HK Telecom Launches Interactive TV
Anthony Plewes, Hong Kong
Jim,
There's a lot of old names discussed here but no mention of VDSL.....................
<<An optical network unit (ONU) receives the stream from the ATM network and passes the signal along the ordinary copper wire to the set-top box in the home>>
Any ideal what this unit is?
nikkeibp.com
Hongkong Telecom IMS Ltd of Hong Kong launched its interactive television (TV) service, dubbed iTV, in January 1998. The service is "a transformation of the TV concept," according to Michelle Li, manager, media communications at the company. "It transforms the multipoint broadcasting concept to a point-to-point service," she explained.
According to Hongkong Telecom IMS, iTV is the first commercially available broadband interactive multimedia service available in the world.
The iTV service essentially consists of three main services: video-on-demand (VOD), music-on-demand (MOD) and home shopping, which will be based around a virtual mall concept. There are also plans to extend these initial services to also include network gaming, home banking and broadband Internet access.
The home banking service is slated for an April 1998 launch and Hongkong Telecom IMS has an agreement with two major banks in Hong Kong. The service will allow the users to do their banking over the network as well as make deposits and withdrawals at home using an electronic cash based smart card. The smart card can be used directly with the set-top box (see Fig) supplied with the iTV service.
The rental of the set-top box is included in the subscription to the service, which will be around HK$150-200. The set-top box is manufactured by NEC Corp of Japan and includes the functionality for the demodulation and decoding of the MPEG-2 video stream. It also has functionality to prevent taping of the video stream to prevent piracy.
The movies for the VOD service are all digitized in-house in Hongkong Telecom IMS's Digital Media Centre (DMC). The movies are compressed using the firm's proprietary technique, which includes the use of a human technician to optimize the process - this would involve using a less high compression ratio for sequences involving a lot of movement, for example. The average compression ratio for a whole movie is about 1:90.
The DMC is primarily a fully-digitized post-production center, but it also is involved in dubbing and some production. It is the first center of its kind in Hong Kong, and the company invested some HK$120 million in it. Previously it was necessary to send movies to the US for digitization at considerable expense.
The iTV service is delivered to the home using Hong Kong Telecom's existing digital telephone network. The service will utilize fibre to the building (FTTB) technology to get the MPEG-2 video stream from video servers located in three points in the territory directly into the home. An optical network unit (ONU) receives the stream from the ATM network and passes the signal along the ordinary copper wire to the set-top box in the home.
The company has invested over HK$1 billion in the project and has a target of 88,000 households by the end of 1998 and 300,000 households within 2-3 years.
HK Telecom IMS's MD Lo
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HKITCC Houses Innovators
Hong Kong's small hi-tech firms are also involved in multimedia development. The Hong Kong Industrial Technology Centre Corp (HKITCC) houses a number of incubatees engaged in multimedia development, including Intisoft Asia Ltd, which is working on set-top boxes and computer telephony; Nirvana Technology Co Ltd, which has developed efficient video compression algorithms for digital surveillance systems; Signal Communications Ltd, which has developed both speech and video encoding chipsets; and Display Research Laboratory, which has an array of products in the video conversion arena.
Signal Communication's main product is TeleEye, which is a remote video monitoring system that operates over phone lines. The challenge for the design of this product is to compress the video sufficiently to be able to send a near-realtime video signal over standard telephone lines.
"The ordinary telephone line can only carry limited data, the challenge is to send almost real-time images," said Cliff Chan, managing director of the firm.
The firm developed a motion-adaptive algorithm which compresses the video up to 200 times. The product incorporates an alarm function and can act as a electronic patrol. The product is aimed at the security market and is priced between HK$10,000-50,000. The product has been on the market for two years now, and is making inroads in the European market, notably the UK.
The firm's other main area of research is into speech compression. They have developed low bit rate speech compression techniques that are suitable for low cost implementation using digital signal processing (DSP) and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology. It is working with a couple of semiconductor companies on a licensing basis with the aim of mass-producing the chips.
Signal Communications is part of the CityU Enterprises Group and is a spin-off from the City University of Hong Kong. Chan said that to help spin-offs to get off the ground the link between industry and the universities has to be improved.
Display Research Laboratory's latest product is the VIP-0215, which is its second generation video interlace processor for video capture and output. It is a one-chip solution which handles all aspects of multimedia video: capture, display and conversion. The chip consists of a high-speed memory controller with an 8-bit to 32-bit central processing unit (CPU) interface and two realtime digital video ports for input and output. Features include zoom and panning and on-screen display.
S C Mok, president, Display Research Laboratory says that the main market for the products are in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Typical applications areas including VGA to TV signal conversion, VGA scaling for LCD panels and video capture. Mok says that one of the firm's key strategies is to keep the documentation and architecture of the product simple. The design is modular, which allows the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to select RAM type to suit the price-performance point. The company has also designed a two-layer board for the China market, as multilayer manufacturing technology is still scarce. This will in time help the manufacturers there upgrade their technology.
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