ENVISIONEERING -- Informed Intelligence for Decision Makers April 7, 1997 In This Issue THE DIGITAL TV SPECIAL Battle of the Titans: HDTV vs. PC-TV FCC ruling only the beginning? Impact of "The 1997 Spectrum Efficiency Act" TV or not TV? That is the question AND OTHER STORIES.... Dragon Systems breaks the speech barrier FCC auctions DAR spectrum Digital VHS decks ship in summer AMD challenges Pentium with K6 Sony's RTE-3000 is a mean tabletop machine Opinion Saying goodbye to "must carry" DIGITAL TV SPECIAL BATTLE OF THE TITANS: HDTV vs. PC-TV By RICHARD DOHERTY After this week, American TV viewers will be faced with yet another complex series of questions to sort out about Digital TV: Will they be viewing it on their existing sets through digital-to-NTSC down-convertors, on new wide-screen digital TVs, or will they turn to an eager personal computer industry for their Home PC Theater experience? All three product lines will be launched, but it's likely that only two of the three will be labeled successes five years from now. Unless the PC industry gets its progressive video and 30 months half-life of product acts together, it won't be PC-based. The PC industry is clearly drooling over the prospect of Digital TV, drawn by reports of $5,000 HDTV receivers and what they could mean for PC makers that now survive on razor-thin margins. But those reports have been recklessly overblown. The reality of price and overall early demand for receivers will mightily disappoint PC companies that get into this business with freshly inked plans that must compete against 12 years of broadcaster and consumer electronics industry cooperation. Compaq Computer (with help from Thomson Consumer Electronics) will unveil its PC TV Theater concept later this week, and it will not be cheap. It will use converted consumer electronics CRT and Compaq will tout its ability to accept signals from broadcasting, cable and satellite NOW. It will not be a TV so much as a Star Trek class, universal translation digital display console capable of converting everything, but likely to be inadequate for one particular thing: displaying the interlaced Digital TV broadcasting signal format which dozens of broadcast equipment vendors and consumer electronics makers have labored on for more than a decade. Before that Compaq announcement, broadcasters had better also brace for a one-two punch from Microsoft and Intel, the true architects of the PC industry. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Consumer Platform vice president, will deliver Sunday that company's Utopian view of the rich new world made possible with square-pixel, digitally interactive PC-based Digital TV. The next day, Ron Whittier, Intel's senior vice president for Digital Content, will detail his company's outlook for PC-based digital content creation and editing, and make a strong case for PC-delivered content as well. That same day, Intel, Microsoft, Compaq and Thomson Consumer Electronics will deliver details on their multi-year PC-TV Theater project, first to the NAB, and later to an audience of thousands more at a Compaq dealer event in Houston, and to PC industry designers at a Microsoft event in San Francisco. (Mundie may or not also speak of the ambitions Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates has for his fledgling Microsoft Network. With a membership of just 1.5 million now -- about the size of the US TV audience in 1949 -- Gates wants to control the architecture and, more importantly, the program ownership of digital content into the next decade. Most program providers Envisioneering has spoken with, and who are being interviewed for MSN funding and "program carriage", receive only 13 episode contracts. After that, their program ideas belong to MSN, much as the three TV networks dictated early TV show ownership rights in the 1950s and 1960s.) The disconnect between the PC and TV industries is apparent, in many ways. Many PC industry executives, for example, think that a 15 inch CRT monitor is wide screen, and only three years ago Intel senior management considered 16-bit color PC screen graphics as "high color". And it's highly unlikely we'll ever get a 10-bits per pixel video signal processing quality from an industry where most executives we meet interpret 16-bit palletized MPEG playback as "TV quality" playback. Set top converters will allow an estimated five million home theater owners in 1998 to attach the high resolution inputs of their TV sets to a series of broadcast HDTV and SDTV decoder boxes which could retail for prices starting between $100 and $300. These might even be "free" given certain viewer subscription services which would be enabled by a terrestrial broadcast data services infrastructure. The control of the digital services side of that digital broadcast infrastructure is something Microsoft is not willing to give up without a fight. It's inevitable, but to wage a good fight against the onslaught from the PC industry the sooner the consumer electronics industry paints a Digital TV product roadmap for consumers the better. The sooner consumer electronics manufacturers commit to HDTV set prices ($1,800 or $5,000?) and set top decoder prices, the sooner the PC industry promise of $50 to $150 added cost to deliver digital TV can be assessed. The consumer electronics industry already has a lot at stake due to consumer confusion over HDTV. Envisioneering