Broadcasters Counter FCC's Kennard on DTV
By TED HEARN -- Multichannel News, 8/7/2000
Washington-Broadcast-industry leaders are countering suggestions by Federal Communications Commission chairman William Kennard that the industry is planning potentially disruptive changes in the digital-TV standard.
In a letter sent to Kennard July 28, two broadcast-industry leaders said they were trying to determine in part whether the standard itself or digital-receiver performance was at the root of the digital-TV-reception debate.
The letter-signed by National Association of Broadcasters president Edward O. Fritts and Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) president Margita White-also said they were testing the FCC's standard against the leading alternative to compare reception of over-the-air video by mobile and portable receivers.
But Fritts and White said the tests-led by the NAB and MSTV and funded by 29 broadcasting organizations-would not involve a comparison of the standards' ability to transmit wireless-data services.
The FCC approved a standard called 8-VSB (vestigial sideband), but Sinclair Broadcast Group and dozens of other TV-station owners claimed that 8-VSB offers inferior indoor reception and is unlikely to be suitable for data or mobile-video services, causing them to push the European standard, COFDM (code orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing).
Both ABC Inc. and NBC have also raised serious questions about 8-VSB's performance.
"We are committed to expediting the transition [to digital], and that commitment impels us to investigate COFDM on a parallel track with 8-VSB, rather than waiting until after it might be determined that 8-VSB is deficient," Fritts and White said.
The letter was their response to Kennard's own July 24 letter, in which he expressed concern that broadcasters were considering a migration to COFDM to explore the use of their digital spectrum to compete in the broadband-wireless-data market, perhaps at the expense of high-definition television.
For many, HDTV is the only reason why TV stations got their digital spectrum free-of-charge.
