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HD Highlights
UK cable company offers viewers HD alternative
Mar 21, 2006 10:33 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
The United Kingdom got its first HDTV service March 10 with the launch of a high-definition offering from cable provider Telewest.
To receive the service, viewers will need a TVDrive set-top box from the company.
Sky plans to launch an HD service this year, and the BBC continues to test HD systems.
Red laser-based optical HD format debuts at CeBIT
Mar 21, 2006 10:38 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Just as vendors of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players were preparing to do battle, and movie studios were choosing sides, a new competing optical format has emerged along with a red laser-based player expected to cost $150.
New Medium Enterprises (NME) last week announced at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, the world’s first red laser (1920x1080 resolution) high-definition optical disc solution. NME unveiled its Versatile Multilayer Discs (VMDs) with pre-recorded HD content and varying storage capacities up to 40GB. Red laser players from NME’s strategic partner E-World played back feature-length films in 1920/1080 HD format from one side of a single VMD disc.
The VMD technology can store up to 20 layers of content on one side of a disc, which is about the same size and thickness as a DVD, increasing capacity from 5GB on a DVD to 5GB per layer of a VMD. That’s a total possible capacity of 100GB. Combining this with E-World's HD playback technology enables HD viewing of pre-recorded video content on enhanced red laser players.
To date, NME has signed content agreements in India, China, Russia and South America. NME's strategic partner in India, Eros Group, has rights to a catalog of about 2600 Bollywood movies. About 50 will be available in the VMD format by the end of 2006. Pre-recorded VMD discs will retail at close to DVD prices.
Whether or not the format makes inroads into the U.S. market is unclear. However, the availability of the large catalog of movies from India using VMD may pull the format into the United States and elsewhere with sizeable Indian communities.
For more information, visit www.nmeinc.com.Technicolor opens test center to evaluate digital cinema components
Mar 21, 2006 10:45 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Technicolor Digital Cinema opened a large digital cinema research and equipment testing facility at its campus in Burbank, CA, March 8.
The mission of the Technicolor Digital Cinema Test Center is to evaluate the performance, reliability and functionality of digital projectors, servers and related hardware from major original equipment manufacturers.
The extensive testing is intended to identify projector and server configurations to be deployed during the Technicolor Digital Cinema’s commercial beta test to begin in the first half of 2006 on 200-250 screens across North America. Following the successful completion of the beta test, Technicolor Digital Cinema plans an initial deployment of a complete digital projection system in up to 5000 DCI-compliant screens over the next three to four years.
The new test center houses small and large screening theaters serviced by various digital projectors, servers and distribution and networking components being evaluated.
The company’s engineers will examine each device to determine if it can handle core digital cinema operations, including subtitle display, simultaneous playout and movement, inter-server movement, automation, 2K and 4K interoperability, alternative content playback, remote management, 3-D capabilities and on-screen advertising integration. Equipment also will be tested for ease of distribution and back-of-house systems integration.
For more information, visit www.technicolordigital.com and www.thomson.net.
Interest in HD, flat panels boosts TV sales revenue
Mar 21, 2006 10:59 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Consumer interest in high-definition television and flat panel displays set the stage for significant revenue growth from TV sales in the final quarter of 2005.
Revenue in the fourth quarter grew 36 percent Q/Q, and for the year rose 13 percent from 2004, according to display research firm DisplaySearch.
Flat panel TV penetration jumped from 8 percent in Q4 2004 to 19 percent in Q4 2005 on a unit basis and from 36 percent to 58 percent on a revenue basis, causing the blended average sales price for TVs to rise 18 percent year over year to $451.
On a unit basis, TV shipments rose 31 percent Q/Q but declined 4 percent Y/Y in Q4 2005 to 58.2M units. China experienced the largest Y/Y decline due to different seasonality associated with the timing of the 2005 Chinese New Year.
By technology:
- LCD TVs grew the fastest, overtaking CRT televisions on revenue. LCD TVs were up 137 percent Y/Y, boosting their share from 6 percent to 15 percent.
- Plasma TVs grew 109 percent Y/Y to more than double their share to 3.9 percent.
- Microdisplay rear projection TV shipments grew 52 percent Y/Y to boost their unit share to 1.6 percent with Sony accounting for more than one out of every two sold.
- CRT TV shipments fell 15 percent Y/Y in Q4 2005 causing their share to fall from 89 percent to 79 percent.
- RT RPTV shipments were down 60 percent Y/Y and fell from 68 percent of the Q4 2004 RPTV market to 36 percent of the Q4 2005 RPTV.
DISH Network launches local HD channel carriage in seven more cities
Mar 21, 2006 11:18 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
EchoStar Communications is adding local high-definition TV channel service in seven more cities via its DISH Network satellite service.
