IP: computer industry digital tv standard

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Digital TV Feud Brewing
(03/22/97; 2:10 p.m. EST)
By George Leopold and Junko Yoshida, Electronic Engineering Times


NEW ORLEANS -- The feud between broadcasters and regulators over launch
timing for U.S. digital-TV service is playing into the hands of PC makers
anxious to add digital video to their growing multimedia arsenal.


Exploiting the delay, a group of PC companies led by Microsoft will propose
video and data specifications for PC-based digital TV within a month,
according to U.S. government and industry sources gathered here last week
for the Cable '97 show.


Craig Mundie, senior vice president of Microsoft's Consumer Platforms
Division, said Microsoft, Intel and a handful of other PC-industry leaders
will divulge their proposed specs for a target digital-TV platform at next
month's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHec) in San Francisco.


The road map will estimate rollout dates for selected video formats and
pixel resolutions, and the specs will include guidelines for software support.


Broadcasters and PC makers agreed last November to drop 18 proposed video
formats from the U.S. digital-TV standard, treating them instead as
recommended formats. That compromise cleared the way for the Federal
Communications Commission's adoption of the standard in late December.


Since then, broadcasters have been under increasing public pressure from
FCC chairman Reed Hundt to speed deployment of terrestrial digital TV.I