[B&C/MCN] HD Newsletter - January 24, 2008

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January 24, 2008
IN THIS ISSUE
  1. TOP STORY: FCC Begins New Round of Testing on White-Space Devices
  2. NEWS:

    --Schools Put Students at Center of HDTV

    --ESPN XGames Go HD This Weekend

  3. Q&A: Ardell Hill , Media General
  4. Briefing Room: News from B&C, Multichannel News and TWICE
  5. Around the Web

This twice-monthly e-mail newsletter is published by the editors of Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News and covers everything related to HDTV. If you are not interested in receiving this key source of information, click here to opt-out.

Top Story
FCC Begins New Round of Testing on White-Space Devices

The Federal Communications Commission began a new slate of testing on consumer devices designed for use in "white-spaces" spectrum. The second round of testing is designed to give consumer-device manufacturers with devices that failed a first round of testing a second chance to prove that they will not interfere with broadcast-TV signals or wireless microphones. And industry associations like The Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) and the National Association of Broadcasters are keeping a watchful eye.
 
Last week, NAB executive vice president of media relations Dennis Wharton said the trade group’s paramount objective remains the delivery of interference-free digital-broadcast television to more than 100 million American households.
 
“We are not opposed to new technology,” he said in a statement. “However, given the failing-grade performance and incomplete implementation of the devices submitted in the first round of tests, we have a high degree of skepticism whether tests of these devices will demonstrate that a practical service using portable devices can be introduced without jeopardizing DTV service.”
 
The testing will initially consist of a four- to six-week lab test of equipment that will allow Internet-service providers to access this spectrum, followed by another six-week field-testing period.
 
The companies involved with the testing include Microsoft, Philips, Motorola and Google. Their goal is to prove the devices work so that the FCC will give them the blessing to deploy them across the country. Those companies are once again claiming that the broadcast, sports and Broadway communities are undertaking a “public misinformation campaign.”
 
MSTV president Dave Donovan called the campaign claim one of the “most disingenuous arguments ever raised in an FCC filing.”
 
The consumer-device makers believe that sensing technology in the devices will enable them to find available spectrum without interfering with TV reception or wireless-microphone use. But sensing devices, for example, will not sense devices kilometers from a home, and tests have shown that interference could, potentially, travel that far. In addition, a device might sense available spectrum during the first half of the Super Bowl but not know that the spectrum is set aside for use during the halftime show.
 
When the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] and FCC first began looking at the viability of sensing devices as the sole protector against interference, they found that it was too complex and difficult,” Donovan said. "So the [Wireless Innovation Alliance] went to the Hill and injected politics into the process.”
 
Donovan urged all networks and industry professionals that rely on either wireless microphones or the delivery of over-the-air TV signals to viewers to get involved in the process.
 
The biggest danger of the testing is the Wireless Innovation Alliance claim that the devices submitted for testing are simply “concept pieces” and not the final devices that will be in consumers’ hands. The FCC is not getting into the business of approving consumer devices, so any future devices could feature smaller, less sensitive antennas than the concept devices and cause harmful interference.
 
“The commission needs to be made aware of any problems,” Donovan said.

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News
Schools Put Students at Center of HDTV  
HDTV is beginning to have a presence at colleges and broadcast schools -- an important shift that ensures that broadcasters and other content creators can find young, upstart talent that is comfortable working with a new way of capturing images.

“It’s not just about learning to work with new technology,” said Sheldon Reisler, coordinator of Centennial College's broadcasting and film program, based in Toronto. “It’s learning about the new format and how the information-rich images impact the telling of our stories.”

Centennial equipped its broadcasting studio with four Hitachi 1080i HDTV cameras to help train students in HDTV techniques and production values. It's the first college in the Toronto region to use the cameras in a learning environment.

Reisler said the new format will bring about a lot of changes to the curriculum taught in his program. “Conventional television can't show details very well, so a lot of time is spent splicing in close-ups of a weapon or jewel or other plot detail,” he added. “An HD camera can capture that and show you the expression on the character's face all in one beautiful frame.”

And the new cameras will also give students a better understanding of set design for HD. “The broader field gives viewers additional information about the environment and the story,” Reisler said. “There's a new level of scrutiny that has to be applied to every aspect of television production.” The HD cameras are the first step in a three-year plan to bring Centennial's broadcasting program up to the same standards the industry is slowly incorporating. The studio's control room will get HD monitors and digital switchers, and videotape eventually will be replaced by high-capacity servers that will store the audio and visual information digitally.

Reisler said Centennial graduates will have an advantage in the job market because they'll know how to apply HD standards to everything from storyboards to set design.

Students in the Los Angeles area are also getting exposed to HDTV via a new program launched by National Mobile Television in Torrance, Calif. Known as CENTRO (The Center for Education in TV and Radio), students interested in pursing a career in television and radio broadcasting as talent, production or technical engineers can receive hands-on training from award-winning faculty and industry leaders. The bilingual broadcasting institute is aimed at training and empowering those interested in pursuing an exciting career in TV and radio and foreign journalists and technicians looking for high-end training, or for those currently in the industry who would like a refresher course utilizing the latest technology and high-end digital equipment available today.

