Interactive High Definition Television - Essay Example

The Potential of Digital Video within Interactive High Definition Television Introduction The purpose of the essay is looking critically at the digital videos' potential in the realm of Interactive High Definition television in a world moving to a digital era. From mobile phones, computers, and Internet to the latest iPod digital music players, myriad combinations of 0's and 1's do the work. Television, sadly, has still been in analogue for more than 50 years. The move to HD television is considered an evolution, not a revolution, since television is now slowly becoming digital after decades of stagnation and minimal growth. What is High Definition television Current television is what is called analogue. Analogue television uses a 6 MHz signal- carrying intensity and colour information for each scan line of the picture. An analogue signal in the U.S. has 480 scan lines (525 broadcast) in NTSC format and in Europe; the PAL format has 576 visible lines (650 transmitted). This level of resolution was good fifty years ago, but today most electronic technologies have moved to higher-resolution digital. Computer monitors offer resolutions of at least 1280x1024, leaving analogue pale in comparison. New satellite systems and DVDs that use a digital encoding scheme provide clearer pictures, but this is then converted to analogue to be displayed on most televisions. HDTV is the big push to convert the world of television from analogue to digital in order to forgo this conversion process and use the signals from the DVD, TV signal, Satellite or Internet directly. Digital Television (DTV) or High Definition Television (HDTV) possesses many improvements including: - Analogue-conversion free usage of digital signals - Better sound quality in Dolby 5.1 stereo - Higher aspect ratios than analogue - Improved picture quality with smaller pixels and high resolution 5.1 Digital Stereo improves sound quality by using one woofer and five speakers to deliver crystal clear surround sound. HDTV has a high resolution of either 720 or 1080 scan lines. In Europe, the move is towards the scanned 720 lines on the TV. Progressive scanning updates the screen 60 times a minute, whereas the interlaced 1080 line scans cause alternate lines to update 60 times a minute, leading to flickering on large displays. TV Stations may choose which formats to broadcast. The HDTV formats in use are 720p - 1280x720 pixels progressive, 1080i - 1920x1080 pixels interlaced and 1080p - 1920x1080 pixels progressive among others. "It is always optimum to reproduce video material in the same origination format" advises TV designer Ed Milbourn. "Optimum production and delivery for 1080p is 60 frames." Processing the digital quality through current analogue bandwidths require compression of the digital information via special technologies. The US after defining the ATSC standards, uses the MPEG-2 compression in DVDs. This offers a lossful compression of 55:1, squeezing the digital picture in the same 6-megahertz (MHz) analogue transmission bandwidth. Compression reduces image quality from the original digital camera image. MPEG-2 is competent at removing details that the human eye ignores anyway. The quality of the image becomes significantly better than traditional analogue. Europe plans to use the H.264 codec in the MPEG-4 standard. The 16:9 aspect wide ratios compared to the previous 4:3 ratio shows that the HDTV image is aligned to the three-decade old aspect ratios used in movie theatres. The panoramic view fills the eyes better than the 4:3 ratios, aligned to the format of its 35-mm film base. These benefits apart, HDTV can also offer Interactive TV, due to the fact that almost every station already sends data with signals. Closed captioning and descriptive audio are existing interactivity, but replay TV and other menu-based options embedded in the broadcast signal will take interactivity to a new level in HDTV. HDTV media delivery: hardware and software Changes to TV transmission in HDTV format introduce a variety of hardware changes on both the consumer and the broadcasting and distribution sides. - Consumers have to buy either a new set-top box (to convert digital to analogue) or a whole new TV set. - Broadcasters would spend huge amounts of money to enable switching to DTV by purchasing new cameras, titling and editing equipment, tape machines, and rigs for their news vans - a huge investment. - Cable and satellite operators have to convert all of their equipment and set-top boxes. - Communities need to agree to have new towers built for broadcast channels On the consumer side, the advent of higher resolution pictures has propelled the usage of large format televisions in recent technologies like Plasma, LCD, LCD Projection, DLP and LCOS. Currently, Plasma and LCD are most popular with LCD screens' sizes growing ever larger and cheaper as manufacturing yields improve. While existing users may buy a HDTV set top box converter to use analogue televisions, that would absolutely negate the benefits of upgrading to HDTV. Consumer electronic companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Dell offer a variety of HDTV's with built-in or external HD tuners in a technology including DLP, LCD and Plasma. Software availability for HDTV currently varies. Because the HD signals are broadcast over analogue instead of digital signals, HDTV has a high penetration in Japan, with most of the broadcasts in Japan converted to HDTV. The USA has aggressive timelines to convert all terrestrial broadcast to HD signals by 2007, the UK by 2008, and Europe by 2010. Currently the pioneer HDTV transmitter in Europe is Euro1080, starting with its flagship channel HD1 back in 2004 and since adding HD2/HD5, all delivered through satellites. The UK's first HDTV service trialled from December 2005 from Telewest, and will launch a full service in 2006. The BBC announced that trials of HDTV were to begin in 2006 with some output filmed in the format, with aims to have all programme productions in HD format by 2010. In the UK, Sky will launch HDTV in early 2006. Europe has the advantage of being able to use more modern picture compression technology due to its late entry into the HDTV market and these major broadcasters have announced their intentions of eventually using H.264/MPEG-4 codec, allowing them to utilize broadcasting frequencies more efficiently than the United States since transmitting HDTV signals using H.264 compression requires only around half as much bandwidth as needed under the USA's ATSC system which uses MPEG-2. Brian Sullivan, Sky's director of consumer products and services, said: "We believe it is pretty much a dead cert that it will take off. There are two major differences between