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Technology Stocks : WavePhore (WAVO)- VBI fed WaveTop for WebTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Gardiner who wrote (844)	1/22/1998 4:15:00 AM
From: Paul K	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2843

I've been reviewing the FCC docs and Patent disclosures of Wavephore's, Microsoft's, and 4 other approved methodologies for transmitting data over NTSC video recently. I've been running Windows 98 since August and am waiting for the participants to get everything in place so I can test Wavephore's system. I have found that even though PBS is supposed to be the partner in delivering the encoded video signal for Wavephore it's network currently supports only 1 VBI line of data of the 4 possible lines. PBS has been leasing VBI data carriage to companies like StarSight, for it's program guide for years. Unfortunatly PBS National Datacast can't even send this one data line within it's multicast programming as the Digicipher satellite encoder used for the MPEG video compression stips all VBI data (except Line 21 captions) from the uplinked programs. Currently the data services are sent separatly from the head-end, then encoded into the live broadcast at each station. These parallel data paths cause a problem for member stations when they need to record program feeds for later broadcast. So, they are not set up to pass programming that has data other than captioning embeded in the VBI. This must be why KCTS, the PBS station in Seattle, tells me that they are not testing the Data Broadcasting service 'at this time'. There are two TV stations in Seattle specified by Microsoft in beta documents as test sites, but the other station (KIRO) has not responded to my inquiry yet. I have calls into Wavephore to be involved in this project. ----- There are other issues to be resolved: The FCC permits program producers to go ahead and encoded data in the video signal without any special approval as long as the signal fits within established broadcast standards, but the current ruling also allows broadcasters to strip away data signals as they see fit at broadcast time since they still have legal control the signal (this lets a station insert their own data services). There is also the question if this data falls under the cable companies 'must carry rule'. So can the encoded data be considered part of the copyrighted program, therefore stations cannot delete/change it? And NEC has questioned if these compound signals will disturb recordings on the next generation of digital VCRs. So I wait. ============== Thanks Dave for the NY Times link. I noted a minor error in the article: "A television image comprises 385 lines with 525 colored dots in each line" I think they meant to say the image is composed of 525 lines of which aprox 485 are visable. (The number of horizontal 'dots', as the article calls it, is limited by the bandwidth of the televisioin circuitry, ie: the 'horizontal resolution', for which there is no defined spec.) Paul