research shows that a good portion of the present Projection TV glut , for example, is due to consumers hesitating on their next large screen TV purchases in order to not make the wrong choice when it comes to Digital TV. A consumer research initiative which leverages the work started by the ATSC's test center in Alexandria, VA, might show manufacturers what form of TVs they want. Will consumers be willing to view 500 to 800 line resolution HDTV and excellent SDTV on existing screens? Will TV projectors capable of 16:9 and 4:3 display be the preferred form? Or will flat panel screens capable of both formats be the choice display system? Or perhaps, 400 MIPs PCs attached to huge progressive scan TV monitor displays? Envisioneering Research believes existing early adopters want to know what to do, even if it means trashing their existing projection TV investment. Unless the consumer electronics industry wants trade and consumer press editorial to tell them, smart consumer research is called for NOW. This could prove a major competitive advantage as the PC industry does not have an analog to the CEMA or EIAJ. A CEMA/EIAJ initiative could invite the PC industry to share - but not necessarily rule - the table. A Consumer Electronics Industry Digital TV industry group could pool consumer research. Perhaps this will be a CEMA opportunity, perhaps it will move to EIAJ auspices? However, if the consumer electronics makers do nothing, they will have to face up to a periodic, market-confusing, onslaught from the well-heeled PC industry. And consumers will lose out. What kind of suggestions could this industry group entertain? People do like wide screen, for example, when they can control it. Many projection TV technologies allow the owner to select 4:3 or 16:9 wide screen at the push of a button. And wide screen PC displays make sense for internet browsing and document processing. Two pages sit nicely side by side in the 16:9 CRT screen world, whereas 4:3 PC screens came about by cost limitations encountered when the first PC screens had to borrow from the more advanced world of 4:3 broadcast TV displays. As for differences between the video and PC worlds, they can be accomodated. The architects of MPEG - companies like Sony, Philips, AT&T -- understand the subtle 1.1 to 1 pixel changes which are needed to appease the PC industry's present bias for 1:1 square pixels. These solutions already exist in the VideoCD and CD-i entertainment media worlds. But, curiously, none of the documents Envisioneering has been privvy to in the many Standards Groups we monitor in PC and consumer electronics sectors acknowledges this. Have Microsoft and Intel done their homework? Or, as some consumer electronics critics decry, is the total cash investment in defining PC based Digital TV just a pad of paper, some sharp pencils and a lobbiests' little black book? The PC industry has also stubbed its toe with some of the demands it wants to enforce for its version of the video world. Progressive scan is nice, for example, but only film material fills the content bill for right now. The world of TV will be interlaced for a few more years yet to come. PC pundits say they can "convert" interlaced TV, but they fail to mention this is not a real time process, and the result makes a mockery of natural movement. Work progresses towards an effective, non-interlaced HDTV imaging solution, but don't hold your breath. The PC industry still has a lot to learn from the broadcast and studio post-production industries when it comes to content capture. Despite all of this week's hoopla, PCs will not be making a splash in digital or any other form of TV for a long time yet. [ Back to Top ]   FCC RULING ONLY THE BEGINNING? By BRIAN ROBINSON The Federal Communications Commission's adoption last week of final rules for digital TV marks the end of a decade-long, technically intensive and often bitter process. But it's unlikely to end the debate. With market flexibility a principal aim, the decision will ensure years of competitive roughousing over DTV. That was hardly the aim when the high-definition TV standard was proposed in the late 1980s. Then the ideal was to provide an industry standard around which broadcasters could smoothly migrate to a wide-format, high definition picture. Analog was the preferred means, and digital was involved only as the junior partner in hybrid systems, which were not well thought of. General Instrument changed all of that in 1990, of course, with its historic announcement of workable digital compression. Since then, the world has turned totally digital, the 500-channel universe is almost upon us, and the PC industry has launched a vigorous challenge to the TV as the modern audience's mechanism for delivery of entertainment and information service. Allied to all of this has been a significant swing in the sentiment of the FCC itself. Broadcaster-friendly when the HDTV proceeding began, it has turned in the last few years away from broadcast to the wider market of video service providers. Led by chairman Reed Hundt, it's now a least-regulation, pro-open market outfit that favors cut-throat competition as the best way to decide matters. This has been a humiliating turn of events for broadcasters, who claimed HDTV as their exclusive turf when the proceeding began those many years ago. Now, especially with Hundt's apparent championing of the PC