this time and the previous attempts to launch HDTV. Firstly, the sets are affordable, and secondly there will be programmes available making use of the new technology. " "The difference is truly dramatic and much more like being at the cinema. The pictures are much clearer. The colours truly explode off the screen. When you watch a football match you can make out the blades of grass, and you can see the detail as in films." High definition DVD should also push the HDTV format with Sony consortium introducing the Blu-Ray DVD standard which will allow storage of over 37 GB of data on a single disk compared to the 4.7 GB that the standard DVD disks now store; and with the Toshiba backed consortium launching the HD-DVD standard, (according to HDTV UK website ) both in 2006, these will introduce high capacity DVD disks capable of storing HD quality movies and will therefore push demand and acceptance of the HDTV technology. With the advent of HDTV, the millions of Personal computers in the market become capable of getting High definition TV content that is already in digital format and there is no more a need for expensive TV tuner cards, which convert analogue signals to digital for PC viewing. This opens up a large potential new market for TV watching. Replay technologies: hardware and software The various delivery channels of cable, satellite, terrestrial transmission remain but with the set top boxes being upgraded to received HD signals and either convert them to an analogue TV or directly drive a HD display. These set top boxes also have embedded hard disks in them to offer PVR functionality - a digital VCR that stores TV programs that can be watched later on at a convenient time. Hard disk capacities have been rising and prices have been falling allowing PVR or DVR or Tivo technologies as they are called to store HD images. A 200 MB hard disk is able to store over 80 hours of regular analogue content, but since HDTV content is larger they typically are able to store only 20 hours of stored video on a 200 MB hard disk. However, over the next few years, cheaper hard disks with capacities of 500 MB or greater are expected and would allow more storage of HD video. With the fall in broadband costs and increase of bandwidth with usage of optical fibre for cable delivery, the storage of video can be also done at the supplier side. These video servers have been already launched by cable operators who have started offering video-on-demand and in future, the video-on-demand should be available more prevalently in HD format as well. A Cabot published whitepaper says that another factor that impedes demand is the fact that the electronic program guides are available only for a week at a time in advance and changes to this availability where the guides are available for a longer duration would drive acceptance of PVR technologies and hence HD demand. We had earlier analyzed that the HDTV market opens up the potential of Personal computers users who can also now watch HD on their PC's. This extends to the DVR market as well as these PC's can now access and store the programming on their hard disk and therefore is a potential market for PC on the TV and PC to work as a DVR machine for HD content. Trends - future hardware and software both in short and long term The HDTV development really means the merger of the entertainment, TV and Personal computer and internet industries with an overlap of technologies. HDTV technology merges into the digital world of the computers and the internet. With broadband speeds increasing, there are new opportunities to deliver HDTV content over the DSL and Cable internet connections. Potential includes delivering video-on-demand both over DSL and cable networks. This has already started in terms of video-on-demand movies in HD format being available for viewing on the Cable TV networks. Internet companies will step in the TV space since for them it will be an extent of another form of content being delivered to the Personal computers and will therefore challenge existing business models and delivery paradigms. In the short term, TV companies will slowly move over their channels to the HDTV network. Over time, most or all channels will be available only as HD. Then will increase in broadband there will more opportunities for delivery like video-on-demand and through the internet. With the advent of high capacity DVD formats like the Blu-Ray, the market will shift to digital media delivery over all forms of delivery channels, DVD, TV and the PC and internet. "Until today we have laboured under a Catch 22. If the industry didn't produce and broadcast in HD, the consumer would be reluctant to purchase HD television sets or equipment," Sony Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Stringer said Conclusion: Existing, future DV applications within interactive HDTV. There is only currently limited use of digital interactive video in HD right now but this area is poised for rapid growth. Current usage includes sub-titles and some games. Interactive applications will include multiplayer games, streamed radio stations, shopping and internet integration for purchase of everyday products including ordering pizza for example and great integration to computer technology. The HDTV sets can be used as computer screens and can stream video-on-demand from the internet service. The internet service by itself is bound to move from DSL, cable to fibre based internet services (FIOS), and this will merge the triple play of Television, internet and voice services. Future HD applications will also mean merger with telephony and video phones due to falling bandwidth prices. Streamed content can be recorded to hard disks at remote locations, which can be accessed by the user from multiple locations and devices. It is only going to get more complicated as new HDTV technologies and variations on existing technologies are being introduced rapidly. Unresolved issues surrounding copy protection of DTV content, slow deployment of HD content distribution, and the challenges for consumers to understand, conspires to slow the pace of HDTV acceptance. Improved HDTV content and availability, TV's with an Ethernet port to attach to your home network, and a built-in Web browser for broadband surfing, improved channel guide with longer periods of programming, DVR and PVR functionality and increased integration with PC systems and H.264 compression are some of the important technologies that are going to be standardized and accepted over the next few years. Sources Murdo MacLeod, The Scotsman: Future TV set to be picture perfect [Online] Available: http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfmid=2200922005 [24 Dec 2005] Robert X. 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