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Digital Technology?

Why did it take so long for digital tv and radio technology to arrive.

Public Comments

1. Standards. For television, standards was set by the ATSC, a government body. In order to set proper standards, the needs of manufacturers of receiver sets, the consumer, the manufacturers of broadcast transmitters, the producers of content and the government regulators and licensees have to be accomodated. digital video specifications went pretty smoothly as international agreed standards for DV existed for more than 2 decades, that SD was 720 pixels per line. Prior to DTV all digital video equipment made, D1, D2, D3, D5, D9, DVCcam, DVCpro, digital Beta, and miniDV all worked at this rate. The reason for 720 pixels is it allows for superior conversion to analog video. But Bill Gates jumped in at the last second and proclaimed that only 640 pixels per line could ever work with Windows based computers. So the entire ATSC had to be reworked for Bill Gates even though he has yet to produce a DTV computer. Seems Windows is actually better served by You Tube. Another factor was to perform propagation tests to determine what DTV power level would equal the distance performance of traditional analog. This is crucial to the people who hold the transmitting licenses and important to consumers to assure they are not left out with no signal after the transition. In comparison, HD radio has rolled out at lightning speed. This is because the standards body is an industrial consortium called Ibiquity. The FCC has signed off in advance of whatever Ibiquity decides on. For example the original codec was an inferior product, so it was quickly changed. Even the name HD radio is a market tweek from the FCC approved IBOC (in-band on-channel) designation. Also HD roll out did not have to wait for a complete set of standards, for example conditional access and picture displays are not defined yet or incorporated in the current receiver chip set, and even the current system is given improvement tweeks occassionally. Also HD radio was able to use the transmitting tests of television to quickly set the power level at only 1 percent of the analog carrier. Unlike television, radio conversion is voluntary for both broadcaster and consumer.