industry's (read Microsoft's) intervention in the final standards decision last year, and his recent strong-arming of the broadcasters' rate of introduction of DTV service, the reduced influence of the broadcast industry on the final product is evident in last week's announcements. Details of the FCC's decision include: Requiring the affiliates of the top four networks in the top 10 markets to be on the air with a digital signal by May 1, 1999. Affiliates of these networks in the top 30 markets must all be online with DTV by Nov. 1, 1999. NTSC service will, as of now, end in 2006 though the FCC will conduct periodic reviews of that date and the progress of the DTV transition every two years. There will be an early recovery of 60 MHz of spectrum in channels 60-69, some of which will be given over to public safety use and the rest auctioned. This is in addition to the 78 MHz of spectrum broadcasters now use for NTSC transmission that will be returned to the government at the end of the transition period. During the transition period, over 50 percent of all broadcasters will receive a DTV channel that provides 100 percent service area replication of brodcasts, and over 93 percent of broadcasters will receive a channel that provides at least 95 percent replication. All DTV channels will eventually be located in a core spectrum of VHF and UHF channels that are most technically suited to DTV operation, in contrast to previous proposals to locate DTV only on UHF channels. Practically all NTSC stations will receive less than 10 percent of new interference from DTV operations. Among other rules adopted by the FCC is a total flexibility for how the broadcasters may use the new digital spectrum, either for HDTV or multiple channel standard DTV. Another rule practically invites broadcasters to partner with others in sharing facilities costs and equipment, and in developing programming and digital services. This rule, and the lead taken by the major stations in the DTV buildout, is aimed at lowering the overall cost-of-conversion for stations. [ Back to Top ]   IMPACT OF "THE 1997 SPECTRUM EFFICIENCY ACT" By RICHARD DOHERTY Now the Federal Communications Commission has made its decision on digital TV there is one, overriding issue: Will Americans freely abandon their analog TV service in just nine years? Chances are they won't. In this, the broadcast industry's intuition is probably correct. The aggressive rollout timetables and station-to-city ratios decided on by the FCC were obviously agreed to by the industry under duress, and far too little attention was paid to what real, paying consumers might think. The backlash could be severe. The only real example we now have for a nationwide abandonment of one television system for another is the transition decades ago of British TV's proprietary monochrome TV system to PAL. But, at best, that involved an early adopter audience and therefore is a weak indication of what might happen with DTV. In contrast, NTSC is a workhorse that is more than 50 years old. Beautiful imagery, which on any given night feeds between 150 million to 225 million TV sets, has been made possible through decades of clever innovations. Even the current statistics on TV set ownership are questionable, as both CEMA and the Nielsen auditors have likely misjudged just how many old TVs are out there. CEMA's membership, for example, is biased towards wanting to see people drop their sets in fewer than the current average lifespan of a twelve year life. Nielsen simply can't economically afford to assess multi-set household viewing patterns. And human nature is a hard thing to factor into any equation. There were smart, ideal target demographic audience families who did not buy color TVs until the mid 1970s, nearly a decade after the three TV networks became 100 percent color content carriers. However, even these examples are not truly appropriate for estimating the transition to digital TV, since changes then were fairly gentle. Most TV stations in the 1960s simply passed along network color TV programming signals and content. Then a few stations invested in a color TV camera or two for local news and sports. The invention of the U-Matic 3/4-inch VCR (championed by Sony, JVC and Panasonic) finally changed everything in 1972, allowing local broadcaster storage of programming and marking the end of the 16 mm camera as the primary news and sports local TV acquisition tool. In the late 1990s, broadcasters are facing higher barriers in their effort to push the digital market. Many early adopters, a group so vital to the acceptance of new technologies, have already "gone digital" through their purchase or lease of Direct To Home digital satellite TV systems. DSS, PrimeStar and EchoStar now reach more than six million homes. The barrier to widespread digital TV broadcasting gets higher with each DBS sale or lease and each cable household that gets a settop digital converter. A new services industry for easily distributed programming could make DBS or cable the digital winner here. Our worst fear is that, in order to meet the new FCC deadlines, TV stations will cut corners on local content creation costs. They will simply pass along centralized network content or worse, try to digitally "bump-up," or up convert their slightly better than NTSC cameras and tape decks to quasi-HDTV resolution. Given that the Microsoft Network will soon