IP: the mess of digital tv standards is getting worse

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 13:44:21 -0500
From: Richard Jay Solomon <richard@goodread.com>
Subject: the mess of digital tv standards is getting worse

This is what happens when you refuse to compromise early in the standards
game and choose a uniform system for the future. Not only do we have 18
hdtv standards, but another half dozen to convert them for PCs, & vice
versa to TVs. What a mess!

And what the industry refuses to acknowledge is that each conversion
DEGRADES the image further. It is physiological impossible to de-interlace
interlaced images without reducing the resolution. All this could have been
solved if hdtv/dtv never had interlace at all and adopted square pixels.

See also today's Wall Street Journal for more nonsense on a new web tv chip
by Broadcom-- their decoder box for a tv set costs as much as a full
low-end PC with a monitor.

Richard


>--Add-in cards could let PCs tune in digital TV next year--
>LG Semicon Co. Ltd. will roll out a chip set at Comdex this month that it
>hopes
>will be used to bring digital TV to next year's personal computers. Though
>new
>to the market, LG and other chip makers are betting that DTV will provide a
>sorely needed new application to drive PC sales in 1999.
>http://www.edtn.com/shared/redirect?url=http://www.edtn.com/news/nov04/1104
98pn
>ews3.html&source_code=26


>BROADCOM SET TO UNVEIL TV-INTERNET CHIP
>Issue: Interactive TV
>Promising the capability of having multiple scenes from various channels on
>a television screen, Broadcom Corporation is designing advanced chips that
>may give a big boost to interactive TV.  WebTV and a few other systems
>already show Internet material on televisions.  Broadcom's new chip will
>allow a mixture of television channels, Internet signals, VCR video and DVD
>movies to be intermingled on the screen in a look similar to Microsoft
>"Windows."  The signals can be sized and arranged as the user wants.  Cable
>companies and other technology companies are becoming more focussed on
>interactive TV and are planning a new generation of cable boxes for
>mid-1999.  Broadcom will hurry production to have its chips included in
>those boxes.
>[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B3), AUTHOR: Frederick Rose]
><http://www.wsj.com/>