Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the click-here-to-see-episode-2 dept.
the coose writes: "EETimes is running an interesting story describing the current turmoil over DTV standards. It involves many players, including, but not limited to, Microsoft, Sun, the ITU, and SMPTE."
Actually, MPEG looks pretty crummy whenever it has to deal with slight changes in color. I was watching a DVD and saw artifacts all over in one scene of Pulp Fiction where the main characters were standing in front of blank off-white walls. Slight variations are a challenge for video coders, as many of their algorithms are based upon fairly large changes. Small changes just don't get noticed.. -- Ski-U-Mah! Stop the MPAA
The /. of DTV is TVIndustry.com
by
wahlis
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· Score: 2
I vote that from now on anyone who uses the pseudo-word "boxen" should be hit in the head with a sledgehammer. It was never funny. It was never clever. As a matter of fact, it's quite stupid. Please stop or I'll kill you.
AC--
Box phonetically equivocates to baw-ks. Boxes phonetically converts to Baw-k-ses, a moderately more linguistically annoying phrase, since you've got to loop yourself from the s sound, to an "eh" sound, back to the "ess". The resolution pluralization became Boxen.
I doubt it was ever intended to be funny or clever. It's just easier to transition from "ks" to "en" than it is to transition from "ks", add a short "eh", then back to "es".
Good example--when going from "Rack" to the plural, you turn "Rack" to "Racks"/"Rax". You can't make the same conversion though for Box, because you've already got that ks/x sound in there. Thus you get something like Boxen.
If you think I've taken this analysis too far, you're the geek who threatened to, and I quote, "kill" somebody over your dislike for a five letter work ending in N instead of S. Not that I took you seriously:-) It's all cool. Lots of people get worked up when they don't get enough seks.;-)
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
The games are too slow, and the email screen could be laid out a lot better, agreed. The shopping system works as well as you could hope for for a dumb home user on a TV system though.
If noone goes and actually creates the systems, then nothing will happen. The games might be interpreted piles of junk (I assume that, or the system as a whole only has a Z80 controlling it), and I would prefer Tetris and other puzzle games (even some classic platformers) to the trash on there currently, but as a real example of a technology it is great.
When the next generation Digital Boxes come out, hopefully within the next couple of years, then there will be a lot more power available to do stuff correctly. Hopefully they will also have ADSL support, and a built in DVD drive (why not use the one set of MPEG-2 decoder chips instead of multiple sets?).
On of the rules of business it to get it out there quickly whatever the faults. Sky has done this knowling it isn't the perfect solution, but they also know that if they didn't release anything then OnDigital (Terrestrial Digital TV) would be on the case. If only the SKy boxes allowed 2 way satellite transmission for IP traffic as well...:-)
Re:Pay Attention to Copy Protection
by
LL
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· Score: 3
referential connections (ie ensure a link encoded within the content)
If you make the assumption that everything is a computer and that XML or Java engines will be embeeded into every computer and consumer item known to mankind (and Mars 127.0,0.1) then if any any point you insert you hacked/hand-made/sniffer device that removes those not-so-subtle control signals, then you can kiss your replay features good bye. Look the technological trends, the Amiga/TAO/Sony announcement of being able to hook multiple IP cores within the same OS. The support of big name companies for selected XML "standards" (with convenient amnesia about certain inconvenient consumer friendly functions). If each silicon slice supports the necessary control protocols, then when you replay back an "interactive" movie, they will be able to tell who/when/what and be able to dictate the terms of the availability, target bits to a specific machine, and eliminate 2nd sale, redistribution, cross-transmission, and lending/borrowing priviledges. Education and entertainment are going to be big money spinners and the players want to keep every penny of it. If you think DVD was bad, wait until every bitstream is encoded.
Take a careful look at how the protocol extensions are to be used in their examples:
Sorry guys, not only can (as McNealy put it) you kiss your privacy goodbye but you might as well forget about keeping any bits you buy/lease/rent whether software or content.
They're going to want to avoid allowing consumers to tape the content. One thing they're afraid of is that you'll record "Dharma and Greg," cut the advertising out (It's digital -- you can do that seamlessly) and repost it on the Internet. The horrors.
And yes, they'll be quite interested to know that YOU (And they will KNOW it's YOU) are watching the Live Goat Porn channel every night from 6 to 9:30. The up side of this is you'll get directed advertising for all that cool Live Goat Porn merchandise. You might even get honorable mention on the Live Goat Porn web page (http://www.livegoatporn.com) for being their best fan. Wouldn't that be cool?
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm talking home video rental.
by
isaac
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· Score: 2
There will be plenty of pay-per-view content, but to build the market there will be content available for free or at a flat subscription rate like cable. And that content will be lucrative to provide, so it will continue.
I'm not talking about the availability of "free" or subscription-based content. I'm talking about putting the video rental market out of business. That's one of the goals of the studios/networks in transitioning to (H)DTV. Fewer intermediaries take a cut out of PPV revenues as compared to rental, which would benefit the content producers and cable companies (frequently one and the same) immensely.
Of course, this will restrict your choices for home viewing to the top dozen popular movies, but that's better for the studios anyhow - no pesky indie or foreign flicks to compete with their "Mission Impossible N"s or "Runaway Bride"s (or "Battlefield Earth"s).
-Isaac
-- I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Re:This is no use unless it can be received!
by
Detritus
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· Score: 2
The current ATSC modulation standard (8-VSB) doesn't work in the real world. There have been vague promises of "magic chips" to fix the problems, but nobody has delivered on their promises. I have to conclude that 8-VSB is dead, even though many people claim that it is "just pining for the fjords".
COFDM and DVB-T work today, the hardware is in mass production, and it looks like it will become the international standard for DTV.
-- Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Re:It's about data standards for interactivity
by
sigwinch
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· Score: 2
I'm for the HTML based plan like ATVEF, since it has all the advantages of an established standard. Plenty of creation tools, few intellectual property issues, and plenty of people that know how to code it.
Those proposing new display engines (usually based on Java) point to the limitations of HTML and XML as unsuitable for use on television.
HTML/XML is also more accessible to people with vision and cognitive disorders, since it's basically text that the client can interpret however they will. Pardon my language, but how the *fuck* do they expect to do large fonts, alternate colors, and speech synthesis on *Java*. If they put in all the hooks to do this well, they'll end up with the OS/360 of content development.