launch its services to more than three million DSS receiver homes before year end, Microsoft may indeed be the winner. And success with DSS may parlay into Microsoft becoming the defacto DTV stations digital services provider. Who would dare to challenge them? Or, is the market too diverse for them to tackle? We may find out this week as Microosoft distributes more than 3,000 demo videocasssettes of their interactive DTV vision to NAB attendees. With DSS, there is just one "broadcaster" -- DirecTv itself. In dealing with the TV terrestrial broadcasters attending the NAB, there are 5,000 new cash-starved entities. Can Microsoft evolve its DirecTv revenue splitting model to share digital services with 5,000? One can't rule out the track record of the world's most successful software company. Should that become the standard model for cost-sensitive local broadcasters, as many cable operators hope for, then the broadcasters will have irreperably crippled themselves. And, consumers will have been cheated by an incomplete conversion. Paid-for digital services will eclipse the original image quality conscious mandate of HDTV, making it a free for all battle for eyeballs amongst what will become 5,000 rival wireless "cable" companies. The broadcasters Envisioneering has spoken with don't want to sink to that level using a digital TV pickaxe. Consider instead if the announcements of last week had been labeled "The Television Spectrum Efficiency Act of 1997" or the "Digital TV Spectrum Efficiency Bonus Act." Everything might have been different, with the emphasis indeed being on the citizen and on the commercial advantages of being digital, which FCC Chairman Reed Hundt claims is the commission's goal. Consider, indeed. [ Back to Top ]   TV OR NOT TV? THAT IS THE QUESTION By RICHARD DOHERTY Intel, Microsoft and Compaq spell digital television with a capital D for Digital. Broadcasters and consumers place the emphasis on Television, with a capital T for terrific. Will broadcasters soon call themselves TV stations, or digital middlemen? Will they learn to work together and see the value in each other's audiences? Or will the dust clouds of confusion scare away the consumer confidence needed for any DTV initiative to to survive and thrive? Speaking on the day of the HDTV station rollout plan last week, FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said: "We've changed the policy form one of pretty pictures to one of digital broadcasting. That all the different versions would be digital" If that attitude reflects the policy of broadcasters - not just Hundt - then the PC industry will enjoy a welcome mat at NAB. However, the PC TV champions must first convince a doubting broadcaster group - the NAB - that digital delivery dollars are just around the corner. "We will pay the going rate for digital services...should there be a business there, said NAB president Eddie Fritts last week. We can't capture the fanfare, the spectacle, the energy of the Intel,Compaq and Microsoft Digital TV initiative this week....but we can sure put it into perspective. Microsoft, Intel and Compaq have tested their Digital TV data delivery concepts on the already preached to and converted -- the PC industry they live to serve. But the NAB is a new forum for them. So, let's explore the assets and aspirations of each PC industry pundit. Intel wants to bring the era of rich, computer synthesized imagery and interactive microcomputer-based screen delivery audiences to those who pay the freight for digital TV content delivery. Compaq Computer is the highest unit volume and most successful manufacturer of PCs in the world. It has pioneered the method of passing major R&D out to Intel and Microsoft, made component suppliers responsible for delivery of quality subsystems and is a leader in delivering consumer multimedia PCs. Former Hewlett Packard vice president Laurie Frick heads up its concept of a PC TV Theater, which will bow this week at NAB, and be showcased at a Compaq dealer event in Houston and to PC 1998 designers at the Microsoft Hardware Engineering Conference in San Francisco this week. Intel wants to move into the Digital TV PC chip business. It knows that digital content will demand a larger and larger role for PCs, workstations and supercomputers for assembling it. In its vision, Intel powered PCs will be needed for receiving, decoding and displaying DTV. Intel Chairman Andy Grove pegged it right last Fall: This is a war for eyeballs. Only to win eyeballs, Intel wants that precious FCC authorized broadcast spectrum and geographically dispersed ambassadors and potential toll collectors of local revenue - the broadcasters - on their side. On Monday at NAB HollyWeb, the Creative Artists Agency will make its appreciation of the PC industry plan publicly known. Microsoft has convinced the powers that be at CAA that its has seen the way to the digital future.and it is PC delivered content. Microsoft has taken proven, off-the-shelf teletext technology to ensure that broadcasters can start delivering a trickle of a digital data stream in order to prove out both the consumer benefit and broadcaster revenue sharing model needed to prove the PC TV is the best receiver for Digital TV. But the PC industry engineers and managers we've been briefed by are barely aware of earlier teletext initiatives in the United States or abroad. Off-the-shelf Norpak teletext encoders -- the same systems that deliver StarSight Telecast TV schedules, VCR clock setting signals and closed caption data - will be used to transmit data to PC TV systems. