How to make conventional TV shows look better in a high-definition
world.
By Joel Brinkley
764 Words
5395 Characters
* 12/15/97
The New York Times
Page 13, Column 4
c. 1997 New York Times Company
ROR television stations, cable companies, even the major broadcast
networks, it is a bad dream in the making: starting next fall, a good
portion of the networks' daily programming schedule will be broadcast in
a high-definition format, producing crystal-clear pictures that make
conventional television images seem wholly inadequate.
And there is the rub: what about all those other shows -- older
programs, or even present-generation shows produced the old way. Will
people still want to watch when the picture quality is so much worse
than the HDTV program on the very next channel?
There's a corollary problem that to broadcasters is at least as
important: how will advertisers who have not yet adapted to the new age
feel about low-definition advertisements dropped in the middle of a
high-definition program?
Anticipating these problems, almost every segment of the television
industry is planning to deploy technologies that home theater
enthusiasts have used for years to improve the quality of television
images. Only now, these devices, called line-doublers, will be used to
make conventional programming look better in the high-definition world.
* Faroudja Laboratories, a small Silicon Valley company, is the best-
known manufacturer of line-doublers. A few short months ago,
* high-definition television seemed ready to put Faroudja out of business.
Who would want to spend thousands of dollars on a line-doubler after
true HDTV sets went on sale?
Now, however, broadcasters, cable and satellite operators, even
* television set manufacturers, all are talking to Faroudja. In fact HDTV
now holds the promise to make the company and its main competitor, a
British company named Snell & Wilcox, major powerhouses in the
broadcast-television industry.
* ''It's really amazing,'' said Michael Moone, Faroudja's president.
''Lots of people thought HDTV would be our enemy. But it turns out, it's
a major ally.'' In fact, anticipating tremendous growth from this new
* business, Faroudja went public last month to raise capital for
expansion.
* Last summer a few broadcasters were talking about using Faroudja
line-doubling in place of HDTV so they could offer ''fake''
high-definition broadcasts. But now the thinking has changed. ABC, CBS
and NBC, among others, are all talking about using line-doubling to
supplement their HDTV shows.
''Since not all of our programming will be in high-definition, at
least not at first,'' said Charles Jablonski, a senior NBC executive,
''we need something to fill the gap. So we plan to use some
* up-conversion equipment from Faroudja or Snell & Wilcox.''
But the networks are not alone. Numerous local television stations
have similar plans. And some cable companies are suggesting they might
build line-doubling equipment into cable boxes.
''We've done some product demonstrations at TCI,'' Thor Culverhouse,
vice president of sales for Snell & Wilcox, said, referring to
Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable company.
Some direct-broadcast satellite companies are also talking about
using line-doubling. Instead of broadcasting a high-definition signal at
all times, the Echostar satellite network might broadcast a
lower-resolution signal ''and line-double it in the set-top box,'' said
Mark Jackson, director of Engineering for Echostar.
Television manufacturers are interested, too. Several say they worry
that buyers of the expensive new HDTV sets will be upset that many shows
will look little better than today's programming. As a result, Mr. Moone
* said Faroudja has also held discussions with several set manufacturers.
That means buyers of the early HDTV's will find that most of the
programming will look improved -- even if only a minority of it is true
high-definition.
Line-doubling does not actually double the number of lines. Instead,
a line-doubled signal displays the entire 525-line TV picture at once,
rather than displaying half of it followed a split second later by the
other half, as conventional television does. With that, the image seems
clearer and sharper.
* Using their own proprietary technologies, both Faroudja and Snell &
Wilcox also further manipulate the line-doubled picture, to enrich it.
* For the moment Faroudja and Snell & Wilcox appear to have this new
business largely to themselves, and each has its own advantages.
* Faroudja is well known, particularly in the United States. The company's
line-doublers are the undisputed standard in the home theater world.
* ''We'll use Faroudja because there's a level of comfort with them, a
warm feeling,'' said George J. Csahanin, director of engineering at
KXAS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Dallas. Like many others, the station
intends to line-double its standard-definition programming.
* But Faroudja has sold little professional broadcast equipment before
now. Snell & Wilcox, on the other hand, ''has been a manufacturer of
broadcast equipment since 1973,'' said Adolfo Rodriguez, director of
marketing for the company. ''And we see this a real opportunity.''
I0607 * End of document. |