Plus, you can do Babelfish-style translation of the content with HTML/XML. Again pardon my language, but how the *fuck* is anybody supposed to translate Java bytecodes from English to Spanish. Sure, English is used a lot all over the world, but I imagine Hollywood still gets significant revenues from dubbing movies and TV programs into other languages. With Java, they have to translate the source and recompile for every language. Even if they wanted to bear the expense, the configuration management issues are formidable.
And how can Java be indexed by the search engines? Much of any media company's value is in their archives. By using Java, they lock their product up where people can't find it to buy. Java either costs sales, or you have to pay to recreate the information in a form that *is* indexable. In other words, they've gotta have a web page (or the equivalent) replicating the content.
Instead of using pure Java, I think they ought to use an HTML/Java combination. First, they would extend and/or clarify HTML so that it rendered consistently (standard table behavior and standard font sizes). The biggest problem with HTML is that basic things like tables are wildly different across existing browsers. Simply codifying how tables, images, fonts, and styles display for the TV Browser Standard would be the most important step. Most stuff, like National Geographic supplemental information and football player stats, would be well-handled by HTML.
They would use Java plug-ins for the truly unusual stuff. For instance, the zoomable-spinnable-interactive-3D-instant-sports-r eplay would be Java.
(Does this remind anybody else of the "Would you like to know more?" bits from the Starship Troopers movie?)
--
-- Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.;-)
The Chinese Lottery is essentially a crypto term referring to the following concept: Each of China's billion residents is given a set top box for their TV. The boxen each receive a block to attack(this can be broadcast simply by continually outputting a stream of if(serial == "12345"){block="0xAABB1234")). The cost of the attack is borne in small chunks by whatever the market will bear to pay for a set top box, plus each individual paying for the electricity(which is of less value, presumably, than the amortized value of each block being cracked).
Then whoever's box cracks the code displays a message, "You've just won a million dollars. Please call this number to claim it." The government collects the box and gives some sum to the winner. Then they take back most of that sum through taxation(OK that's not part of the Chinese Lottery, but it's part of *every* lottery), and everyone's happy.
Now consider that most of these settop boxen will end up actually having phone connections to the media owners, so that Pay Per View can be implemented. Now the owner of the box doesn't need to be paid off or even informed that his machine was being used to crack some code, and that the cost of that cracking was being borne by his electricity bill. The result of the crack can be sent down the pipe at will.
All they need is the ability to execute code...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
Try checking the Sigma Designs news server, at news.sigmadesigns.com. I seem to recall seeing some mention of that, and that it was intended for computer monitor viewing, or something. --
-- Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Where film is going (based on reality)
by
WillAffleck
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· Score: 2
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
That's been one of the ongoing topics at the Seattle International Film Fest, which wraps up this weekend. Most of the directors have said they're going to digital, partially because you can film for under $10,000 instead of $250,000.
So expect this to be the "new story" next year, when all these films start coming out of the can (ok, I guess that's outmoded too).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Also a discernable trend, as more people start filming for their own countries, partially due to the drop in cost factor. So, we should expect to see way more films in wide format.
A humorous anecdote - at one point in the film fest a whole bunch of us had to tell the theatre manager (a nice woman who we like) that the aspect ratios were way off, when they persisted in showing a french film (Girl on the Bridge) at the Cinerama with the wrong settings. Of course, this was just after they had completed showing How The West Was Won using the Cinerama tri-screen, so they had to totally rework the whole theatre. It took us five minutes to explain why those of us in the audience knew how the film should be prepped.
-- Will in Seattle
What it all really means (second look)
by
WillAffleck
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· Score: 2
The second incorrect statement is this one:
The studio production standards we've cited are not to be confused with the broadcast standards listed below.
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Because film is going digital. All the directors at the Seattle International Film Fest, which is much more of a director's fest than Cannes will ever be, have said they're going digital for at least half their upcoming films.
And the argument about theaters was used during the release of color TV. Theater attendance is way up since then. If I'm watching Gladiator, I want to see it at the Cinerama, not at home. Sure, there are a lot of made-for-TV movies that aren't any better on the big screen, but try telling me that The Matrix is the same on HDTV as the big screen and I'll ROFL immeadiately.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
Actually, they have no choice, the legislation requires them to broadcast in HDTV by 2003 (or was it 2004, can't recall).
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
No, you'll see HDTV resolution at the mini-malls most likely, and have to go to the city to see higher res versions on a "true" big screen, where sound and experience will become more of the big picture.
Now if they could just issue candy in non-plastic wrappers to avoid the sound crinkle, I might start buying theatre candy again...
-- Will in Seattle
Re:What it all really means (second look)
by
K8Fan
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· Score: 2
Actually, they have no choice, the legislation requires them to broadcast in HDTV by 2003 (or was it 2004, can't recall).
The FCC requires them to broadcast digitally by that time, but does not require them to broadcast H/DTV (1080i or 720p). And a lot of the broadcasters plan to show 4 480p channels - 1 of the same crap they've been dishing all along, and 3 additional channels of shopping.
-- "How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure"
Charles Crumb
Re:Another thing you won't get
by
Graymalkin
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· Score: 2
Do you realize how much bandwidth that would require? Even with a highly compressed video stream you still need several Mbps, and since you're not special that means everyone needs a pipe that size. No nationwide network can provide that amount of data yet. The quip about booting to Windows it also pretty stupid, the point of open source is that if you don't like something you fucking write your own. Show some initiative man, complaining gets nothing done.
-- I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Re:It's about data standards for interactivity
by
Graymalkin
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· Score: 2
Vision and cognitive disorders? Aren't these the same people who can't watch TV because of this? Should I put fucking Braille on my keyboard just in case a blind person comes over to my house and decides he wants to type up an email? You ENTIRELY missed the guy's point with Java. They want to use Java as the actual compiled code that handles processing of such things as text and video. There is no need to translate the display code into different languages. The text the display code would be handling could be in any damn language people wanted. It'd be awfly easy to have one large XML file with text in several languages and it merely picks out the tag that says English or Spanish. HTML would be a pretty fucking stupid markup language to use because it tells the rendering program how to view the data. Contextual info needs to be just raw data that a parsing program can figure out how to display according to a set number of preferences. I shouldn't have to worry about HTML formatting on my television.