“We built a fully operational TV and radio station and studio with equipment currently being used in the industry,” NMT CEO Mark Howorth said. “We will be training our students on EVS, Zodiak Switcher, Deko, Tapeless P2 environment with Avid Unity. Most broadcast programs rely on using old or donated equipment, much of which won’t actually be seen by graduates in the field. CENTRO is committed to offering practical and applied learning.”

For those interested in radio, participants enroll in an intensive four-month radio talent and production program. Enrollment costs are $12,000 for the TV program and $7,000 for the radio program, and classes are limited to 30 people for the TV programs and 20 for the radio.

Rolando Nichols, a UCLA journalism instructor and Univision journalist, approached Howorth and NMT about the idea. Howorth said a group of minority investors were on board with the plan and Nichols also obtained a Small Business Administration loan to launch this program.

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News
ESPN XGames Go HD This Weekend  
This weekend ESPN's Winter X Games will take the HD half-pipe challenge as the network looks to make its most ESPN-centric product a full HD experience.
 
Rick Alessandri, senior vice president of ESPN consumer products and X Games managing director, said the move was a direct result of equipment getting better and the HD audience getting larger. “Everything from follow cams to robotic cams will be in HD,” he added.
 
Approximately 59 HD cameras -- a mix of Grass Valley, Sony and Panasonic gear -- will be used to cover the action. There will be one or two non-HD cameras, like POV cameras on snowmobiles, as the technology has still not caught up with the need. “Our position is that we don’t want to take something away from the viewer in terms of POV camera,” Alessandri said. “If the cameras aren’t HD, they are still worthwhile.”
 
ESPN will use Panasonic and Sony HD cameras, as well as EVS XT[2] drives, to capture the action in HD. Avid-based on-site edit rooms in local hotel rooms will allow for multiple editors to simultaneously share content via an Avid Unity server.
 
All 15 hours of the Winter X Games 12 will be in HD Jan. 24-27 live from Aspen, Colo. X Games 14 will also be presented entirely in HD and will air in early August. XCENTER -- the daily highlight show for both the X Games and Winter X Games -- will also be shown in HD on ESPN2 HD.

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Q&A
Hill Moves HD Mountains for Media General
 

Ardell Hill
Senior VP, Broadcast Operations
Media General

Q: What is your take on the current status of the DTV transition now that we have about one year to go?
 
A: There are so many puzzle parts that are still in play. On the technical side, we’re working hard to be prepared, but when you have a situation like our two stations in Spartanburg, S.C., WYCW and WSPA, which are a channel 7 station and an out-of-core channel 57, and you need to take 57 off the air and convert an analog channel 7 to a digital transmitter, it is not an insignificant amount of work. The antenna that the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] might think is the size of an index finger weighs 13 tons and you just don’t stack it.
 
Q: What specifically are you doing at Media General?
 
A: Everybody is working hard to get our station plants in order, and we are taking part in several industry groups like MSTV [the Association for Maximum Service Television] and speaking with our counterparts at the affiliate level to make sure we’re all in sync. As time goes on, I think the public will be very well notified and engaged about the transition, and they’ll be aware that analog pictures are going away. But by the time we get there, the industry will have expended a lot of energy.
 
Q: Are you happy with the current state of the DTV transition?
 
A: On the whole, I am optimistic and positive. Cable households will hear a lot of stuff but they aren’t even going to know the transition happened and everything will be like it was the day before. Of course, some people will wake up and have to get converter boxes, but the industry is working at the consumer and station level to make sure we have answers when viewers and customers call us.
 
Q: What are Media General’s top HDTV priorities in 2008?
 
A: More than one-half of our stations are impacted with the analog turnoff and will have a meaningful change of facilities. But other than turning off the old analog transmitter and moving the antenna up, there are few physical changes. And we are focused on DTV so there isn’t a large push to embrace new technologies or major projects.
 
Q: What about HD news?
 
A: Right now, we have five stations doing HD newscasts, not HD in the field. And we probably won’t complete any more HD upgrades this year. We’ll delay them and look at doing more in 2009. Interviewed by Ken Kerschbaumer
 
 

--Interviewed by Ken Kerschbaumer

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Briefing Room

WCBS Gives Wider View of New York
(From a Jan. 21 article in Broadcasting & Cable magazine)

WCBS New York is upgrading the look of its HD newscasts by investing in Sony XDCAM HD camcorders and a server-based production system from BitCentral. The new gear will allow the newscasts to immediately provide wide-screen images from the field and eventually support full HD newsgathering. The CBS owned-and-operated station is making the move to keep pace with HD newscasts from competitors WNBC and WABC, both of which capture their field footage in wide-screen standard-definition and upconvert it for broadcast.
For more…

World Wrestling Entertainment Enters HD Ring
(From a Jan. 14 article at BroadcastingCable.com)

The WWE began airing its events in HD. Pay-per-view will also be delivered in the high-resolution format beginning Jan. 27. The move follows a $20 million revamp of WWE's Stamford, Conn., studios, including new gear and new sets for Raw and Smackdown, according to the company.
For more…

