And who do you think is involved in China DTV?
January 11, 1999, Issue: 1043 Section: News
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Able to dictate its specs, China propels digital TV
Junko Yoshida
Milpitas, Calif. - Virtually free from the industry infighting now hindering the takeoff of digital TV (DTV) in the United States, China is marching full speed ahead into the digital-video revolution. The latest efforts include a homegrown HDTV (high-definition-TV) 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 the 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, 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 allows the same HDTV encoding unit to be used for both standard- and high-definition encoding.
Instead of developing a 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, 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.
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 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 underscores 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 postproduction infrastructure to consumer set-top and supervideo CD players. "We are committed to China in a big way to provide digital video," he said.
Freedom from the most contentious interindustry 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 never 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 millions of Video CD and Super Video CD disks are available in China, it's natural to devise a player-with a tray for multiple disks-that can record TV broadcasts or, better yet, a machine that makes it possible to copy 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," Du said. 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 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 operate with DTV. The next stage of rollout mainly focuses 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, Du said, since tall buildings in big cities create huge signal-interference problems, producing "not just ghosts but literally no picture."
Yet terrestrial DTV broadcasting is also part of the broadcasting academy's R&D. China's final transmission format and standard, however, will need further discussion this year, Du said. Noting heavy lobbying from Europe and the United States to endorse their respective standards, Du said China's decision may come down to royalty issues between the two.
Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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