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not sit on any Society of Cable Television Engineer committees. And most cable suppliers think nothing of stripping off VBI signals, unless they are required to pass them through by act of Congress. Data throughput is a paltry 9600 baud per video line transmitted. The average existing TV channel could send just 28,800 baud. Still, that's 80 Megabytes over a 24 hour period. In contrast, a full VSB digitally modulated HDTV or multichannel SDTV service can deliver 21-25 Mbits/second. Just one sixth of a digital TV service carrier would deliver 4 Mbits/second, which is 2 Gigabytes per hour or 48 Gigabytes per 24 hour period. Big difference. Just how Microsoft intends to convey the economic benefit to broadcasters of this new math is anyone's guess. We will find out Sunday morning from Microsoft, Monday morning from Intel and Monday evening at a joint PC industry gala event at Treasure Island. Microsoft, Intel and Compaq have taken out full page ads in several Hollywood and broadcasting trades touting the event. However, Microsoft does have amazing influence with the Internet Engineering Task Force. Monday, Microsoft will submit its proposal for a new version of videotext propelled TCP/IP to the IETF to form a Request for Comment. This procedure makes light of the 12 years the ATSC, ANSI and ITU have been working on the Grand Alliance HDTV/DTV standard. After all, the IETF is not a standards body, although many in the PC industry give it the same credit as such. So when Microsoft uses the term "standards" they mean an IETF proposal which is up for public comment. Microsoft will also announce that it will commit to placing the PC decoding software needed to display MPEG 2 Main Level, Main Profile progressive scan video onto all future versions of Windows Memphis (Windows 98), Windows NT and a new video display version of Windows CE, its handheld computer (compact code) version of Windows. "In this way, we and the PC industry can deliver 75 to 80 million Digital TV ready PCs by late 1998 as opposed to just a few million HDTV sets," boasted Microsoft Broadcast PC engineer George Moore, scant hours before the Microsoft plan was slated to be released at NAB. The real problem faced by the PC industry is that PC penetration in households has only just recently barely crept above the 35 percent level achieved 12 years ago in the Commodore 64 and Apple II era. In contrast, televisions are in 99 percent of American homes. Americans have more TVs than bathrooms. That alone says a lot. Four times as many TVs as PCs. TVs that last a dozen years before breakdown, versus the average PC depreciating to half its value every year or two. Broadcasters and TV set makers joke that "Bill Gates want your Grandma to have to boot her TV." Well, based on consumer experiences with the industry's pioneering home PC Theater - the Gateway 2000 Destination PC - they are correct. The entire system would often lockup and shut off all entertainment as it rebooted for a minute or two. Consumer electronics philosophy is to hide the complexity of the computer from the consumer: Don't celebrate it or draw attention to it. In short, the PC industry's definition of Digital TV is DIGITAL TV while broadcasters, advertisers and the vast audience of television owners and viewers are looking forward to digital TELEVISION. [ Back to Top ]   AND OTHER STORIES....   DRAGON SYSTEMS BREAKS SPEECH BARRIER By RICHARD DOHERTY The Holy Grail of natural speech may finally be in sight, with a true technology and engineering breakthrough from Dragon Systems, Inc. Its beta product for PCs, Dragon Naturally Speaking, is the first solution that allows a user to dictate to a PC and produce -- first time round -- stenographer-level quality text . There are subtle misrecognitions for sure, though they are on the level of human stenographer error and can be quickly corrected with spoken commands, in many cases as fast or faster than using mouse-and-trackball screen editing. Compared to the staccato, single-word style required by previous generation products such as Dragon Dictate and Articulate's Power Secretary applications, Naturally Speaking recognizes entire sentences and paragraphs. It is single speaker dependent after a brief training session, and high levels of ambient noise and even the occasional cold do not seem to affect it. The base platform is a 133 MHz Pentium system running Windows 95 or NT with 32 MBytes of RAM. The native vocabulary is a 30,000 word dictionary list (requiring 50 MBytes of disk space) but up to 230,000 words can be tapped on command. Special vernacular can be entered simply by spelling it out once. In a demonstration, Dragon product manager Joel Gould read raw text off the front page of the New York Times and needed to correct about one in twenty words, mostly by voice command. The system is trained to recognize the speakers natural intonations by having the user dictate about 18 minutes of text from either Arthur C. Clarke's 3001 or Dave Barry in Cyberspace. "This is the ultimate Alchemy," quipped Jim Baker, co-founder of Dragon along with his wife Janet Baker. "I have spent 25 years pursuing natural speech recognition. Now, we are getting