Ray Van Eng (12/30/96)
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved on Christmas eve a set of guidelines for high-definition television (HDTV) transmission that can beam a digital television signal at 19Mbps which will offer consumers sharper TV pictures, more channels a wider screen and may be even e-mail or digital content from the Internet. The FCC standard specified the inclusion of a number of multimedia technologies such as MPEG-2 compression, Dolby AC-3 audio, and Zenith's digital transmission scheme known as the vestigial sideband.
Of particular interest is picture scanning. For text display, the progressive mode where lines are updated one after the other is a better way. But for TV pictures, the interlace mode where lines are refreshed alternatively is the norm as used in existing TV sets. Computer and TV makers would have to find the right product combinations to satisfy different market requirements. As for as how wide the video screen should be is also an open question. Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg and others have argued that a proposed 16:9 HDTV aspect ratio is not wide enough for some film productions (e.g. cinemascope is about 3:1) that are being shown in theaters today. "The agreement lets manufacturers experiment, and ultimately, consumers will vote with their pocketbooks," said Saul Shapiro at the FCC's Mass Media Bureau. The first digital TV products will not be available until 1998. And when they do show up, consumers will be expected to pay a higher price at about $1000 to $1500 more than a conventional TV set. However, with widespread adoption of the HDTV format, prices could drop. |
However,
the standard does not mandate how the digital video format should be implemented.
This will allow computer and consumer electronic manufacturers interested
in building digital TV screens and PC-TV hybrid products to experiment
with screen size, aspect ratio and scanning rates etc. 