-- I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
DTV and the laziness of America
by
Graymalkin
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· Score: 2
We're seeing arguments over television, one of the horsemen of the technological apocalypse. Interactive television is a misnomer, you're not interacting with Buffy the vampire slayer of Carson Daily. You're merely getting to choose at which camaera angle you view them or look at their bio on the side of the screen. It reminds me so much of Fahrenheit 451 where his wife thought she was interacting with the people on the television because they paused while she read her lines. Thats actually exactly that people are asking for. Its funny because we stare at the glowing picture on the television like pre-historic man sat and stared at his fire. Its amazing to think how far we haven't come since them. Theres an alternative (a rather cheap one) to the DTV troubles. Before virtual reality was really feasible we used this thing called real reality. Instead of needing fancy goggles and a body suit all you need is some shorts and tank top. Theres tons of applications for real reality too. Some of my favourites include the beach and driving. Quake is fun and all but nothing beats running around playing paintball until you're too tired to drive home. Oh well, some people like sitting on their couch enough to put an ass print in it.
-- I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
United States DTV Standards Technical Details
by
QBasic_Dude
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· Score: 4
There are actually already several Digital TV standards broadcasting companies announced they are going to use:
So called e-cinema or electronic cinematography seems to be moving toward two HDTV standards: 24p (24-frame progressive) and 60i (60-field interlaced). Those who are after the "film look" prefer 24p, especially since the progressive approach results in fewer artifacts (aberrations) and higher resolution. The 24 fps speed is also the same as film--even though the extra sharpness of video sets it apart from film. However, compared to 24p, 60i (30 fps) does a better job of tracking motion, which means that zooms and camera movements--especially when done rapidly--appear smoother. (These must be done slower with film or 24p video.) Either of these standards can be converted to film. With the proper equipment and electronic setup, either of these standards become almost indistinguishable from film when projected. (If there is any "fault" with digital video it's that seems "too sharp and clear" compared to film. Of course, I guess we can all get used to better quality if we really have to!) At the same time we are seeing the beginning of a move to e-theaters, or movie theaters that use video projection equipment. A dozen or so major theaters around the country use digital projection now. Several digital feature "films" are in the works now. The studio production standards we've cited are not to be confused with the broadcast standards listed below.
They're after an encrypted signal path from the studio to the screen. This is the single biggest hangup preventing (H)DTV from hitting the market, and is the reason why cable systems aren't carrying HD signals.
Forget video rental, it's pay-per-view only w/ (H)DTV.
The new "interactive features" will be used to track your viewing habits with alarming granularity.
Fuck DTV. Fuck TV.
-Isaac
-- I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Re:Why (H)DTV will suck...
by
Smitty825
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· Score: 2
Fuck DTV. Fuck TV.
This reminds me of that Simpons Episode where Homer doesn't allow Bart to go see that Itchy & Scraty movie. Homer tells Bart to watch TV instead, and Bart, who is upset at Homer for not letting him go says something like "TV Sucks".
Homer got really upset and said (in a growling voice) "Bart, I know your upset, but don't say anything you don't mean" or something like that...great episode!
I was thinking about the parallels between this and the various TV, videotape, and more recently HDTV standards. And the world has changed. The hardware necessary is cheap enough now that it will happen in software. New codecs can and will be developed. New viewing software will be downloadable. That wasn't possible for TVs or VCRs and was only on the horizon when the HDTV debate began. We are likely to see incremental improvements rather than needing a legislated concensus to get manufacturers to shift to a single new standard. Sometimes life is good.
-- The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
What's happening with (H)DTV in other countries. IIRC in Japan they were pursuing a High-Def analog format. Anyone know what's going on with high-def in Europe? It also seems as if the television makers are trying to keep DTV capable TV prices at a premium as long as they can. For example, Sony makes a Wega 34" 16:9 HDTV capable set which sells for ~$6000. In America, this and some of their high end XBR projection screens are the only progressive-scan models. Whereas in Japan, they offer 29" and 34" 4:3 progressive scan models at seemingly resonable prices. AFAIK, when tuner boxes for DTV come down in price, it will only make a big difference for sets that progressive scan, which should be able to display 480P at least.
The "ideal" resolution would be a resolution which was backwards-compatiable with what exists today. This would be (PAL x NTSC)/(Highest Common Factor).
Frame rate should be calculated the same way. 25f for PAL, 30f for NTSC. Therefore, the "ideal" frame rate would be 150f. Yes, this is a lot higher than existing systems go, but it makes transferring existing NTSC or PAL footage a doddle. You don't lose any information, and you don't need to do any interpolation.
Such a resolution and frame-rate should also reduce the horrible artifacts produced by MPEG. (MPEG cannot handle low light well. It looks like a JPEG in a 16 colour resolution.) The only way to remove artifacts is to INcrease the resolution & speed, not decrease it. If you decrease it, the artifacts are still there, they're just not so "visible". Which means exactly nothing, since you don't watch a single frame, but a whole movie.
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
At least in Europe we have had trouble free DigitalTV for 2 years now. There is nothing wrong with it quality wise - Widescreen is excellent, the audio is excellents and the picture quality can be excellent.
Since noone has a TV capable of showing a 1920x1080 picture, or even half of that, I don't think that the lack of a high resolution DTV signal is that bad. That capability can be added on later, when there are more satellites providing more bandwidth.
Of course, HDTV looks amazing, so when it becomes affordable it could be an interesting option to purchase. Unfortuneately, there is nothing on TV to actually watch, so I don't currently have a TV and I don't intend to get one.
Last thing I want is to have to have a box with "Microsoft Media Player" logos on it. Looks like that is the way America wants to go, with MS-MPEG4, etc. A TV is meant to perform a function - show TV. In the UK, DigitalTV also has games, email, shopping etc as well, using Sky TV's Open platform. You ust can't browse the web using the box, but the next generation of DTV boxes in europe will be able to do that as well. Hopefully, Mozilla with its extreme customisability will be chosen for these boxes ahead of PocketIE or whatever.
Next: People to incorporate ReplayTV and DVD players into the DigitalTV's themselves.
Pay Attention to Copy Protection
by
ewhac
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· Score: 5
There's a lot of behind-the-scenes dealmaking going on to try and insinuate copy protection methods into DTV signals. They're trying to prevent people from recording programming off the air (since that would prevent you from buying the home video version of whatever it is).
Pay very close attention to this. Look for copy protection systems in the upcoming standards, and call attention to them. It's very important that it not come to pass.
When all you have is a hammer...
by
First+Person
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· Score: 3
Reading this article, I am reminded of a paragraph appearing in the 2 June 2000 issue of Science (Vol 288, p. 1597).