DISH Network is expanding its HD channel lineup in 2006 and launched the new DISH HD programming packages. Packages offer customers more than 1700 hours of HD programming every week across its more than 23 available channels which include HD local broadcasts.
For more information, visit www.echostar.com.
Eutelsat launches satellite to optimize capacity
Mar 21, 2006 11:21 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Eutelsat Communications successfully launched its HOT BIRD7A broadcast satellite aboard an Ariane 5 ECA rocket.
After a series of firings to put the satellite into geostationary orbit, the satellite will be tested and eventually join the HOT BIRD neighborhood at 13 degrees East.
According to Eutelsat Communications CEO Giuliano Berretta, the arrival of HOT BIRD7A coincides with the “near completion” of the transition to digital in the HOT BIRD neighborhood, which hosts Europe’s first commercial HDTV channels. The new 38 Ku-band transponder satellite will optimize the capacity at Eutelsat's prime video neighborhood.
Currently, the HOT BIRD neighborhood broadcasts 850 television channels and 550 radio stations to 113 million homes in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
HD Showcase
Ascent Media Group brings secure post facility on line
Mar 21, 2006 11:34 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Ascent Media Group is using SGI server, storage and networking technology as the heart of a new state-of-the-art facility in Burbank, CA.
The SGI hardware and software is part of AMG’s data-centric production network solution, known as ProdNet, which offers studio clients secure methods for accommodating a large variety of deliverables.
AMG’s 100,000sq ft building was gutted to the walls and rebuilt to be one of the world’s most modern, most secure, all-digital facilities. SGI Professional Services worked with AMG to design and integrate the ProdNet system, which is dedicated to manufacturing, repurposing, and distributing large media assets.
Ascent Media Group’s deliverables include digital intermediates in high definition, 2K or 4K resolution for Hollywood blockbusters, post-production and satellite delivery of television programming, digital cinema masters, multilanguage versions for home video, DVD, and a variety of entertainment content for wireless mobile devices.
The SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS shared file system was a major component for AMG, particularly in the telecine department, where each frame must be handled as an individual file as opposed to a portion of a larger file. File sizes range from moderate to large, depending on whether they are high definition, 2K or 4K resolution. Moreover, the process requires not only opening and closing a lot of files consistently, the files have to be on time.
At the core of AMG’s ProdNet are three SGI metadata servers based on SGI Origin 350 technology, each with eight CPUs, acting as the SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS servers for the storage system. AMG has 20 SGI Origin 350 servers.
ProdNet was fully functional in September with one SGI InfiniteStorage TP9500 storage system. A second SGI InfiniteStorage TP9500 and a TP9300 storage system will be online shortly, giving AMG a total 100TB of enterprise class storage in addition to 80TB in local caches around the facility.
For more information, visit www.sgi.com.
MTV Networks Music Group launches HD Channel in Dolby Digital 5.1
Mar 21, 2006 11:47 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
MTV Networks Music Group launched its first HD channel, MHD, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
MHD is carrying music-based native-HD programming, including "MTV Unplugged," "VH1 Storytellers," and "CMT Crossroads;" music events such as the "MTV Video Music Awards;" new shows from its Vail studio in Colorado, including "UnCompressed;" and the exclusive concert series "Music With Altitude." Each program will be broadcast using Dolby Digital 5.1.
To capture the full impact of sound from live concerts, special events, and interviews, MHD will leverage Dolby E, a professional-quality compression technology, to deliver the multichannel audio signal to its broadcast centers. The audio will then be re-encoded into Dolby Digital 5.1 for transmission to cable head-ends and satellite providers from which is transmitted to viewers.
Dolby Digital delivers up to 5.1 discrete channels of surround sound.
For more information, visit www.mhd.tv.
Soundoff
Make the most of the ‘20Mb/s pipe’ today, or face uncertainty tomorrow
Mar 21, 2006 12:23 PM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
In the last edition of HD Technology Update, Merrill Weiss urged television broadcasters to begin thinking out of the box about how they offer over-the-air television.
In this edition, HDTU concludes the interview with the NAB2006 Television Engineering Achievement Award winner.
HD Technology Update: ATSC over-the-air transmission of HD is delivering service today that is unsurpassed from the point of view of quality. Is that enough to keep broadcasters competitive, or must they take other steps to win back the audience to over-the-air service?
Merrill Weiss: We need to recognize that the satellite operators and most likely the cable operators are reducing the bit rate of the signal that broadcasters transmit — especially for HD — and that it ultimately reduces the quality of the image that can be displayed in a consumer’s home.