close to finishing this journey" Over the decades, the Bakers have been the prime contractors on much of DARPA's voice recognition and speech command contracts. Today, they have 200 people advancing speech recognition, driving performance up and cross platform capability outwards. "This is the first software which actually allows one to speak his mind," said actor Richard Dreyfuss. "Those who have to deal with computers will instead find this moving...and of great consequence.' The Academy Award winning actor is also a writer of screenplay, theatrical and studio proposals. The Dragon technology has changed his life, he said, and "there is no going back". He and his son routinely use it for creating text on their PCs. Dreyfuss came across the Dragon team when a technology trade show was a hall way from an event he was attending in San Diego late last year. He then followed the company's executives to the Consumer Electronics Show and other meetings and agreed to be an uncompensated spokesman for how the technology frees up the creative mind to espouse thoughts, not become stuck behind the mechanics of typing. "Just as my ten year old son is a fan of the Lakers and can spout statistics, I have become a fan of what this amazing company's technology can do for the creative spirit," said Dreyfuss. Ten years ago, Dragon pioneered a limited working vocabulary on Apricot computers. This was followed by a breakthrough in isolated word response recognition in 1990 with the release of Dragon Dictate for DOS, a 30,000 word software system. The Naturally Speaking software will ship commercially this summer for $695 for Windows 95 and Windows NT hosts. A Professional Edition, priced at $995, will allow greater customization for work groups and teams who share resources. "We have benefited tremendously from the computer industry's gifts of MIPs and Megabytes of memory," said Janet Baker, Dragon president. "This software will allow people to migrate from touch typing to talk typing." Dragon also offers OEM and VAR tools and technologies for license to specific vertical markets. Their technologies are truly cross platform, supporting Intel and Windows, Macintosh and even the ARM processor. Dragon has a limited vocabulary speech recognition system which worked flawlessly for this reporter running in a Newton 2000 handheld PDA. Dragon can be reached at www.naturalspeech.com. [ Back to Top ]   FCC AUCTIONS DAR SPECTRUM By BRIAN ROBINSON The Federal Communications Commission last week auctioned off 25 MHz of S-band (2.3 GHz) spectrum and finally ushered national digital audio radio service into the U.S. But the eventual quality of that service is being questioned. The Consumer Electronics Manufacturer's Association (CEMA) believes the spectrum allocated for the service would not allow clear signals to receivers in all situations. Testing by CEMA's Digital Audio Radio Caucus in 1996 had demonstrated "significant technical problems" with the use of S-Band for DAR, it said. Specifically, it said that the "innate propagation characteristics" of S-Band make it incapable of allowing seamless service in a metropolitan area. Extensive signal blockage by terrain, buildings, foliage and even street signs at S-Band frequencies would "result in service outages that were almost impossible to restore to a CD-quality" level without using numerous gap-filling networks of supplemental transmitters," the Caucus said. Because of this, CEMA believes the satellite-delivered national DAR service now envisioned would work well only in relatively unrestricted environments, and would work poorly particularly in mobile applications. And that would squelch the potential of DAR since, according to CEMA, the "vast majority" of radio listening is done in the car. Gary Shapiro, president of CEMA, reiterated those fears last week in several interviews, telling a national radio audience that "broadcasters are very happy today because they know this won't work, and so they have no competitive threat" to counter. (The National Association of Broadcasters didn't quite agree, at least publicly, complaining last week that the new DAR services could eat into an existing broadcaster's ability to do local news, sports and other programs, as well as affect advertising revenues.) The applicants for the DAR spectrum disagree with CEMA's findings, and the FCC said it is willing to allow them to prove their claims For the record, CD Radio and American Mobile Radio Corp. were the two winners of the auction, beating out challengers Digital Satellite Broadcasting Corp. and Primosphere LP. The winners will pay a total of just over $173 million for two 12.5 MHz slices in the 2320-2345 MHz range of frequencies. The four companies initially applied for DAR licenses in 1992 but a number of problems stalled the proceeding. Not least was a dispute among FCC commissioners about opening up the auctions to all-comers. This was the route favored by chairman Reed Hundt, who said the government would lose out on higher auction revenues otherwise. But other commissioners argued that the four companies had already waited a long time, and had invested considerably to develop the technology and should be given preference. The two winners expect to broadcast up to 50 channels of CD-quality radio, including commercial free music programs. Other non-music news, talk and sports channels could carry ads. According to