New Technologies often initially attempt to reproduce the previous technology in form and function. For example, when word processors were first introduced, many were designed to emulate typewriters: Characters were entered along one line at the bottom of the screen, and white "electronic paper" has to be scrolled up and down to the "writing head".
Interactive television strikes me as the same sort of revolution. Everyone's perspective is limited by what they know. TV will looks totally different in 20 years from the standards committees expect.
-- Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Forget video rental, it's pay-per-view only w/ (H)DTV.
That's funny. Then why do I find plenty of examples in nearly every medium of people willing to give me content for free and sell advertising space to sponsors. I find this on the radio, TV, the Web, some smaller newspapers, checkout aisle swapsheets and low budget newsprint computer magazines. And people who buy the latest home entertainment technology are a really enticing market niche to be able to sell advertising time in front of. They have disposable income and are willing to part with it for new gadgets. They are likely to be younger and novaphiles, so they may become repeat customers.
There will be plenty of pay-per-view content, but to build the market there will be content available for free or at a flat subscription rate like cable. And that content will be lucrative to provide, so it will continue.
-- The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Another thing you won't get
by
Greyfox
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· Score: 2
You know what I want? I want to go to a web site for my favorite shows at any time of day or night and select any current episode for playback. Ideally I could get this at a nice high resolution and a reasonable frame rate without having to boot my computer to Windows (Which is difficult since I don't have Windows on my computer.)
Somehow I don't think the content providers would be fond of this idea, despite it being the logical next step for content delivery services.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re:Another thing you won't get
by
Greyfox
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· Score: 2
We're getting there...
Even when we have the bandwidth, we still won't be able to do it. The content providers will see to that.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re: holding back to film standards
by
FFFish
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· Score: 3
It's inutterably stupid to choose a video standard based on 24fps, simply because that's what film uses.
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Though, of course, all this is moot when considering broadcast television. That shite ain't worth watching no-how. I just want my DVDs to look good...:-)
Just put a synchronization timestamp/token in the VBI, and that's it. (not enough bits to do much else, especially if you have to make room for closed-captioning)
If you want to see a show, go to the show's website, and the magical little box on top of your TV will access the appropriate channel for your area. Then the magic box picks up timestamp/synchronization info from the VBI for the SMIL metadocument to synch to.
I wouldn't be suprised if this could be done today with entirely existing technologies, appropriate software and a TV tuner card.
The funny thing is, 4K can be done. Arri's latest film recorder does so.
Yes, you're right. It can be done, but far too many special effects and post-production houses just don't do it. They think 2K is "good enough" and just don't bother with 4K. I really hope that 4K becomes the standard for movie resolution, but it seems that many people just don't care. They hear the word "digital" and shut their brains off, thinking that as long as they have that buzzword going for them, they're getting high quality.
I noticed that Industrial Light and Magic is not one of the listed installations for the new Arri scanner, even though lots of other major special effects houses are using it, including Digital Domain (co-founded by James Cameron and used for movies like "Titanic"). Apparently George Lucas is among those people who think that 2K resolution is "enough". Can't he tell the difference? Is he blind? I, for one, thought that "Star Wars Episode I" looked blurry, and that's because pretty much the entire movie was scanned, processed, and printed at 2K resolution, which is just not good enough to match film resolution. Give most people a side-by-side comparison, and they'll agree that 2K digital just isn't as good as film.
I wonder if they aren't approaching this from the wrong direction.
We already have the interactive technologies in development -- the web stuff, SMIL, and so on, and we certainly have the TV infrastructure already in place.
Why not just develop close synchronization between conventionally-delivered web and conventially-delivered TV content in some fashion, instead of deciding to cram everything conceivable down the broadcast channel?
The main thing it'd require would be the maturation of SMIL and a common schema/domain for "TV" URNs, and a little bit of hardware to pick up on synchronization info in the vertical blanking interval[1], but that's about it.
That'd leave you three options[2]:
1. watch TV on your TV while interacting with the synchronized web site on your PC
2. have the TV broadcast embedded in the synchronized website itself (courtesy of your TV card)
3. a WebTV-like set-top box that handles the web side of things, either doing as for #2, or compositing the website with the TV image in some other fashion
The technology for this kind of approach is here today, and it doesn't require pie-in-the-sky home bandwidth capabilities, nor does it require significant changes to the existing broadcast infrastructure.
I wonder why everyone seems so anxious to push their own proprietary solution, instead? I mean, Open Standards allow users control over their experience of the content, and that's a good thing, right?
---
[1] Maybe even current TV tuner cards could be pressed into service, depending on exactly what they offer; I don't know enough about them to say.
[2] Maybe more than that; these are the three I can think of off the top of my head
--
DNA just wants to be free...
It's about data standards for interactivity
by
Argyle
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· Score: 4
As a television engineer that was at the founding meetings of ATVEF and the ATSC commitee meetings I can tell you this is a very thorny subject.
Basically it boils down to two camps. One camp wants to invent new languages/scripting to be used for television. The other camp wants to incorporate and amplify IETF standards and utilize them.
I'm for the HTML based plan like ATVEF, since it has all the advantages of an established standard. Plenty of creation tools, few intellectual property issues, and plenty of people that know how to code it.
Those proposing new display engines (usually based on Java) point to the limitations of HTML and XML as unsuitable for use on television. The IP questions about using Java with a 'clean room' version are mind blowing. Noone wants to touch this issue except the electronics manufacturers since all they do is buy a chip and don't deal with any other licensing issues.
The real issue is what will the content providers choose to support. No content provider wants to code several versions of an enhancement to play on differing systems. They want one unified standard to code to all the time. I think most of the content providers have lined up with the ATVEF plans since they allow simple reuse of web apges and tools to make enhanced television.
Contrary to the above posts, the debate isn't about scan rate and format any more, it's about data enhancement.
In the US there is debate that the approved VSB transmission method is far worse than the CODFM method used in Europe. I can tell you as a fact that CODFM is a better method than VSB, but the consumer electronic manufacturers will never allow a switch at this point.
-- nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I just bought a Hollywood Plus MPEG decoder card, and did a little hacking to get it to work with NTSC (just had to change a few register values, nothing fancy). Reading over the documentation for the NTSC/PAL encoder, I see that interlacing can be turned on and off. Doing a search on the 'net reveals that people are talking about progressive scan NTSC, but I can't seem to find any information about sets that actually understand it. I've twiddled the bits on my H+, but my TV still displays in interlaced mode (not that I really expected it to suddenly do progressive scan...)
