Stations are just buying what they need too. They need a long term plan.....................................
tvbroadcast.com
Yeah, We've Got That!
By Michael Grotticelli
(March 19, 1999) Faced with a soft market and customer confusion, manufacturers of broadcast transmission and production equipment are doing everything they can to help stations make the costly transition to digital television (DTV) affordable... and increase sales.
These efforts go beyond merely designing cost-effective product to include companies helping chief engineers design their digital broadcast facilities and being called on to make equipment recommendations that often are not of their own making.
At this year's NAB convention, attendees will see a plethora of digital technologies and product families designed to allow a station to buy in at a lower cost and then upgrade or expand as the need arises.
To that end, manufacturers are realizing that not every station can afford to make the jump to full-bandwidth high definition (HD) television production and transmission right away, and that many are currently only interested in putting together the necessary infrastructure to pass through a network signal or broadcast in standard definition (SDTV). A recent Television Broadcast
survey of chief engineers revealed that an overwhelming majority of those responding (81 percent) said that their station wasn't "601-compliant" and thus, not ready to make the transition to DTV.
"Stations are expected to take inputs in various formats, convert them to what they believe is an appropriate in-house format for baseband processing, and then convert them to one of the 18 ATSC Table 3's video formats for transmission," explained Art Allison, a senior engineer at the National Association of Broadcasters. "Some stations are building a 1.5 Gb (1080i) system right out of the shoot. Others may not be able to afford to do that. So, the question is total life-cycle cost; when you're going to spend the money, and what the trade off is between cost now and in the future."
With this in mind, Chesapeake VA-based Leitch Technology has been hard at work configuring its equipment to economically upconvert NTSC programs. In addition to numerous "Digital Glue" products--such as D/A converters, test signal generators DAs, encoders/decoders, multiplexers and small routers, at NAB they're offering a package of digital products integrated into a bundled system called "ezHD."
This cost-effective system, which the company says saves customers over $13,000 if they were to buy them individually, includes its Juno HDTV upconverter for creating HD signals (1080i or 720p) from 525-line video programs.
Once upconverted, the signal can be locally branded using Leitch's HDTV logo generator/inserter. Then, before encoding and transmitting the signal, broadcasters can use the ezHD bundle's D/A converter to generate a component analog signal for monitoring. A Leitch DigiBus frame is also included to house the HDTV logo inserter and D/A converter. "This package not only gives broadcasters the essential equipment for preparing and monitoring the HD signal," explained Michael Steel, program manager, conversion products, "but by including a DigiBus frame, ezHD also supplies them with a reliable platform for easily and economically adding other HDTV products as their facility expands."
Snell & Wilcox, with U.S. offices in Sunnyvale, CA, has designed a strategy the includes a number of "signal conditioning," test and measurement, and MPEG compression products under the catchy name of "DTV To Go." The idea here is that the products they'll be showing in their exhibit booth on the LVCC show floor are practical, working models ready to be integrated into a station's analog or digital infrastructure.
"We're telling customers that we realize the expense involved in making a digital television station work, and we're offering products to help them get to where they want to be at a price that we think is affordable," said Adolfo Rodriguez, Snell's director of marketing.
Stuart English, Panasonic Broadcast and Digital Systems Company's new vice president of marketing, concurred, stating that his company's DVCPRO line is designed so that customers can take full advantage of the small-format digital equipment, grow with it--from DVCPRO to DVCPRO 50 to DVCPRO 100--and still be able to leverage backward compatibility and familiar tape size.
And yet, he also agreed that companies are working harder than ever to help broadcasters afford the equipment they'll need to produce digital (both standard definition and HD) programming.
"There's no doubt that companies, perhaps now more than ever before, are listening to their customers and moving forward accordingly," he said.
Sony Electronics has devised a similar upgrade path with its MPEG compression-based, 1/2-inch product family (starting with Betacam and moving on up through Betacam SX and now HDCAM). Bob Ott, company vice president, VTRs, spoke about future 200-300 MB versions of the format that could accommodate full 1080-line video and eight channels of audio.
"Our philosophy has always been that there is a huge legacy of Betacam tapes that are not going to be discarded," he said. "We've always tried to protect our customers' equipment investment, knowing that equipment budgets are limited, and we're making every effort to work with broadcasters to help them get to where they want to go."
Philips Digital Video has taken the "acquisition to reception" philosophy by offering a complete line of products from digital cameras, switchers and their popular Spirit DataCine to data broadcasting, advanced MPEG products, and video streaming over the Internet. Their feeling is that broadcasters will be looking for a wide variety of solutions to help them find new revenue streams to recoup their DTV investment.
For many customers, a company with a "total solutions" approach, like Sony and Philips, is one they feel comfortable doing business with because these manufacturers will be able to address all of their concerns.
Likewise at JVC Professional Products, marketing communications manager Dave Walton explained that the D-9 (formerly known as Digital-S) platform of products his company markets was developed to provide broadcasters with a "robust" 4:2:2 videotape format that can stand up to daily ENG activities today, but can also handle the higher data rates of HD in the future.
"For the broadcaster who is trying to doing something with digital and who doesn't have anything but an analog plant, they first have to look to converting their analog to digital, no question about it," he said. "The advantages of using a high quality format [like D-9] today is that you're serial digital output, even an SD output that is processed through traditional analog means, will look better on the air. But even if equipment saves you money in the short term, it doesn't do you any good unless it points you in the right direction for the future."
Addressing crucial transmission concerns, manufacturers like Advanced Broadcast Systems (ABS), in Burlington KY, are offering systems--like their CST high-power transmitter--that can be easily upgraded as the need arises. Dan Adams, ABS' marketing advisor, said he's "ready and willing" to help stations figure out an implementation strategy that fits their budget.
"We've been answering a lot of questions and saying 'What can we do to help you?'" he said. "We're willing to take [broadcasters] through the various interim steps to getting on the air, perhaps even loan them equipment--depending upon the situation."
Harris Broadcast, perhaps more than any other company in this industry, has been instrumental in helping numerous stations get on the air with DTV. The company offers a wide range of "next level solutions," such as transmitters, encoders, decoders, routing switchers, and even mobile production trucks, to satisfy any need.
They recommend the Harris FlexiCoder for stations just looking to get on the air, be FCC compliant, and distribute SDTV only. The FlexiCoder allows customers to buy the frame with only a SDTV encoder card now and then upgrade to an HDTV card in the future. This SDTV-only configuration (with analog and SMPTE 294 inputs) enables current NTSC broadcasters to use their existing 525 programming and then upconvert to digital.
"I always ask customers a really basic question, 'What are your short term and long term plans, as far as what you want to do with HD?'" said Bruce Allan, vice president/general manager of Harris Corp., Broadcast Systems. "Station engineers need to devise a plan so that they know what equipment to buy, both now and in the future. We give them the flexibility to start out with analog and then switch their plant to digital in the future; all they have to do is change their I/O card."
Every manufacturer contacted for this story strongly encouraged NAB attendees to stop by their respective booths and talk to a company representative about where your station is in its transition and how they can help get to where you want to go.
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