CD Radio, at least, the new DAR service should cost $10 a month or less. Users will receive the new radio services via a credit-card sized antenna. A chip that would convert radios to receive DAR broadcasts would cost around $150, CD Radio said. [ Back to Top ]   DIGITAL VHS DECKS SHIP IN SUMMER Hitachi and RCA this summer will both ship set-top sized Digital VHS decks that provide the same picture and digital sound quality as the Hughes/Thomson Digital Satellite System delivers. Both companies showed prototypes of the systems at the recent SBCA satellite show. Production of the digital VCRs, first shown in late 1995 at the Berlin IFA, had been delayed awaiting conclusion of digital copyright negotiations with Hollywood studios, which feared rampant digital piracy of their wares. These sub-$700 machines will become available in quantity this summer The catch here is that the new Hitachi and RCA model D-VHS VCRs have nothing to record unless they are firmly attached to a convenient (MPEG-2 output signal) DSS satellite receiver. They use the HD output D-shell connector port on the rear of every licensed DSS receiver (some 3 million plus sold so far) for signal sourcing and playback. The D-VHS decks simply record and play the special RCA/Thomson designed MPEG 2 bit stream of DSS receivers. This data stream is laid down on tape and played back through the DSS receiver itself, again using its MPEG 2 decoder circuitry for playback. And it must be DSS, not the plain vanilla MPEG 2 being used by EchoStar, AlphaStar and most cable TV suppliers. Five hours of content can be recorded on what is essentially a Super VHS tape, currently retailing for between $7 and $10. There are no SP, LP or SLP speeds, just one 4.5 MBit/second rate that allows a taping of seven hours duration with special thin (T-160 style) S-VHS tape. Trick play modes of slow motion and speed scan are possible. The machines also play and record VHS HiFi tapes in SP, LP and SLP modes, but curiously they do not record and play S-VHS tapes that a few early adopters may still have on their shelves Other Hitachi/Thomson licensees are expected to be announced later in 1997 and 1998. [ Back to Top ]   AMD CHALLENGES PENTIUM WITH K6 The price curve and discount schedules for Pentium chips have been among the most stable in semiconductor history, remaining essentially unchanged since 1993. Now, as AMD launches its K6 Pentium MMX processor family, Intel faces the first serious contender to its monopoly of the leading-edge PC performance crown in four years. The chip reportedly outperforms raw Pentium applications and particularly excels at the Multimedia Extensions special instructions which Intel launched thirteen months ago. AMD intends to market the K6 at prices between 25 and 30 percent below the prevailing Pentium pricing, taking aim at a $10-billion wedge of Intel's silicon revenue. AMD chairman Jerry Sanders boasts that the existing 0.35 micron and forthcoming 0.25 micron K6 chips will steadily beat Intel's Pentium and Pentium II MMX price performance - and power requirements - for the foreseeable future. AMD has high hopes that the K6 will propel them from $2 billion of annual revenue now into the double digit billions, carried along by rosy industry forecasts of a $25-$40 billion annual Pentium/MMX style processor market within three years. Sanders says he will "personally immolate" himself if a laptop version of the K6 isn't available before the end of the years. Intel is rumored to be launching its next-generation Klamath processor some time next month. The company will showcase the power of the chip at the Computer Game Developers Conference in Santa Clara at the end of the month. There are no recognized third-party benchmarks of MMX efficiency, much to the consternation of PC industry multimedia title and network services developers. Indeed, the MMX capabilities of the K6 may be one means by which AMD ratchets up its visibility, should the chip attract sufficient developer endorsement and multimedia title and services commitments. [ Back to Top ]   SONY'S RTE-3000 IS A MEAN TABLETOP MACHINE By RICHARD DOHERTY This is by far the easiest-to-use encoding system that packs a non-liner video editor and RS-422 serial deck controller, real time MPEG encoder, custom video filter capability and turnkey Video CD authoring into so compact or affordable a package. We first examined this machine in our lab at its introduction 18 months ago (the review is at www.envision-group.com). Since its introduction, Sony has vastly expanded its performance range both up and downward, making the RTE-3000 the closest thing to a turnkey VideoCD publishing solution today. The recent repricing of the system to $9,000 for the basic MPEG 1 real time encoder, and $14,000 for the fully featured system, now makes this system an attractive alternative to PCI-card based, multi-board video capture and compression cards. At this price, the RTE-3000 provides a substantial, low-cost peace of mind for a far larger videographer and digital multimedia publishing audience. Its payback period may be measured in just a few weeks, or in terms of a few dozen MPEG production jobs and VideoCD production masters. The RTE-3000 features inputs and outlets for composite video, S-video, component video inputs for either NTSC or PAL analog signals. Time code and conventional Betacam SP deck controls are standard. Audio