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Analog to Digital Television Transition
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auctioned the
airwaves that would serve as Digital Television broadcasts
back in the mid-1990s, the goal was for the United States
to “fully” transition to new ATSC DTV standard by the
year 2006. At such a time, Congress would take
back the airwaves originally allocated to NTSC analog
television and re-allocate it for other purposes.
(Not everyone is aware of this fact.) Analog television
signals would cease to be broadcasted over-the-air,
and everyone in the United States would watch Digital
Television signals.
Analog television
signals would cease to be broadcasted over-the-air,
and everyone in the United States would watch Digital Television signals.
To make the huge number of existing analog televisions
forward compatible with the DTV signals, manufacturers would make set-top boxes
(STB), much like the set-top boxes that you may have today from your cable TV
or satellite TV provider, that down-convert the DTV signal to an analog television
signal so you would be able to drive your existing analog TVs with a signal
that it is able to display. The down-conversion process takes the higher
resolution picture of DTV signals and re-formats it to a lower resolution picture
that analog TV sets is capable of displaying.
Well, it's already 2003 and the DTV transition
has been rather slow to date. Only a few percent of all U.S. households
have DTVs or DTV-ready displays. The problem is similar to that of the
chicken and the egg. The chicken being DTVs and the egg being DTV programming.
(Or is it the other way around?) Without DTV programming, why would consumers
want to upgrade to the more expensive DTVs or DTV-ready displays? From
the content producers and broadcasters’ perspective, why would they upgrade
their production equipment to DTV when there are not enough consumers with DTV
capability to justify the investment?
Given the more realistic (read “slower than expected”)
rate of DTV rollout by content producers, broadcasters, and distributors, and
the adoption rate by everyday consumers, this 2006 “deadline” would have to
be extended. The U.S. Congress provision calls for the transition to occur
when 85% of the United States population has Digital Television. So don’t
worry. Your analog TVs are safe from obsolescence for quite a few years.
Recording
Digital TV & HDTV
Naturally, with DTV content available, everyday consumers will
want to record such programs whether it be for time shifting, sharing programs,
or archival purposes. But recording DTV is one of the sticking points
of this new technology. Since DTV, particularly HDTV, contains very high
picture quality and its digital form theoretically allows bit-for-bit perfect
copies to be made, content owners are leery of allowing their precious, revenue-generating
content to be recorded. Most of this is understandable, considering they
are the rightful owners. But for sometimes, their resistance may be viewed
as just paranoia. As a result, there is ongoing debate as to whether consumers
should be able to record certain DTV programs in light of the Fair Use Act.
Whatever the case, recording DTV does have some technical challenges.
First, the data rate for HDTV peaks at some 28 Mbps, about four to seven times
that of the DVD-Video format. So whatever recording medium is used, it
must accommodate a fast data rate. And since many movies and sporting
events are a couple of hours long in duration, the recording medium must also
have a large data capacity, on the order of 25 - 50 GB.
Right now, there are three hypothetical ways in which consumers
may be able to record HDTV programs. Digital-VHS
is the only format available today, while high definition
personal video recorders and recordable high definition
DVD are expected to be available soon.
Digital-VHS (D-VHS). JVC took its aging VHS and Super-VHS formats and
gave it new life as a video tape-based DTV recording medium. The Digital-VHS
format is capable of recording HDTV in either 1080i or 720p, for up to four
hours on a single D-VHS video tape. This recording capability is available
now. There are four D-VHS VCRs available, including the JVC HM-DH30000
($600, as low as $549.88 at JandR.com), Marantz MV8300 ($1,600),
Mitsubishi HS-HD1100U, and Mitsubishi HS-HD2000U. For playback
of high definition movies, JVC also added a proprietary copy protection feature
called D-Theater, allowing movie studios to release movies in full HDTV
quality without fear of it being pirated. So far DreamWorks, Fox, Universal,
and Artisan have embraced the D-Theater format and have begun releasing a handful
of movies to this format. For more information about Digital-VHS and D-Theater,
read our Digital-VHS and D-Theater Overview.
High Definition Personal Video Recorders
(HD-PVRs). Hard disk-based personal video recorders such as TiVo and ReplayTV
have revolutionized the way consumers time shift TV. And soon, by the
end of 2003 or early 2004, HD-PVRs capable of recording HDTV programming may
become available. These devices are likely to be integrated with the set-top
broadcast satellite receivers or cable boxes and come with large hard disk capacities,
in order to capture the high bandwidth of HDTV programming. Current and
previous generations of PVRs are designed for analog TV, and cannot record DTV
and HDTV broadcasts.
Recordable High Definition DVD. On the near horizon is the introduction
of the recordable High Definition DVD (HD DVD) format. This new optical
disc format would use the new blue-violet laser technology to allow more data
to be recorded on the familiar 12.0-cm optical disc form factor. Two formats
are being considered, Blu-Ray Disc and Advance Optical Disc (AOD).
The Blu-Ray Disc format seems to have a leg up on the AOD format, as Sony just
released a production Sony BDZ-S77 Blu-Ray Disc Recorder (equivalent
$3800 US, available since April 2003) to the Japanese consumer market.
For more information about these HD DVD formats, read our High Definition
DVD Tutorial.
The Future
of Digital TV & HDTV
DTVs and DTV-ready displays will undoubtedly
get cheaper and better with time. More and more
sets will incorporate a built-in DTV receiver.
And hopefully with more DTV programming comes more DTV
adopters. As we discussed above, HD DVD
recorders are only a few years years away, providing
the convenience of an optical disc format. HD-PVRs
based on today's TiVo and ReplayTV devices will probably
converge with the new HD DVD recordable format and allow
us to archive HDTV quality programming onto removable
and shareable HD DVDs. Years from now, our children
will ask us how we ever got along without Digital Television.
Until then, we’ll help you navigate the road ahead and
avoid the pitfalls of an evolving technology.
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