Stop the downward spiral in digital TV!
Ali Hossaini
http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=132&DocID=1773

American television is entering a digital crisis. Viewers have more choices
than ever, but they're faced with skyrocketing costs. Pay TV operators have
sprinkled the country with a hodge-podge of digital technologies, and they
dominate distribution. So far consumers have shouldered the bills. But,
despite higher revenues, media concerns have shaky prospects. If pay
TV-cable and digital broadcast satellite-falters, far-ranging economic and
social repercussions will follow. The crux of the problem lies in the new
standard for digital broadcast: it isn't up to the job. The American
Government needs to act quickly and decisively to stop the downward spiral.
To start the Government needs to rethink its approach to digital television.
The American regulator - the Federal Communications Commission
<http://www.fcc.gov/> - has published an engineering standard for next
generation TV. This standard, known as High Definition Television (HDTV),
meets goals set in the 1980s, and it ignores the massive growth of pay TV,
the Internet and other players in electronic media. What's needed is a
broader standard, and a broader consensus, for a range of digital products.
In the absence of a consensus, the FCC should freeze technology rollouts,
just as it did in 1940 and 1949, when it convened the National Television
Systems Committee that standardized analogue television.
Some background
Understanding the crisis requires some background. The American digital
transition began in 1987, when the FCC began thinking about next generation
TV. After several years of testing, HDTV emerged as the most likely
candidate to replace the old analogue standard. The Advanced Television
System Committee <http://www.atsc.org/> (ATSC), a non-profit trade
organisation, began to document the new standards. A legal milestone was
passed in late 1996 when the FCC mandated that HDTV standards be used by
broadcasters. Specifically, the ruling applied to terrestrial broadcasters;
local TV stations were told that HDTV was the best way to improve the
quality of sound and picture.
Important players sit on the ATSC. But the HDTV upgrade hasn't gone well.
Industry keeps dragging its feet, and consumers are barely aware of digital
options. So the commissioners got serious on August 8 this year. By a three
to one vote, they issued a ruling forcing manufacturers to include digital
tuners in almost all televisions, and TV-ready computers, by 2007. Set-top
boxes provided by pay TV providers might be the next target for
HDTV-compatible tuners.
The problem is that HDTV sets currently cost around a thousand dollars.
Estimates for implementing the ruling range from negligible (according to
the FCC) to $250 a set (according to some industry sources). Digital
broadcast facilities, in turn, cost between one and three million dollars,
which comes directly from broadcaster budgets. One thing is clear: the
upgrade isn't going to be easy or cheap.
Is the move to HDTV misguided? Even with the rulings, the transition has
been less painful than implementing the National Television Service
Committee (NTSC), when the FCC shut down interloping stations. The NTSC is
highly restrictive, but TV has thrived for decades because it has provided a
consistent foundation for business. The FCC hopes the HDTV standard will
confer similar benefits on future broadcasters. But do the Commission's
rulings offer a single set of reliable digital standards? Most certainly
not. There are now numerous platforms for digital production, transmission
and distribution, and HDTV complicates the marketplace even more.
The issue with HDTV lies in its expanse, not its expense. HDTV stands for
'high-definition television', and it focuses on creating a dramatically
better viewing experience. Improving the delivery of sound and picture might
have played well in the 1980s. But today's consumers expect more from
digital media, and cable TV is already in the midst of a vast digital
conversion. The HDTV standard is about picture quality, not interactivity.
The bottom line is that the 'D' in HDTV should stand for digital, but does
not.
Digital explosion
Distribution is a key factor missed by the FCC. About 80% of Americans
subscribe to cable (or digital satellite), and operators have already spent
15 billion dollars on digital upgrades. In May, the ATSC expressed optimism
- but no certainty - that HDTV could interoperate with cable. The need for
cable delivery points to another telling fact. The market has already
outstripped local broadcasting, and the FCC rulings on HDTV are irrelevant,
even detrimental, to existing digital products.
None of this means that the FCC and ATSC are irrelevant. In fact, the market
desperately needs standards. Cable operators aim to offer an array of
digital services and programming via advanced television. Yet, with the
exception of high-speed Internet access, they haven't seen a return on their
digital products because they're focusing on engineering rather than
programming. Two factors are hampering the growth of revenues: competing
platforms and incomplete infrastructure. Only the government, supported by
trade organisations, has the power to address these issues and give 21st
century television a foundation for profits.
What government can do
A public-private partnership can maximise the value of digital television.
This means going beyond high-definition pictures and taking command of large
trends in technology. The first is in distribution. Coaxial cable crosses
most US households, but it's too narrow for many services - it doesn't carry
enough data. So the government and industry should partner to provide 'last
mile' fibre connections to urban and suburban households. Rural areas can be
served by high-bandwidth satellites. In brief, we need to revive our