First off, the EE Times article is talking about the standards for interactive content, not the image specs. The image specs have already been set, as you pointed out. The current wrangling is over the set of APIs used to provide interactive "programming" for people's DTV sets and set-top boxes. It has nothing to do with the image specs. Read the article.
That said, there are a couple of incorrect statements in your post (actually, in the quote you have from the "CyberCollege" site). The first is this one:
If there is any "fault" with digital video it's that seems "too sharp and clear" compared to film. Of course, I guess we can all get used to better quality if we really have to!
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, the resolution of HDTV is not the same as film. Film is capable of resolving up to 4,000 lines, not 2,000. People see this all the time when scanning film in for the purpose of creating special effects. The current standard for scanning film in post-production is 2,000 lines ("2K" resolution). However, there is still scannable information left on the film that is not picked up at that resolution. 4,000 lines ("4K" resolution) would be the proper resolution for scanning film. 4K is what is needed to really replace 35mm film without any loss, not 2K resolution.
If you look closely next time you're at a movie theater, you can see that special effects shots look blurry compared to the rest of the movie. That's because of the loss in resolution due to scanning at 2K. Hopefully 4K will become the standard for doing special effects, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Most people think that 2K is "enough", even though it really isn't.
As for HDTV looking "too sharp and clear", this is nonsense. No one ever says that. The common complaint is that HDTV looks "too real" compared to film. And what people mean when they say this is that it looks too much like the evening news. Film is used for everything you see on TV these days except for the news and other "reality" programming, and so when people mean to say that something has too much of the video "look", they end up saying that it looks "too real".
The reason film and video have different looks is that they respond to light differently. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees light. That is why film looks so natural. Video cameras, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives it that particular look. The fact is, if you want an image that looks the most natural, film is still the way to go.
The second incorrect statement is this one:
The studio production standards we've cited are not to be confused with the broadcast standards listed below.
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
It's all about 1080 24P, interlace is DOA
by
Argyle
·
· Score: 2
All broadcast manufacturers are heading toward doing top end production on 1080 24P systems. It makes film people happy because 24P matches film. It makes TV people since you can downconvert to any resolution/scan format. It make computer people happy because the nasty interlace demons are gone.
You will see television broadcast move to 720 60P in the next decade. Why? Because the coming large plasma displays and projection sets are all natively progressive. Watching interlaced content on a progrssive screen is like listening to 8track tapes on a high end stereo system.
-- nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, MPEG looks pretty crummy whenever it has to deal with slight changes in color. I was watching a DVD and saw artifacts all over in one scene of Pulp Fiction where the main characters were standing in front of blank off-white walls. Slight variations are a challenge for video coders, as many of their algorithms are based upon fairly large changes. Small changes just don't get noticed..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
For more indepth info about DTV look at:
http://TVIndustry.com/Main.DigitalTV.htm
/oskar
I vote that from now on anyone who uses the pseudo-word "boxen" should be hit in the head with a sledgehammer. It was never funny. It was never clever. As a matter of fact, it's quite stupid. Please stop or I'll kill you.
:-) It's all cool. Lots of people get worked up when they don't get enough seks. ;-)
AC--
Box phonetically equivocates to baw-ks. Boxes phonetically converts to Baw-k-ses, a moderately more linguistically annoying phrase, since you've got to loop yourself from the s sound, to an "eh" sound, back to the "ess". The resolution pluralization became Boxen.
I doubt it was ever intended to be funny or clever. It's just easier to transition from "ks" to "en" than it is to transition from "ks", add a short "eh", then back to "es".
Good example--when going from "Rack" to the plural, you turn "Rack" to "Racks"/"Rax". You can't make the same conversion though for Box, because you've already got that ks/x sound in there. Thus you get something like Boxen.
If you think I've taken this analysis too far, you're the geek who threatened to, and I quote, "kill" somebody over your dislike for a five letter work ending in N instead of S. Not that I took you seriously
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The games are too slow, and the email screen could be laid out a lot better, agreed. The shopping system works as well as you could hope for for a dumb home user on a TV system though.
If noone goes and actually creates the systems, then nothing will happen. The games might be interpreted piles of junk (I assume that, or the system as a whole only has a Z80 controlling it), and I would prefer Tetris and other puzzle games (even some classic platformers) to the trash on there currently, but as a real example of a technology it is great.
When the next generation Digital Boxes come out, hopefully within the next couple of years, then there will be a lot more power available to do stuff correctly. Hopefully they will also have ADSL support, and a built in DVD drive (why not use the one set of MPEG-2 decoder chips instead of multiple sets?).
On of the rules of business it to get it out there quickly whatever the faults. Sky has done this knowling it isn't the perfect solution, but they also know that if they didn't release anything then OnDigital (Terrestrial Digital TV) would be on the case. If only the SKy boxes allowed 2 way satellite transmission for IP traffic as well... :-)
Take a look at HTTP Extension Framework. Note a couple of key aspects:
- use of mandatory and optional items
- end-to-end transmission
- referential connections (ie ensure a link encoded within the content)
If you make the assumption that everything is a computer and that XML or Java engines will be embeeded into every computer and consumer item known to mankind (and Mars 127.0,0.1) then if any any point you insert you hacked/hand-made/sniffer device that removes those not-so-subtle control signals, then you can kiss your replay features good bye. Look the technological trends, the Amiga/TAO/Sony announcement of being able to hook multiple IP cores within the same OS. The support of big name companies for selected XML "standards" (with convenient amnesia about certain inconvenient consumer friendly functions). If each silicon slice supports the necessary control protocols, then when you replay back an "interactive" movie, they will be able to tell who/when/what and be able to dictate the terms of the availability, target bits to a specific machine, and eliminate 2nd sale, redistribution, cross-transmission, and lending/borrowing priviledges. Education and entertainment are going to be big money spinners and the players want to keep every penny of it. If you think DVD was bad, wait until every bitstream is encoded.Take a careful look at how the protocol extensions are to be used in their examples:
- Man: "http://www.copyright.org/rights-management"; ns=16
- 14-Credentials="g5gj262jdw@4df"
- Expires: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:12:31 GMT
- C-Opt: "http://www.meter.org/hits"
- Opt: "http://www.my.com/tracking"
- Cache-Control: no-cache="Ext"
Sorry guys, not only can (as McNealy put it) you kiss your privacy goodbye but you might as well forget about keeping any bits you buy/lease/rent whether software or content.LL
And yes, they'll be quite interested to know that YOU (And they will KNOW it's YOU) are watching the Live Goat Porn channel every night from 6 to 9:30. The up side of this is you'll get directed advertising for all that cool Live Goat Porn merchandise. You might even get honorable mention on the Live Goat Porn web page (http://www.livegoatporn.com) for being their best fan. Wouldn't that be cool?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm not talking about the availability of "free" or subscription-based content. I'm talking about putting the video rental market out of business. That's one of the goals of the studios/networks in transitioning to (H)DTV. Fewer intermediaries take a cut out of PPV revenues as compared to rental, which would benefit the content producers and cable companies (frequently one and the same) immensely.
