Setting a singular path to digital video in China (How do you spell "connected with CUBE"??)
eetimes.com
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(01/07/99, 3:23 p.m. EDT)
MILPITAS, Calif. — Virtually free from the industry infighting now
hindering the takeoff of digital TV in the United States, China is marching full
speed ahead into the digital video revolution. The latest efforts include a
homegrown HDTV encoder development, DTV broadcast infrastructure
buildout, plans for HDTV cinemas fed by satellites and the development of
CD-based rewritable video-disk machines, a new breed of consumer
products unknown elsewhere in the world.
These efforts — which could allow China to leapfrog other nations in terms
of penetration of digital video technologies — were sketched out by Du
Baichuan, vice president professor at the Academy of Broadcasting and
Science (Beijing), who is visiting the United States as head of a team of
engineers working on a joint project with C-Cube Microsystems Inc., based
here.
Du was the man who pulled the strings as a key consultant to China's digital
Video CD debut in the early 1990s, when he was a professor at the Beijing
Broadcast Institute. He is now responsible for bringing digital broadcast
technologies to China, working at the Academy of Broadcasting Science, an
R&D arm of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
"My job is to create the demand and stimulate the consumer market in China
with new digital video technologies people want to buy," Du said in an
interview with EE Times.
Occupying a room tucked away in a corner of C-Cube's main building, Du's
team of young engineers is hard at work developing the academy's own
HDTV encoder system.
The team has come up with a fairly esoteric solution. The method first calls
for dividing a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel HDTV picture into six blocks, each at 640 x
540 resolution. After applying standard-definition (SDTV) encoding in each
of those blocks, it stitches all six together to make one HDTV-encoded
picture. The scheme is so designed that the same HDTV encoding unit can
be used for both standard- and high-definition encoding.
Instead of developing new HDTV encoding silicon or microcode from the
ground up, the Chinese team is using C-Cube's current-generation DVxpert
chip and its SDTV encoding microcode, which were designed for the
professional broadcast market. Du's engineers, however, are implementing
their own HDTV encoding solution in the form of both software and
hardware on top of C-Cube's chip.
The solution may seem like a poor man's HDTV encoder, but it is "a novel
approach whose flexibility and practicality exactly meet Chinese market
demand," according to Du. "We've needed a flexible HD and SDTV
encoding solution in China. The fact is that some Chinese TV stations have
already purchased SDTV encoders, and we don't want to make them
obsolete." Du added, "We already have two patents on this HDTV encoding
method."
Bob Saffari, director of marketing for broadcast and professional products at
C-Cube, described the engineering team Du has brought to Silicon Valley as
"excellent and very competent engineers and scientists" who are no strangers
to HDTV. "They've been studying HDTV more than five years," he said,
although mostly in an academic sense.
C-Cube's role in the project is to train the team on C-Cube's encoding
technology, including features and capabilities of its silicon, underlying
microcode and application programming interface. "We are also helping them
solve some of the stitching problems," Saffari said.
However, sharing the fruits of the technology development is not a part of
the agreement, according to Saffari. All the intellectual property involved will
belong to the Academy of Broadcasting Science.
Independent of its collaboration with the Chinese, Saffari noted that C-Cube
has been working on its own HDTV encoding microcode, which is expected
to reach the market in the first half of this year.
The Chinese engineers will stay at C-Cube until their HDTV/SDTV encoder
is finished. That should be around midyear, Du predicted.
Strong ties
While many chip vendors are scrambling to move into the Chinese market,
the joint project with China's Academy of Broadcasting and Science
indicates C-Cube's years of experience and strong ties with Chinese
authorities and manufacturers. Saffari said the company hopes to help China
build "an end-to-end digital solution" that extends from broadcasting and
post-production infrastructure to consumer set-top and Super Video CD
players. "We are committed to China in a big way to provide digital video," he
said.
Freedom from the most contentious inter-industry debates over copy
protection of digital video content is bringing China a few new new twists in
the development of digital consumer products. Indeed, the nation appears to
be devising products that have never been considered anywhere else.
Asked to predict the hot digital video trends in China in 1999, Du cited movie
houses to which HDTV-quality films are fed via satellite; "recordable disk
machines" that use CD-recordable technology; and digital cable set-top
boxes.
By far, the most interesting possibilities for the electronics industry are the
recordable-disk machines. Central to such a new product is an MPEG-2
encode/decode IC, designed for the mass consumer market, such as the one
currently in development at C-Cube.
Because there are millions of Video CD and Super Video CD disks available
in China, it's only natural to devise a player — with a tray for multiple disks
— that's capable of recording TV broadcasts or, better yet, a machine that
makes it possible to copy prerecorded Video CDs.
Du noted that VHS VCRs are already a fixture in a large percentage of
Chinese households, but "most of them are kept in the closet today," due to
the lack of prerecorded VHS tapes or rental chains like Blockbuster.
Consumers instead watch movies on Video CD players.
Developing recordable machines for CD rather than DVD could help "China
embrace the recordable-disk machines much faster than the U.S. market,"
projected Du. Worldwide, the consumer electronics industry remains split
over incompatible, competing rewritable DVD formats. Japanese and U.S.
companies apparently see no reason to go back to CD technology when
many have already poured billions into the development of DVD.
On another front, China is quietly rolling out digital-TV broadcasting at a
steady clip. Du said that China expects to see a total of 36 digital channels
launched in 1999, 31 of them operated by different provincial stations and
five reserved for China Central TV for nationwide coverage.
Already, 24 provincial stations are in operation with DTV. The next stage of
rollout is mainly focused on big cities. The game plan is to first transmit DTV
programs via satellite to local cable head ends, and then — assuming that
many people in big cities live in huge apartment complexes — to string a
cable to each building for digital cable broadcast. Cable delivery of DTV
programming is the initial goal for China, according to Du, since "tall buildings
within big cities create huge signal-interference problems, producing not just
ghosts but literally no picture."
Yet terrestrial DTV broadcasting is also part of the Academy of
Broadcasting and Science's R&D work. China's final transmission format
and standard, however, will need to be discussed further in 1999, according
to Du. Acknowledging heavy lobbying from Europe's Digital Video
Broadcast Project as well as the U.S. Advanced Television Systems
Committee to endorse their respective standards, Du indicated that China's
final decision may come down to royalty issues between the two.
At a time when the U.S. DTV market faces uncertainty, largely created by
never-ending debate among broadcasters, system vendors and service
providers over the fragmented HDTV and SDTV video formats, Du noted
that regional Chinese TV stations today are demanding 1,080-interlaced
format HDTV in addition to SDTV.
Chinese broadcasters appear eager to jump onto MPEG-2 Main Profile @
High Level-based HDTV, rather than sticking to SDTV.
The reason? "TV stations are always looking for a way to make more
money," Du said. "They see HDTV as a perfect opportunity for starting
pay-per-view service in China."
The idea is that Chinese consumers already know how good digital video
looks, based on their extensive experience with Video CD and Super Video
CD. Broadcasters, if they want to wow consumers and make extra money,
must take a clear step beyond SDTV.
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