commitment to the Information Superhighway.
The second trend is in production. HDTV may be a digital standard, but it
misses the boat on datacasting and interactive programming. Ironically, the
FCC is enforcing HDTV, which has no discernible market, and ignoring
interactive television (iTV), which is already available through cable
operators. In the absence of a standard, cable operators are deploying an
array of digital platforms. Programmers and advertisers would like to create
iTV programming, but the lack of a coherent market keeps their efforts
experimental. Imagine you needed a different TV to watch ABC, NBC and CBS.
There would be no national television market, just a cluster of regions, and
programmers would never reach economies of scale. To become a mature
industry, iTV must be included in the digital mandate.
The government should also recognise the growing role of streaming media and
other Internet platforms. Convergence was oversold in the last decade, but
it is entering the mainstream. Standardisation would help the market for
Internet media mature, and it would prevent disruptions during the next
decade, as pay TV providers integrate Internet products into set-top boxes.
It would also foster distribution over PCs, mobile devices and other
emerging platforms.
Minimally, the FCC should specify baseline standards for streaming media,
instant messaging and web browsers across platforms. Some flexibility could
be allowed for proprietary features, but it is intolerable that consumers
need to maintain streaming clients from Microsoft, Apple and Real. And the
situation is just as bad for the producers who spend money to output shows
in multiple server formats. Without a stable technology landscape, streaming
media will remain unprofitable.
Goodbye terrestrial
Finally, the FCC needs to prepare for a more dramatic action: pulling the
plug on local broadcasts. If every US household has a common carrier
broadband connection - fibre in cities, satellite in the countryside - there
will be no need for local TV towers. This move will free enormous swaths of
spectrum, and revenues from licensing frequencies could help finance the
fibre network. This does not mean the end of local television. In fact,
local stations will thrive because they'll save money on transmitters and
operations. Their licences will entitle them to low (or no) rates on local
fibre, and everyone will benefit from the superior performance of
ground-based transmission and new wireless products.
How can we start realising the full potential of digital technology? The
good news is the ATSC did not close shop in 1996. During the past few years,
the committee has suggested standards for the delivery of data and streaming
media over broadcast TV. It is currently working on transactional services
for iTV. The FCC should put industry on the alert that it plans to mandate
these standards for the entire television industry, including cable and
satellite operators. Then we need them to go much further. The FCC should
mandate a broader set of standards that covers all media and all delivery
systems. They also need to recognise that copyright and privacy protection
are essential to compliance in a digital world. The Advanced Television
Systems Committee needs to become the Advanced Media and Telecommunications
Systems Committee.
A complete set of media standards - for television, Internet and IP-based
telecommunications - accompanied by a revolution in transmission, will have
the same impact as the NTSC in the 1940s. The playing field will level for
new entrants, and a focus on consumer products (rather than proprietary
standards) will reinvigorate markets. Wireless costs will drop as jockeying
for spectrum slows. Communities will add as many local TV stations as they
want, and public service stations will stop scrambling for transmission
funds. Hospitals could offer 'home visits' via two-way iTV, and distance
learning might finally become a reality. Needless to say, the AMTSC must
have a consensus behind its mandate.
Consensus for the future
The only way to achieve consensus, and get the best engineering, is to
repeat history. The NTSC contained stakeholders from every reach of
television, and it had a clear mission. The AMTSC needs the same force of
purpose. Representatives from corporations, academia, government and public
interest groups should stop business until they define their industries
through a set of enforceable standards.
For sixty years, television has offered fantastic opportunities. As we
expand into the digital realm, we should remember that commercial TV
followed fifteen years of experimentation, and the government twice reined
in business to enforce the NTSC. In contrast, digital media blasted off in
the 1990s with little preparation.
Our current headaches emanate from an exuberant lack of planning, but I
argue we've done enough experimentation. We know what works. A new standards
commission, the AMTSC, would define the contours of a thousand-channel world
that combines entertainment, information and communications. With any luck,
we can creat a new industry - and leave the past behind - by combining our
digital dreams into one.

Copyright ) Dr Ali Hossaini, 2002. Published by openDemocracy
<http://www.openDemocracy.net>. Permission is granted to reproduce articles
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Dr Ali Hossaini is a pioneer of interactive television and electronic media.
He manages two television channels in New York City, and he is developing
ArtTV, an art video channel. Previously he worked as a Vice President at
Oxygen Media and helped launch MSNBC, WorldLinkTV and TechTV. At the latter,
he launched the Television Palace, an application that merges chat and
television into a virtual environment. He also published one of the first
electronic books. Visit his website <http://www.pantar.com/>.

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