Of course, this will restrict your choices for home viewing to the top dozen popular movies, but that's better for the studios anyhow - no pesky indie or foreign flicks to compete with their "Mission Impossible N"s or "Runaway Bride"s (or "Battlefield Earth"s).
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
COFDM and DVB-T work today, the hardware is in mass production, and it looks like it will become the international standard for DTV.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
HTML/XML is also more accessible to people with vision and cognitive disorders, since it's basically text that the client can interpret however they will. Pardon my language, but how the *fuck* do they expect to do large fonts, alternate colors, and speech synthesis on *Java*. If they put in all the hooks to do this well, they'll end up with the OS/360 of content development.
Plus, you can do Babelfish-style translation of the content with HTML/XML. Again pardon my language, but how the *fuck* is anybody supposed to translate Java bytecodes from English to Spanish. Sure, English is used a lot all over the world, but I imagine Hollywood still gets significant revenues from dubbing movies and TV programs into other languages. With Java, they have to translate the source and recompile for every language. Even if they wanted to bear the expense, the configuration management issues are formidable.
And how can Java be indexed by the search engines? Much of any media company's value is in their archives. By using Java, they lock their product up where people can't find it to buy. Java either costs sales, or you have to pay to recreate the information in a form that *is* indexable. In other words, they've gotta have a web page (or the equivalent) replicating the content.
Instead of using pure Java, I think they ought to use an HTML/Java combination. First, they would extend and/or clarify HTML so that it rendered consistently (standard table behavior and standard font sizes). The biggest problem with HTML is that basic things like tables are wildly different across existing browsers. Simply codifying how tables, images, fonts, and styles display for the TV Browser Standard would be the most important step. Most stuff, like National Geographic supplemental information and football player stats, would be well-handled by HTML.
They would use Java plug-ins for the truly unusual stuff. For instance, the zoomable-spinnable-interactive-3D-instant-sports-r eplay would be Java.
(Does this remind anybody else of the "Would you like to know more?" bits from the Starship Troopers movie?)
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
...Only there's no payoff.
The Chinese Lottery is essentially a crypto term referring to the following concept: Each of China's billion residents is given a set top box for their TV. The boxen each receive a block to attack(this can be broadcast simply by continually outputting a stream of if(serial == "12345"){block="0xAABB1234")). The cost of the attack is borne in small chunks by whatever the market will bear to pay for a set top box, plus each individual paying for the electricity(which is of less value, presumably, than the amortized value of each block being cracked).
Then whoever's box cracks the code displays a message, "You've just won a million dollars. Please call this number to claim it." The government collects the box and gives some sum to the winner. Then they take back most of that sum through taxation(OK that's not part of the Chinese Lottery, but it's part of *every* lottery), and everyone's happy.
Now consider that most of these settop boxen will end up actually having phone connections to the media owners, so that Pay Per View can be implemented. Now the owner of the box doesn't need to be paid off or even informed that his machine was being used to crack some code, and that the cost of that cracking was being borne by his electricity bill. The result of the crack can be sent down the pipe at will.
All they need is the ability to execute code...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Try checking the Sigma Designs news server, at news.sigmadesigns.com. I seem to recall seeing some mention of that, and that it was intended for computer monitor viewing, or something.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
That's been one of the ongoing topics at the Seattle International Film Fest, which wraps up this weekend. Most of the directors have said they're going to digital, partially because you can film for under $10,000 instead of $250,000.
So expect this to be the "new story" next year, when all these films start coming out of the can (ok, I guess that's outmoded too).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Also a discernable trend, as more people start filming for their own countries, partially due to the drop in cost factor. So, we should expect to see way more films in wide format.
A humorous anecdote - at one point in the film fest a whole bunch of us had to tell the theatre manager (a nice woman who we like) that the aspect ratios were way off, when they persisted in showing a french film (Girl on the Bridge) at the Cinerama with the wrong settings. Of course, this was just after they had completed showing How The West Was Won using the Cinerama tri-screen, so they had to totally rework the whole theatre. It took us five minutes to explain why those of us in the audience knew how the film should be prepped.
Will in Seattle
The second incorrect statement is this one:
...
The studio production standards we've cited are not to be confused with the broadcast standards listed below.
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Because film is going digital. All the directors at the Seattle International Film Fest, which is much more of a director's fest than Cannes will ever be, have said they're going digital for at least half their upcoming films.
And the argument about theaters was used during the release of color TV. Theater attendance is way up since then. If I'm watching Gladiator, I want to see it at the Cinerama, not at home. Sure, there are a lot of made-for-TV movies that aren't any better on the big screen, but try telling me that The Matrix is the same on HDTV as the big screen and I'll ROFL immeadiately.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
Actually, they have no choice, the legislation requires them to broadcast in HDTV by 2003 (or was it 2004, can't recall).
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
No, you'll see HDTV resolution at the mini-malls most likely, and have to go to the city to see higher res versions on a "true" big screen, where sound and experience will become more of the big picture.
