Taking the High Cost Out of High-Definition Television Broadcasting
The rollout of high-definition television (HDTV) across the nation will be faster and less expensive than originally expected as a result of an ongoing research collaboration that has produced an array of components already in use at dozens of sites. Co-funded by NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP), the joint venture is led by Sarnoff Corp. (Princeton, N.J.) and involves nine companies in three industries. The five-year project is intended to accelerate the adoption of HDTV by U.S. broadcasters by enabling dramatic reductions in the cost of equipment. The project anticipated the 1996 establishment of U.S. digital television transmission standards and broadcast mandates. Although the ATP project will not end until the fall of 2000, participants already have successfully found ways to work efficiently with the massive amounts of data in HDTV images, achieved interoperability among various network types, and developed the requisite software tools for HDTV broadcast signal processing. The new technology is being tested by NJN Public Television (Trenton, N.J.), which
expects the project to accelerate its introduction of full digital service by three years.
One commercialized service, developed by MCI WorldCom (Richardson, Texas), has the
capability to transport theater-quality digital video over standard digital
telecommunications facilities. The service is being used by a major cable TV programmer at
a 40 percent savings (saving tens of thousands of dollars monthly) while maintaining a
normal picture quality and sound fidelity. Thomcast Communications, Inc. (Southwick,
Mass.) has captured one-third of the global digital transmitter market with a product
believed to be unique in offering the precision tuning needed for HDTV. At least 38
stations are on the air with this transmitter, including 28 in the United States and 10
elsewhere (Spain, France, Brazil, and the Netherlands). IBM Corp. (Hawthorne, N.Y.) is
working with Connecticut Public Television to implement a software and networking system
that enables the creation and sharing of vast archives of video content over a
geographically distributed network. In addition, technologies for working with compressed
HDTV images are being commercialized by Agile Vision Systems, a new company formed by
Sarnoff and a computer company not involved in the ATP project. The products will enable
studio operations to be performed entirely by one piece of equipment instead of half a
dozen, thus reducing hardware costs by approximately 50 percent. May 2000
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