Digital TV Gridlock: Anatomy of an Argument
By Leslie Ellis
from the June 4, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
There are few issues in broadcast television more vexing than the tangled transition to an all-digital format. And from the looks of things, the picture won't clear up anytime soon.
Knots tangle each junction point in the journey of a digital TV signal, from origination to distribution (cable, satellite or off-air), to in-home electronics (set-tops and TVs). Even the "digital television" itself isn't exactly digital: As any home theater aficionado will wearily point out, most "digital" sets don't yet have a digital connector on the back.
At a macro level, the problem is an intense industrial solipsism emanating from four entwined, but naturally adversarial, factions: TV networks, TV manufacturers, broadcast stations and cable TV operators. Each snipes at the digital viewpoints of the others, particularly when regulators are within listening range.
Meanwhile, an essence of benign neglect wafts from the freshly re-staffed Federal Communications Commission. Regulations will likely be studied, and grumbles examined--but rules are unlikely this year, experts on all sides say.
Who's Dissing Whom?
Understanding the technical, regulatory, business and political ropes hobbling broadcast digital TV requires a quick review of argument anatomy.
Broadcast networks. For starters, they complain there aren't enough digital or high-definition television (HDTV) sets in use by U.S. consumers to justify the steep costs of digital content production, and particularly HDTV content. At the end of last year, they say, only about 650,000 digital sets were sold that could display HD images.
TV manufacturers. They retort with two-part proof of their combined commitment. Part 1: Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Thomson/RCA already are picking up part of the HDTV production tab for CBS' "Touched By An Angel," and about a dozen other shows. They do this because they know that high-definition images, backed by crisp, digital sound, create an experience that is better technically than the human eye can fathom. But if consumers can't see proof--which comes from the content side--how will they know to want it?
Part 2: Prices for digital sets are going down. The Consumer Electronics Association says DTV prices are down 25 percent since 1998. Panasonic showed an HDTV set in the $2,000 range in January--pocket change in home theater currency.
Nonetheless, the price tag for most HDTV sets or monitor/set-top combos still lingers in the neighborhood of $4,000-$10,000. For most consumers, thinking about how to spend $5,000 means weighing orthodontia against the college fund, more than it means popping for a cool TV set.
In turn, consumer electronics manufacturers and their lead lobbyist, the Consumer Electronics Association, blames the cable industry for the slow consumer uptake. Methods to physically connect digital TV sets to cable boxes, CEA grouses, are flawed and stagnant. So are methods to keep digital content safe from copying, and to move supplemental program information, such as electronic guide data, into the digital TV set. (Cable, predictably, vigorously disagrees on all counts.)
It is the latter CEA complaint--recently formally directed to the FCC--that is its most visceral. Right now, the cable box represents the last significant microprocessor before digital programming reaches the eyeball. If the program guide or other interactive menus could slip into the TV set, the CE industry would control the last microprocessor before consumer eyeballs.
It's historical score settling: After 20 years in wait, the CE industry finally could evict the cable interloper that assiduously nicked control of how consumers watch TV. Recall that it was in the early 1980s that cable introduced set-tops with remote controls, so that consumers didn't have to get up to change the TV channel.
Broadcast stations. They also are roiled with cable. Consumers can't see digital TV broadcasts because cable won't carry them, they protest. Until cable simulcasts the analog and digital transmissions of the broadcasters, what's the point of broadcasters spending money to transmit digitally?
Cable's indignant, eyes-rolled retort: Horsefeathers. Along with former FCC Chairman William Kennard, cable regularly maligns broadcasters as "spectrum squatters." Broadcasters, they chortle, were given a slice of spectrum to air HD programming and not only are not using it for HD, but also are abusing the gift by attempting to use it for such other applications as data broadcasts and additional channels of standard definition TV.
Whither Consumers?
Left in the smoke of the crossfire are consumers themselves. Those who can afford it wonder why they can't get more HDTV content. Those who don't have it barely know it exists.
Cost and content issues aside, there are at least three ways for consumers to receive HDTV transmissions today: Off-air, from direct broadcast satellites and from cable.
Getting HDTV signals over-the-air requires an antenna (around $25) and a receiver ($450-$800) that demodulates the transmitted signal. Getting HDTV from DBS usually requires buying and installing a new dish, ranging from $200-$500.
Getting HDTV signals from cable, so far, is free to those digital subscribers served by MSOs active in HDTV transmissions. So far there are few. AT&T Broadband and Cox are dabbling--AT&T in the Chicago area, and Cox in its Omaha, Neb. system. Time Warner Cable is the most active in HDTV deployments, with north of 18 systems carrying high definition programming.
That means that Time Warner subscribers in those systems, (see sidebar) who phone in to request a way to receive HDTV programming, receive an expensive HDTV-capable set-top box, delivered and installed--free.
It's not free for cable providers, naturally. A "sidecar" unit made by Motorola runs in the $300-$500 range; an all-in-one HDTV-capable set-top from Scientific-Atlanta runs in the $1,000 range.
Cable's HDTV Options
Notably, broadcasters use a different form of modulation than cable or DBS to imprint digital signals onto a carrier for the airborne ride to homes. Known as 8-VSB (for vestigial sideband), the method was built for sturdiness against interference.
Cable, by contrast, uses a digital modulation method called "QAM," for quadrature amplitude modulation. DBS uses QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Key). QPSK is the most sturdy, which is logical, considering that signals blast up to space, then come back down. 8-VSB is in the middle; QAM is fastest of the three in potential throughput, but least resistant to noise. Because the cable network is inherently sealed off spectrally, it suffers less interference issues than over-the-air or satellite transmissions.
But the modulation differences do cause challenges for cable operators mulling how to best offer HDTV. Right now, cable providers have two choices, neither of them ideal. First is to transmit the raw, VSB-modulated signal from a broadcaster, which involves clearing off a full, 6 MHz cable channel. That's a spectrally inefficient and economically unattractive proposition, cable technologists submit, especially considering that some metro markets attract upwards of 15 off-air broadcasters.
The second option is to re-modulate the broadcast digital signal from VSB to QAM, then send it to an HDTV-capable set-top. That's the way most MSOs are doing HDTV today.
The Last Three Feet
The final junction point at issue is the three feet of wire that runs from the digital cable set-top box, to the digital TV. Until there's a 1394 "FireWire" or otherwise mutually agreeable digital connector on the back of the digital TVs, transmissions must be sent in analog format.
That connector, should it ever be mutually endorsed by cable set-top manufacturers and digital TV set makers, also will handle copy protection so that HDTV and digital content owners can be protected against hackers making unfettered copies.
This is the area of the gummiest mudslinging--and has been for decades. (One white-haired cable engineer who worked on cable/consumer-electronic compatibility issues off and on for 20 years wryly notes that "when we started down this path, we were young men.")
Digital interfaces between cable boxes and digital TVs, as well as copy protection, are merely the digital manifestation of an on-again, off-again strategic volcano between cable, and electronics manufacturers. At its core is the crown jewel: The final control point before the consumer.
Clearly, there are no quick or simple ways to smooth the digital TV transition. Completing it as originally scheduled, in 2006, seems unlikely. Making HDTV work in scale to more than 110 million U.S. households, seem to require at least two things: Cross-industry cooperation, or a vigorous, arm-twisting game of "uncle."
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