Now if they could just issue candy in non-plastic wrappers to avoid the sound crinkle, I might start buying theatre candy again
Will in Seattle
Do you realize how much bandwidth that would require? Even with a highly compressed video stream you still need several Mbps, and since you're not special that means everyone needs a pipe that size. No nationwide network can provide that amount of data yet. The quip about booting to Windows it also pretty stupid, the point of open source is that if you don't like something you fucking write your own. Show some initiative man, complaining gets nothing done.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Vision and cognitive disorders? Aren't these the same people who can't watch TV because of this? Should I put fucking Braille on my keyboard just in case a blind person comes over to my house and decides he wants to type up an email? You ENTIRELY missed the guy's point with Java. They want to use Java as the actual compiled code that handles processing of such things as text and video. There is no need to translate the display code into different languages. The text the display code would be handling could be in any damn language people wanted. It'd be awfly easy to have one large XML file with text in several languages and it merely picks out the tag that says English or Spanish. HTML would be a pretty fucking stupid markup language to use because it tells the rendering program how to view the data. Contextual info needs to be just raw data that a parsing program can figure out how to display according to a set number of preferences. I shouldn't have to worry about HTML formatting on my television.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
We're seeing arguments over television, one of the horsemen of the technological apocalypse. Interactive television is a misnomer, you're not interacting with Buffy the vampire slayer of Carson Daily. You're merely getting to choose at which camaera angle you view them or look at their bio on the side of the screen. It reminds me so much of Fahrenheit 451 where his wife thought she was interacting with the people on the television because they paused while she read her lines. Thats actually exactly that people are asking for. Its funny because we stare at the glowing picture on the television like pre-historic man sat and stared at his fire. Its amazing to think how far we haven't come since them. Theres an alternative (a rather cheap one) to the DTV troubles. Before virtual reality was really feasible we used this thing called real reality. Instead of needing fancy goggles and a body suit all you need is some shorts and tank top. Theres tons of applications for real reality too. Some of my favourites include the beach and driving. Quake is fun and all but nothing beats running around playing paintball until you're too tired to drive home. Oh well, some people like sitting on their couch enough to put an ass print in it.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
More information on the DTV Standards is available.
CmdrTaco: The first link to EETimes is broken.
Content companies aren't about to allow VCRs.
They're after an encrypted signal path from the studio to the screen. This is the single biggest hangup preventing (H)DTV from hitting the market, and is the reason why cable systems aren't carrying HD signals.
Forget video rental, it's pay-per-view only w/ (H)DTV.
The new "interactive features" will be used to track your viewing habits with alarming granularity.
Fuck DTV. Fuck TV.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I was thinking about the parallels between this and the various TV, videotape, and more recently HDTV standards. And the world has changed. The hardware necessary is cheap enough now that it will happen in software. New codecs can and will be developed. New viewing software will be downloadable. That wasn't possible for TVs or VCRs and was only on the horizon when the HDTV debate began. We are likely to see incremental improvements rather than needing a legislated concensus to get manufacturers to shift to a single new standard. Sometimes life is good.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Frame rate should be calculated the same way. 25f for PAL, 30f for NTSC. Therefore, the "ideal" frame rate would be 150f. Yes, this is a lot higher than existing systems go, but it makes transferring existing NTSC or PAL footage a doddle. You don't lose any information, and you don't need to do any interpolation.
Such a resolution and frame-rate should also reduce the horrible artifacts produced by MPEG. (MPEG cannot handle low light well. It looks like a JPEG in a 16 colour resolution.) The only way to remove artifacts is to INcrease the resolution & speed, not decrease it. If you decrease it, the artifacts are still there, they're just not so "visible". Which means exactly nothing, since you don't watch a single frame, but a whole movie.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Since noone has a TV capable of showing a 1920x1080 picture, or even half of that, I don't think that the lack of a high resolution DTV signal is that bad. That capability can be added on later, when there are more satellites providing more bandwidth.
Of course, HDTV looks amazing, so when it becomes affordable it could be an interesting option to purchase. Unfortuneately, there is nothing on TV to actually watch, so I don't currently have a TV and I don't intend to get one.
Last thing I want is to have to have a box with "Microsoft Media Player" logos on it. Looks like that is the way America wants to go, with MS-MPEG4, etc. A TV is meant to perform a function - show TV. In the UK, DigitalTV also has games, email, shopping etc as well, using Sky TV's Open platform. You ust can't browse the web using the box, but the next generation of DTV boxes in europe will be able to do that as well. Hopefully, Mozilla with its extreme customisability will be chosen for these boxes ahead of PocketIE or whatever.
Next: People to incorporate ReplayTV and DVD players into the DigitalTV's themselves.
There's a lot of behind-the-scenes dealmaking going on to try and insinuate copy protection methods into DTV signals. They're trying to prevent people from recording programming off the air (since that would prevent you from buying the home video version of whatever it is).
Pay very close attention to this. Look for copy protection systems in the upcoming standards, and call attention to them. It's very important that it not come to pass.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Reading this article, I am reminded of a paragraph appearing in the 2 June 2000 issue of Science (Vol 288, p. 1597).
Interactive television strikes me as the same sort of revolution. Everyone's perspective is limited by what they know. TV will looks totally different in 20 years from the standards committees expect.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
That's funny. Then why do I find plenty of examples in nearly every medium of people willing to give me content for free and sell advertising space to sponsors. I find this on the radio, TV, the Web, some smaller newspapers, checkout aisle swapsheets and low budget newsprint computer magazines. And people who buy the latest home entertainment technology are a really enticing market niche to be able to sell advertising time in front of. They have disposable income and are willing to part with it for new gadgets. They are likely to be younger and novaphiles, so they may become repeat customers.
There will be plenty of pay-per-view content, but to build the market there will be content available for free or at a flat subscription rate like cable. And that content will be lucrative to provide, so it will continue.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Somehow I don't think the content providers would be fond of this idea, despite it being the logical next step for content delivery services.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's inutterably stupid to choose a video standard based on 24fps, simply because that's what film uses.
:-)
Digital video is where it's going, and bloody fast. Set the standard at 48 or 72fps, and use every second or third frame if cutting back to film (or double or triple the frames if going from film to television).
And let's start seeing the wide format more in use. Most of our world is lived more horizontally spread-out than vertically spread-out, New York and Hong Kong being the notable exceptions.
Though, of course, all this is moot when considering broadcast television. That shite ain't worth watching no-how. I just want my DVDs to look good...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Just put a synchronization timestamp/token in the VBI, and that's it. (not enough bits to do much else, especially if you have to make room for closed-captioning)
If you want to see a show, go to the show's website, and the magical little box on top of your TV will access the appropriate channel for your area. Then the magic box picks up timestamp/synchronization info from the VBI for the SMIL metadocument to synch to.
I wouldn't be suprised if this could be done today with entirely existing technologies, appropriate software and a TV tuner card.
DNA just wants to be free...