inputs and outputs can be direct line analog RCA inputs, or digital AES/EBU, SP/IF or optical digital connectors. Inside the box, hundreds of MIPs of custom Sony MPEG compression silicon and subsystems allow the RTE to produce a higher quality of MPEG encoding -- one with minimal artifacts -- at nearly any desired data delivery rate. Dozens of combinations of CIF and fractional CIF MPEG compression rates are Windows menu selectable, accompanied with several compressed digital audio rates. The RTE-3000 allows the artistic flair of a videographer to shine through. Custom filter settings allow the talent and MPEG compression preferences of each operator to be saved as a special filtering arrangement. That enables production of the highest quality real time MPEG 1 video the Envisioneering Lab has ever seen at any given data output rate. The RTE-3000 can be selected to produce 120 x 90 pixel MPEG video at data rates suitable for ISDN Internet (64 kbit/second) links all the way up to 7 Mbit/second high bit rate MPEG 1 for Video on Demand server file creation. Features such as setting black level to 7.5 percent (for US) video sources through to the richer 0 percent black level used in Japan indicate the professional attention Sony has given to these issues. The RTE-3000 system has the quality, polish, look and feel of a $70,000 encoder system, which in fact was the system's price throughout most of 1996. The new bargain pricing on the eve of the NAB allows Sony to attract a far larger audience of videographers and PC multimedia service bureaus, digital video MPEG-ographers who might otherwise need to assemble a handful of disparate cards in a PC or who might otherwise need to suffer with non-real time MPEG encoding alternatives. With the addition of Sony's companion VideoCD authoring software, the RTE-3000 takes on a whole new productive life. It can serve as a virtually turnkey mastering station for VideoCDs. With VideoCD playback now assured on nearly every PC and laptop computer being sold, the high quality of MPEG 1 for Video CD allows the RTE-3000 to deliver CD-R (write-once) platters which solve the majority of most user's interactive multimedia needs. In short, the RTE-3000 and VideoPress software marks the transformation of multimedia CD production as an art and craft towards one of quality and commerce. Given the powerful drag and drop non-linear editing capabilities of the system and the custom control over MPEG pre-filtering possible, this system will likely pay itself off in just a few weeks or months at busy video post facilities. At $14,000 for the deluxe RTE-3000 configuration, there is no finer real-time MPEG compression system. With its ability to deliver higher quality MPEG 1 at rates between 3 and 7 Megabits/second, the RTE-3000 is an easy rack addition to anyone needing to get a reliable high bit rate video on demand server system up quickly. [ Back to Top ]   IN OUR OPINION......... GOODBYE TO "MUST CARRY" The Supreme Court has delivered its decision on cable "must carry" rules, and we welcome it. Not that we necessarily agree or disagree with it -- as the Supremes' 5-4 vote showed, you can come down one way or the other -- but because, in the long run, the issue is moot and so we should just get on with life. When the challenge to must carry began in the early 1980s there was a reason for the fight. Cable was a young industry at the start of its competition against the giant broadcasters and spectrum was at a premium, so the need to preserve channel space was paramount. It hurt cable companies to have to carry local broadcasts. That's no longer a concern, or at least will not be in the near future. As all industries rapidly move into the digital age (yes, broadcast, even you!) compression will remove worries over available channel space. In a 300 channel universe, what's even a dozen or so local broadcasts? The claim by the cable industry that must carry robs it of its constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech resonates somewhat, but only slightly. The modern reason for why cable dislikes handing over channel space to local broadcasts has much more to do with straight business concerns. Cable companies salivate over the possible revenue from "premium" channels, and dislike having to give up space for even one non-paying customer. So, why is this all moot? Because local content is apparently becoming a necessity for all media, be they broadcast, cable, satellite, radio, Internet, whatever. As the total amount of programming pushed to consumers increases, it seems that local shows are becoming the differentiator. You can wrap whatever premium channels you want around them, but discard the locals at your peril! (Ironically, satellite companies are currently fighting for the right to carry local broadcasts also, since must carry does not apply to them. Cable companies apparently think it would given them an edge if it did apply as they believe satellite does not have the spectrum to carry all the local signals it must under the rule. Don't bet on that: Rupert Murdoch for one knows the competitive advantage of local programming, and it's a fair bet his and other satellite companies would find some way to cram them in alongside other channels.) Must carry has been the reddest of herrings, and it's unnecessarily diverted a lot of attention from more important concerns. Good riddance. [ Back to Top ]