Whether that can be turned into an advantage by broadcasters for attracting people back to over-the-air reception will depend on whether broadcasters are even willing to promote the fact that they do have the best signal. Given that most broadcasters don’t even promote that they have an HD service on the air, it’s hard to see broadcasters promoting that their signal is superior to that of satellite or cable. And a second question is: How many people in the audience will that really matter to?
HDTU: Clearly one of the goals of the ATSC transmission scheme was a robust over-the-air method to deliver high definition television. Were the smallest of screens — i.e. LCD cell phone displays — ever considered as ATSC standards were being defined? Is there room in the ATSC transmission scheme to accommodate broadcast service to handsets as there is with DVB-H? I know one of your primary focuses has been DTV distributed transmission. Could that technology be useful in broadcasting to handsets (cell phones)?
MW: In the earliest stages of the development of what is now the ATSC system, the decision was made that the service to be provided was over-the-air transmission to fixed locations based on assumptions that people would be using an outdoor antenna at 30ft — on the rooftop. The objectives that were set did not include the transmission to portable or mobile receivers.
As other systems developed, the question has been raised in the ATSC context as to whether or not advancements or extensions should be targeted toward enabling portable and mobile reception. In fact, there have been some enhancements already adopted by the ATSC that help with reception in weaker signal areas.
Additionally, it recently has been proposed that they carry the potential further, and among the possible targets are portable and mobile receivers. But you have to recognize that, when you configure the signal to address portable and mobile reception, you are making a trade-off in the bit capacity of the signal in order to achieve the improvement in robustness required for non-stationary reception. And that tradeoff can be 2-to-1 or 4-to-1, so you get only half or a quarter of the bit capacity in return for more robust reception.
Clearly, if you were going to move in that direction, you would need to use more advanced coding to somewhat or fully make up for the loss of bit rate you would suffer to achieve the higher robustness. Even with that more efficient coding, you still might not have enough capacity left to do HD transmission if you were trying to provide service to cell phones.
If you did want to provide mobile and portable service, another factor that comes into play is that you would want to have multiple transmitters to improve the robustness of the system even if you were using lower bit capacity. When moving a receiver around, there will be places where the signal is cut off abruptly. So having signals illuminating those areas from a number of directions will help to mitigate those problems and to resolve that issue. Besides that, putting transmitters closer to receivers reduces the fading of the signals that will be received by the moving receivers.
It is important to recognize that, unlike a cell phone system, where each transmitter at each cell site is on a different frequency from the neighboring transmitter, and each cell uses a number of channels to cover the same sector for the same cell, if you are talking about a broadcast transmitter, it has to have exactly the same information on the same frequency from each cell. So you have to build technology into the receiver to eliminate echoes and extract the data from those signals.
Some of the other transmission systems, such as DVB-T, have been designed specifically to enable mobile and portable reception. It’s not entirely clear whether the ATSC system can be expanded to do that. It depends very much on what receivers have in their front ends for echo mitigation.
There is a technology that’s been brought to the ATSC recently that is being evaluated and might have some potential. It’s too early in the process to know how far it can be pushed and what can be achieved.
HDTU: Look down the road 25 years. What do you see in terms of the digital transmission capabilities of over-the-air television stations?
MW: Twenty-five years is very long time. It is hard to know what broadcasting itself will be like in 25 years. What can be envisioned is that the utility of a pipe into virtually every house in the country that can provide nearly 20Mb/s of data from a number of parallel sources would seem to be a resource that would be quite valuable going forward.
Whether that turns out to be the case or not, however, depends on what applications broadcasters or those who control the spectrum 25 years from now put on the channels licensed to them. A lot will depend on what broadcasters do over the next few years as to whether they are still the licensees of that spectrum 25 years from now.
What will happen to the spectrum in the political process? I’m not in possession of such a good crystal ball that I can divine that. Broadcasters, however, need to think about their businesses as bifurcated. It used to be that owning a broadcast license was a license to deliver content, and that was the only way to get that content to consumers.
Now, that is no longer the case. Broadcasters can deliver content through other avenues, such as cable and satellite. The continued carriage of their signals through those delivery media will depend on their creating content that’s so compelling for their communities that their communities won’t want to be without it and on their communities demanding of those gatekeepers that they deliver that content.
At the same time, broadcasters have to transmit a channel that they can use to deliver content and they might be able to use to deliver other types of information. Whether they will be allowed by the political process that controls the spectrum to do so over the long term will depend on what the broadcasters choose to do with the spectrum and on how the political process trades that use off against the other economic realities that might come to bear on that spectrum.
To read the first part of this interview, visit: http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/hd_tech/20060307/#weiss.
Tell us what you think! HDTU invites response from our readers. Please submit your comments to editor@broadcastengineering.com. We'll follow up with your comments in an upcoming issue.