I noticed that Industrial Light and Magic is not one of the listed installations for the new Arri scanner, even though lots of other major special effects houses are using it, including Digital Domain (co-founded by James Cameron and used for movies like "Titanic"). Apparently George Lucas is among those people who think that 2K resolution is "enough". Can't he tell the difference? Is he blind? I, for one, thought that "Star Wars Episode I" looked blurry, and that's because pretty much the entire movie was scanned, processed, and printed at 2K resolution, which is just not good enough to match film resolution. Give most people a side-by-side comparison, and they'll agree that 2K digital just isn't as good as film.
Free Hans!
I wonder if they aren't approaching this from the wrong direction.
We already have the interactive technologies in development -- the web stuff, SMIL, and so on, and we certainly have the TV infrastructure already in place.
Why not just develop close synchronization between conventionally-delivered web and conventially-delivered TV content in some fashion, instead of deciding to cram everything conceivable down the broadcast channel?
The main thing it'd require would be the maturation of SMIL and a common schema/domain for "TV" URNs, and a little bit of hardware to pick up on synchronization info in the vertical blanking interval[1], but that's about it.
That'd leave you three options[2]:
1. watch TV on your TV while interacting with the synchronized web site on your PC
2. have the TV broadcast embedded in the synchronized website itself (courtesy of your TV card)
3. a WebTV-like set-top box that handles the web side of things, either doing as for #2, or compositing the website with the TV image in some other fashion
The technology for this kind of approach is here today, and it doesn't require pie-in-the-sky home bandwidth capabilities, nor does it require significant changes to the existing broadcast infrastructure.
I wonder why everyone seems so anxious to push their own proprietary solution, instead? I mean, Open Standards allow users control over their experience of the content, and that's a good thing, right?
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[1] Maybe even current TV tuner cards could be pressed into service, depending on exactly what they offer; I don't know enough about them to say.
[2] Maybe more than that; these are the three I can think of off the top of my head
DNA just wants to be free...
As a television engineer that was at the founding meetings of ATVEF and the ATSC commitee meetings I can tell you this is a very thorny subject.
Basically it boils down to two camps. One camp wants to invent new languages/scripting to be used for television. The other camp wants to incorporate and amplify IETF standards and utilize them.
I'm for the HTML based plan like ATVEF, since it has all the advantages of an established standard. Plenty of creation tools, few intellectual property issues, and plenty of people that know how to code it.
Those proposing new display engines (usually based on Java) point to the limitations of HTML and XML as unsuitable for use on television. The IP questions about using Java with a 'clean room' version are mind blowing. Noone wants to touch this issue except the electronics manufacturers since all they do is buy a chip and don't deal with any other licensing issues.
The real issue is what will the content providers choose to support. No content provider wants to code several versions of an enhancement to play on differing systems. They want one unified standard to code to all the time. I think most of the content providers have lined up with the ATVEF plans since they allow simple reuse of web apges and tools to make enhanced television.
Contrary to the above posts, the debate isn't about scan rate and format any more, it's about data enhancement.
In the US there is debate that the approved VSB transmission method is far worse than the CODFM method used in Europe. I can tell you as a fact that CODFM is a better method than VSB, but the consumer electronic manufacturers will never allow a switch at this point.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Okay this is a bit offtopic..
I just bought a Hollywood Plus MPEG decoder card, and did a little hacking to get it to work with NTSC (just had to change a few register values, nothing fancy). Reading over the documentation for the NTSC/PAL encoder, I see that interlacing can be turned on and off. Doing a search on the 'net reveals that people are talking about progressive scan NTSC, but I can't seem to find any information about sets that actually understand it. I've twiddled the bits on my H+, but my TV still displays in interlaced mode (not that I really expected it to suddenly do progressive scan...)
Anyone have more info?
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA
Well, there you go. Microsoft must teach this meaning of "standard" to their people during orientation or something. It would sure explain a lot.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That said, there are a couple of incorrect statements in your post (actually, in the quote you have from the "CyberCollege" site). The first is this one:
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, the resolution of HDTV is not the same as film. Film is capable of resolving up to 4,000 lines, not 2,000. People see this all the time when scanning film in for the purpose of creating special effects. The current standard for scanning film in post-production is 2,000 lines ("2K" resolution). However, there is still scannable information left on the film that is not picked up at that resolution. 4,000 lines ("4K" resolution) would be the proper resolution for scanning film. 4K is what is needed to really replace 35mm film without any loss, not 2K resolution.
If you look closely next time you're at a movie theater, you can see that special effects shots look blurry compared to the rest of the movie. That's because of the loss in resolution due to scanning at 2K. Hopefully 4K will become the standard for doing special effects, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Most people think that 2K is "enough", even though it really isn't.
As for HDTV looking "too sharp and clear", this is nonsense. No one ever says that. The common complaint is that HDTV looks "too real" compared to film. And what people mean when they say this is that it looks too much like the evening news. Film is used for everything you see on TV these days except for the news and other "reality" programming, and so when people mean to say that something has too much of the video "look", they end up saying that it looks "too real".
The reason film and video have different looks is that they respond to light differently. Film samples light in a logarithmic curve, which is very similar to the way the human eye sees light. That is why film looks so natural. Video cameras, on the other hand, sample light in a linear fashion, which is what gives it that particular look. The fact is, if you want an image that looks the most natural, film is still the way to go.
The second incorrect statement is this one:
Actually, the 1920x1080 24 fps progressive format is exactly the same format that is being used for Star Wars Episode II. That's right, it's being shot in the exact same resultion that is supposedly going to become the broadcast standard for TV. Why would studios being doing that? If they use the same resolution for movies as is going to be used for TV, why would people go to theaters anymore? It doesn't make sense.
Unless of course, they have no intention of ever giving us the HD resolution at home. And since all the major TV networks are now owned by movie studios, they can do that.
So, here what's going to happen. HDTV resolution will be used for theaters, which will be a step down in picture quality, and then regular resolution digital TV will be used for the home, and the extra bandwidth from the digital broadcasting licenses that were given away by the U.S. Congress will be used for a bunch of stupid "interactive" content. Isn't that nice?
Free Hans!
All broadcast manufacturers are heading toward doing top end production on 1080 24P systems. It makes film people happy because 24P matches film. It makes TV people since you can downconvert to any resolution/scan format. It make computer people happy because the nasty interlace demons are gone.
You will see television broadcast move to 720 60P in the next decade. Why? Because the coming large plasma displays and projection sets are all natively progressive. Watching interlaced content on a progrssive screen is like listening to 8track tapes on a high end stereo system.
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We should make our own DTV standard. With gambling. And hookers....
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?