TV Makers Push Internet Connections
(From a Jan. 14 article in Broadcasting & Cable magazine)

LCD- and plasma-display manufacturers are seeking to differentiate their products by offering thinner and lighter sets with colored frames and additional features, including Ethernet ports that allow the sets to display Internet-based content, as well as HD pictures. At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show, several set manufacturers touted those new bells and whistles.
For more…

Indy Racing League to Rev Up HD on ESPN, ABC
(From a Jan. 10 article at BroadcastingCable.com)

ESPN and ABC will telecast all 16 of their Indy Racing League races in HD beginning this year, starting with the March 29 race from the Homestead-Miami Speedway in primetime on ESPN2. That follows the HD telecast of the Indianapolis 500 by ABC last year, the first event on the circuit to get HD treatment. All of the cameras, including in-car and pit cameras, will be HD.
For more…

Travel HD Touts Demand, VOD Premieres
(From a Jan. 14 article in Multichannel News)

The HD version of Travel Channel launched Jan. 15 with Cox Communications and RCN distribution pacts and offering cable affiliates video-on-demand premieres of new shows. Travel president and general manager Pat Younge said the signal has been available to Cox affiliates since Jan. 1. Cox bought Travel from Discovery Communications last year.
For more…

Gameplay HD Tackles ‘Madden Challenge’
(From a Jan. 14 article in Multichannel News)

Gameplay HD is in the game with “EA Sports 2007 Madden Challenge.” Voom’s HD channel devoted to the world of video gaming created a new TV series capturing the action from competitive tournaments built around Electronic Arts’ popular Madden NFL Football game. Gameplay HD will kick off a seven-part series at 1 p.m. Feb. 2, the day before Super Bowl XLII.
For more…

Cable-Cutting WiHD Spec Finalized
(From a Jan. 21 article at TWICE.com)

The WirelessHD consortium finalized specifications for its in-room cable-replacement WirelessHD (WiHD) technology, promoted as the only cable-replacement technology that delivers uncompressed copy-protected HD video up to 1080p with no signal loss. One of the consortium's founders, Panasonic, demonstrated the technology at CES. Other consortium founders are LG Electronics, NEC, chipmaker SiBeam, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. Intel is also a member.
For more…

Blu-ray Shifts Promo Plans
(From a Jan. 21 article at TWICE.com)

Members of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) were not declaring victory in the war of the HD disc formats at CES, but their actions seemed to be speaking louder than their words. Since Warner Bros.' surprise announcement that it will exclusively back Blu-ray Disc later this year, leaders of some of the BDA's largest manufacturers and studios said they have agreed to shift gears in their joint promotional and marketing efforts from a Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD approach to one that will promote the advantages of Blu-ray over standard-definition DVDs.
For more…


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Around the Web
Flipping Over HD
TV Technology reports that the industry is right now at the edge of transitioning to the distribution of syndicated content in HD. Warner Bros. began distributing sitcom Two and a Half Men in HD via Pathfire and expect more shows to transition to HD syndication in 2008. Other products like Thomson’s K2 server and Telestream’s FlipFactory will also play a role in speeding up the transition to HD syndication.
For more…
 
HDTV Makers Struggle to Stand Out
AP reports that HDTV manufacturers are trying to make the task of buying an HDTV set much more difficult than just choosing between LCD and plasma, 42 inches or 46 inches. To stand out amid fierce competition, they're adding exotic features, and even a little bit of color to the plain black bezels that have been de rigueur. They're also chasing each other to zero -- zero thickness, that is. Apparently, you can't be too thin if you're a TV.
For more…
 
Don’t Believe the Low-Bit-Rate ‘HD’ Lie
ZDNet blogger George Ou reports that “HD” video from Microsoft’s XBOX360 HD download service and Apple’s new Apple TV service or any other Web download service is simply not HD by any respectable definition. Standard-definition 480i DVD movies are typically 5 megabits per second to 8 mbps MPEG-2, whereas these so-called HD wanna-bes weigh in at a pathetic 1.5 mbps-4 mbps of 720p H.264.
For more…
 
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD: I Don’t Care Who Wins!
CNET’s Charles Cooper reports that he doesn’t care who wins the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war. Why? Because he simply wants clarity to ensure he makes a buying decision that will let him make a choice one way or the other so he “doesn’t get hosed.”
For more…
 
Toshiba Plans Big HD-DVD Marketing Campaign
Video Business reports that Toshiba is launching a massive marketing campaign for its HD-DVD hardware, including granting $150-$200 price chops on players. Despite Warner’s planned HD-DVD exit, Toshiba executives said during the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show that they would stay the format course. Toshiba is heartened by the fact that player sales accounted for 50% market share of next-generation players in 2007, according to the company. Also, HD-DVD enjoyed 80% market share of next-generation-enhanced notebook-computer sales during the fourth quarter.
For more…
 
EDITOR:
PJ Bednarski
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WRITER/CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
Ken Kerschbaumer
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