A Glance At The Stats
Broadcast supply side confidence high, says IABM poll
Mar 21, 2006 11:54 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
A recent survey of broadcast equipment manufacturers paints a rosy picture for the industry as measured in sales, and the roll out of HDTV, upcoming live events and new product launches are the reason.
The poll, “IABM Industry Trends Survey,” released last month reveals that respondents are confident about the prospects for the broadcast market with just over half stating increased confidence in the next quarter compared to only 8 percent reporting diminished confidents — a 7:1 confidence ratio. Last quarter, more than 46 percent said they had high confidence.
Looking ahead across the coming 12 months, confidence has also increased over the previous quarter with 68 percent acknowledging a rise compared to 60 percent previously.
The IABM Industry Trends Survey is produced in association with Ernst & Young. It provides an accurate assessment of current industry sales facts and wider trends from IABM members. It has been carefully designed to allow member companies to provide up-to-date information anonymously via the Internet. The full results are available only to participants.
For more information, visit www.theiabm.org.
Men, women willing to sacrifice for HD plasma, says survey
Mar 21, 2006 11:58 AM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Half of all Americans want to own a high-definition plasma television, according to the results of a survey released last month.
The “I Want My Plasma TV Survey” conducted by Roper Public Affairs for Pioneer Electronics found that men and women in the United States may go to surprising lengths for a high-definition plasma display.
Forty percent of men surveyed said they would endure a 48-hour “chick flick” marathon if it meant they would be rewarded with a plasma television. Twenty percent of the men surveyed said they would give up all sports-related activities: watching, playing and reading about their favorite sports and athletic heroes. Men aren’t alone in willingness to sacrifice. Thirty-three percent of women would give up chocolate for 12 months in exchange for a plasma television.
For more information, visit www.pioneerelectronics.com.
HD Products & Reviews
Anixe HD encoding station relies on Optibase MovieMaker
Mar 21, 2006 1:33 PM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
 The Optibase MovieMaker MPEG-2 HD PCI-encoder, which offers high image and sound quality, was key to the new Anixe HD encoding station. |
Digitalvideo Computing (DVC) has installed an HD encoding station at Anixe HD in Mannheim, Germany.
The key component of the station was the Optibase MovieMaker MPEG-2 HD PCI-encoder, which offers high image and sound quality.
MovieMaker HD supports 4:2:2 encoding at up to 150Mb/s as well as 4:2:0 up to 80Mb/s at MP@HL. Anixe HD will go on air April 1 covering a variety of topics, including cinema, travel, sports and feature films.
For more information, visit www.digitalvideo.de and www.anixehd.de.
Snell & Wilcox rollout Quasar HD upconverter
Mar 21, 2006 1:38 PM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
Snell & Wilcox has introduced Quasar, an HDTV upconverter that integrates motion compensation technology.
The new Quasar platform uses motion estimation techniques based on the company’s Ph.C technology to produce clear, sharp high-definition outputs from a variety of standard definition inputs.
Developed from the ground up, the compact, 1-RU Quasar combines three Snell & Wilcox technologies, including motion estimation, HD conversion, and Prefix compression pre-processing.
At the heart of Quasar is motion estimation technology based on Snell & Wilcox’s Ph.C. It is equally adept at preserving high-frequency detail in action-packed images.
For more information, visit www.snellwilcox.com.
T-VIPS to launch JPEG2000 HD backhaul over IP solution
Mar 21, 2006 1:46 PM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
T-VIPS is launching its HD IP video backhaul solution based upon JPEG2000 compression, the TVG430, at NAB2006. Using JPEG2000 compression, the TVG430 reduces the bit-rate required of an HD-SDI signal from 1.485 Mb/s to between 50- and 200Mb/s.
JPEG2000 is wavelet-based and encodes each frame independently. It provides 10-bit resolution inherent in the HD-SDI format. HD television formats supported are 720p59, 1080i59, 720p50 and 1080i50.
JPEG2000, which has been selected as the standard file format for Digital Cinema, does not create blocking defects and works at full 10-bit resolution.
For further information, visit www.t-vips.com.
Cineflex introduces multi-sensor
Mar 21, 2006 1:47 PM, HD Technology Update e-newsletter
 Cineflex’s Magnum MS system is designed to improve high altitude surveillance. |
Cineflex has debuted its new V14 Magnum multisensor (MS) camera system, which combines a high-definition day/night camera coupled with an extended focal length lens, a real-time wide field of view camera, and a long-range, three field of view infrared thermal sensor.
The system is improves high altitude surveillance. Magnum MS is offered as a fully customizable system.
For more information, visit www.cineflex.com.
