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To: Maya who wrote (48190)	1/10/2000 11:33:00 AM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Kennard calls for cable-ready DTV by April By Rick Merritt EE Times (01/07/00, 8:15 p.m. EST) LAS VEGAS — Claiming digital television is a "market failure," Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard Friday (Jan. 7) directed cable and consumer electronics industries to sort out compatibility specifications for a cable-ready digital TV by April or the FCC may issue its own ruling to resolve the matter. Analysts and OEMs attending the frank speech at the Consumer Electronics Show here generally praised his call to action, but noted the difficulty of the job of pulling diverse factions into a consensus in four short months. "I have directed the FCC to draft proposed rules for digital television compatibility standards," Kennard said here. "If industry can't solve these problems by April we will be prepared to act." The two key "sticking points" holding back the roll out of digital TV, Kennard said, consist of an agreement between cable operators and TV makers about a physical connection for cable-ready DTVs and a means of delivering digital programming guides and information over cable. Kennard fell short of drawing a line in the sand about another contentious issue-whether cable companies "must carry" the high definition digital TV signals generated by terrestrial broadcasters. "I see this issue as separable," said Kennard after his speech. "We have questions that need to be answered about the capability of cable systems to carry" high definition signals, he added. Despite letting the must-carry issue slide for the moment, Kennard took a hard line with cable broadcasters and TV makers on compatibility issues. "We have a market failure in digital TV right now and it's our responsibility to address it," he said. "The American public made a huge investment in this (digital broadcast) spectrum. The industry has to bring these issues to closure or the FCC will act." Kennard spoke with some frustration of a six-year process that has dragged on to no conclusion. "We have been complaining and goading and nagging from day one on this issue and so far the job is getting done." The latest deadline—set in October '98—for a copy-protected cable-ready DTV standard by November of last year "came and went and the standards were not resolved," he added. But pulling together four diverse groups now discussing the specifications will not be easy. The latest of those groups is the so-called R8 committee of the Consumer Electronics Association which has aimed to have a completely public discussion, distinct from talks at CableLabs OpenCable group which requires NDA agreements of its members. "We want to have an open discussion that anyone can attend," said Craig Tanner, former head of the ATSC and current vice president of cable business development for Sharp Laboratories of America. Despite that wish, no representatives of the cable industry attended the group's first meeting on DTV/cable compatibility on December 3. In fact the head of a cable operators group blasted CEA for creating yet another organization to discuss the issue. The cable operators have their own group discussing DTV/cable compatibility, the so-called DV subcommittee of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. A fourth ad hoc group of cable TV technologists and consumer electronics engineers has also been meeting regularly to discuss the same topic. "Forming another committee is not the answer," said Richard Doherty, a technology and market analysts who heads the Envisionneering Group (Seaford, N.Y.). "There has been no lack of effort going into this but there hasn't always been enough resources behind the effort. "This is a last warning to industry," said Doherty of Kennard's call to arms. "I think Kennard will wake up the cable marketing managers and engineers to accelerate their coming to the table for what is a very significant effort." According to Sharp's Tanner, talks between cable operators and TV makers are stalled on the question of a physical connection between a cable line and a digital TV. TV makers want an RF coax input to their digital TVs, allowing them to decode inside the DTV a digital cable signal and process it at will. Cable operators, they say, prefer to decrypt and process any digital signal in their own digital set top boxes and send a copy protected signal over a 1394 connection to DTVs. But that could wrest away from TV makers the ability to control special graphics effects such as picture-in-picture, he claimed "A lot of the functionality of the TV would be lost," said Tanner. "The TV becomes a monitor." Kennard telegraphed to the audience here that if the FCC is forced to act it might bless 1394 and the 5C's copy protection mechanism developed by a group of companies including Sony and Intel as a suitable physical connection between cable services and a cable-ready digital TV. "The 5C standard seems to be the most promising," Kennard said in his speech, adding to a Sony executive after the speech that, "I like the work you've been doing." However, to an audience largely of press and TV makers, Kennard showed empathy for the issues aired by the consumer companies. "Cable operators hesitate to transfer to much of their networks' intelligence to the customer," Kennard said. "They want to exert some control through the set-top."