Detroit news paper comments on Digital TV in China.....................
detnews.com
Saturday, September 6, 1997
U.S., European digital TV promoters take their rivalry to China
By Joe McDonald / Associated Press
ÿ ÿ BEIJING -- The Americans showed baseball and the Grand Canyon. For their European rivals, it was soccer and Venetian canals.
ÿ ÿ The goal in this contest: Dominance in the next era of television.
ÿ ÿ For a week, Beijing was the site of the intense struggle between U.S. and European teams roaming the world promoting two rival standards for digital and high-definition broadcasting.
ÿ ÿ The competition is polite but the stakes are high. Each country that picks one standard over the other could mean billions of dollars in sales for companies that developed it.
ÿ ÿ "Every TV that exists in the world is at some time going to be replaced by digital TV, so the market is huge," said Robert Graves, chairman of the Advanced Television Systems Committee promoting the U.S. standard.
ÿ ÿ Both sides showed off their technology at two conventions of Chinese broadcasters. Graves took Chinese officials to the Great Wall to watch sports and a scene from the movie "The English Patient" broadcast by a transmitter 40 miles away.
ÿ ÿ No country outside the European Union and the United States has announced its choice or said when it will, but China, Australia, Brazil and others are actively studying the alternatives.
ÿ ÿ In addition to better pictures and sound, its promoters say digital broadcasting turns a television set into a receiver for stock prices, sports scores, weather reports and other data. Digital television uses narrower portions of the broadcast band, opening up frequencies for cellular phones and other new technologies.
ÿ ÿ Though incompatible, the U.S. and European systems are more alike than different. The differences lie in arcane details of megahertz and techniques for turning the 1's and 0's of digital code into pictures and sound.
ÿ ÿ "I think it's great. The receiving quality is excellent. Very impressive," Du Baichuan, president of China's Academy of Broadcasting Sciences, who attended the HDTV demonstration at the Great Wall.
ÿ ÿ China hasn't made any decision about which standard it wants, but plans to set up a transmitter by the end of the year to test the two systems, Du said in an interview.
ÿ ÿ The result of the international rivalry will be a world divided, as it is today, between U.S. and European broadcasting standards.
ÿ ÿ The Americans say their system is better in part because it was designed specifically for HDTV, while the Europeans added the technology late to their already developed standards.
ÿ ÿ The Europeans say being able to add HDTV shows the versatility of their Digital Video Broadcasting system, or DVB.
ÿ ÿ "DVB technology is just like a puzzle. You can add as many pieces as you want," said Lou Dutoit, a manager of the DVB office in Switzerland.
ÿ ÿ The standards originated in the United States and Europe, but the groups promoting them include broadcasters and manufacturers from Japan, South Korea, Australia and Latin America. Electronics makers Philips of the Netherlands and Thomson of France belong to both.
ÿ ÿ The U.S. standard is based on work by companies including Zenith Corp., Dolby Laboratories and NextLevel Corp., which pioneered digital HDTV in the mid-1980s. They spent $500 million developing the technology.
ÿ ÿ Digital broadcasts in the United States are to begin next year, and reach at least 50 percent of viewers by 1999.
ÿ ÿ A European consortium began work only four years ago, but has created standards for satellite, cable, microwave, interactive and broadcast transmission.
ÿ ÿ The Americans so far have announced standards only for traditional local broadcasts.
ÿ ÿ With no U.S. alternative, the European satellite standard has been adopted by broadcasters in Europe, as well as Echostar Corp. of the United States and companies in Thailand, South Africa and Australia.
ÿ ÿ Graves said U.S. developers blew a huge lead by spending years arguing over integrating with computers and data transmission. But he contends that in their haste, the Europeans picked inferior technology.
ÿ ÿ Albert J. Stienstra, a Philips engineer, rejected any suggestions of technical weakness. In fact, he said, DVB is better at keeping broadcasts from interfering with nearby transmitters -- an important factor in Europe, Japan and other crowded regions.
ÿ ÿ Chinese interest in such gee-whiz technology is less outlandish than it might seem for a country where city dwellers earn an average of just 4,377 yuan ($525) a year.
ÿ ÿ While most Chinese homes lack hot running water, nearly all have television, and 40 percent have color television, according to a 1995 survey by the U.S.-based Gallup Organization.
ÿ ÿ "Within 10 years, Americans and viewers in many other countries will not accept today's broadcast quality, just as they no longer accept black and white," Graves said.
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<Picture>Copyright 1997, The Detroit News |
