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Ed's View - HDTV Quality Reduction - A Time for Action | |
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By Ed Milbourn Correspondent Posted on March 6, 2008 Category: General Interest |
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In 1969 Japan's National Broadcast Network (NHK) started research on an advanced television system to bring truly high definition television to the public. Their goal for such an endeavor was to "appeal to a higher level of psychological sensation and emotion by transmitting highly intellectual information with detailed characters and graphics." 1
That highly eclectic goal for HDTV remained through its complex evolution to the US system commercialized in 1996. Unfortunately, that goal is being severely and continuously eroded by most of the purveyors of "HDTV." Granted, there are some HDTV offerings with quality of production and distribution levels reaching and perhaps exceeding that lofty NHK aspiration - but not many.
There are several reasons for HDTV quality reduction in the US broadcast distribution industry; that industry including OTA, Cable, DBS, et al. Indeed the pioneers of broadcasting - both in radio and television - such as Sarnoff, Armstrong, Farnsworth and others - were frustrated over the de facto applications of the media they labored so hard to create. The hope was that broadcast HDTV would rise to that higher, loftier level and deliver images and sound that would raise the sensual sensitivities of the viewers and ultimately mankind in general. But the economic forces that finance the commercial success of the system interfered, causing, hopefully, a temporary compromise in the quality of HDTV delivery. Interestingly, it took the NTSC delivery system almost 50 years to get it right. Then, along came digitization and the signals were up-converted, down-converted, reformatted, scaled, compressed, transcoded and "bit-starved" to force them down very expensive "pipes."
For those who just purchases new HDTV displays, it is possibly frustrating not to be able to see the high quality HDTV images they saw in the showroom, save for some sports and live OTA productions. Generally poor receiver upconverters create fuzzy SD images that are even more myopic when stretched to full screen.
So, is there any hope? Yes, there is - a bunch of hope. Allow me to summarize:
- Time - Generally, the HDTV program production qualities are much better than the signal distribution qualities because of high bandwidth costs. There are several local and national communications initiatives now in play that will significantly increase available bandwidth and thus allow cost effective, true HDTV signal distribution. As HDTV approaches market maturity, the novelty factor decreases, and the content battles will be increasing fought on the quality front.
- Superior Displays - Present 1080p display systems are capable of producing much better images than they receive. As the signal quality of HDTV improves over time, the images will be better. Thinking of the HDTV display as a monitor in a systems concept will allow customers to continuously upgrade the signal processors in set-top-boxes (STBs) to match monitor capability.
- Technology - Increasingly sophisticated signal processing technology becoming available at all levels of signal distribution is allowing networks and local distributors to greatly improve HDTV signal quality. Developments such as the Texas Instruments "DaVinci" processors will provide extremely high quality, cost effective single-chip solutions to virtually all the complex signal processing tasks required in the distribution pipeline, including those in STBs.
- Business Models - Wonderful opportunities exist for OTA broadcasters and their network providers to leverage true HDTV services. Seizing these opportunities may very well determine their survival as viable program suppliers. Time will tell, but the clock is ticking.
- Us - Last, but far from least are those of us who recognize the potential of HDTV, but are disappointed in the results so far. The power of the consumer is very strong. Now there are a substantial number of us expecting true HDTV but not getting it. Phone calls, letters, e-mail comments to all levels of signal providers, either on a program or general basis, will go a long way in influencing the "powers-that-be" in the system.
Consider the above bullet point a "call-to-action." I don't think we should expect anything less than the original NHK goal for HDTV. Without us, it may take another 50 years to get it right. But it will get at lot better.
Ed
1 - From: "Television, The Life Story of a Technology," by Alexander B. Magoun
Posted by Ed Milbourn, March 6, 2008 09:58 AM
Reader Commentary Mar 6, 11:01am You are absolutely right about the potential of the ATSC system we have put in place. Technological improvements have and will continue to give us a better palette to express images that are so powerful they (and the stories t Mar 6, 4:45pm This deterioration of quality as opposed to technological capability goes back a long time. In the early era of black-and-white television, the US had a 525 line system, Germany 625 and Great Britain a legacy 405 line one. Obviously, the 625 should provid Mar 7, 7:05am I have yet to see the promise of HDTV since 2002. I had visions of actually being able to watch broadcast content with the clarity of DVD and decent audio. Thank God for D-Theater, HD DVD and Blu-ray! On the other hand we w Mar 7, 7:14am :idea: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." H. L. Mencken. "The game is flawed." John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) The economics of scale tend to render medio Mar 20, 8:23pm The so-called High Def channels that are currently provided by Cable and Satellite are more like DVD quality than HD...if not worse. I've compared sports programs that's supposed to be "HD" from ESPNHD with a 480p, 4mbps DVD: The 480p signal from the DVD Mar 21, 7:16am In fact we are almost brutally not concerned with quality it is just scary. No one (okay a bit of hyperbole - but what - 85% of us) wants to be bothered learning anything about most anything (except our 1 obsession - sports being a big one). We are runnin Mar 21, 9:34am The so-called High Def channels that are currently provided by Cable and Satellite are more like DVD quality than HD...if not worse. I've compared sports programs that's supposed to be "HD" from ESPNHD with a 480p, 4mbps DVD: Th Mar 21, 9:43am Personally, I am liking what i see in sports from my dish system, and my cousins DirecTV system. BUT, I have not compared with over the air or...Verizon's FIOS. I have a co-worker who got FIOS from Comcast cable and he said with out a doubt, without even Mar 22, 2:48am I'm a little uncomfortable commenting on this subject because it is so subjective and depends on so many factors, but here goes. First of all, you have to have a screen larger than 50" to see the full 1080p resolution anyway unless you sit closer to th Mar 22, 6:31am First of all, you have to have a screen larger than 50" to see the full 1080p resolution anyway unless you sit closer to the screen than one would normally comfortably view a TV set. Paying for 1080P with a 50 i More on General Interest
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About Ed MilbournAfter graduating from Purdue University with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Education in 1961 and 1963 respectively, Ed Milbourn joined the RCA Home Entertainment Division in 1963. During his thirty-eight year career with RCA (later GE and Thomson multimedia), Mr. Milbourn held the positions of Field Service Engineer, Manager of Technical Training and Manager of Sales Training. In 1987, he joined Thomson's Product Management group as Manager of Advanced Television Systems Planning, with responsibilities including Digital Television and High Definition Television Product Management. Mr. Milbourn retired from Thomson multimedia in December 2001, and is now a Consumer Electronics Industry consultant. |
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