‘We can’t wait for standards’

Spurred on by the threat of “video dial tone” from the telephone companies, the cable industry is rushing to select and put into place compressed digital video distribution systems. CableLabs, the industry’s technology clearinghouse, put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for digital video compression/decompression technology that would meet the requirements of the cable industry.

The signatories, or sponsors of the RFP, were TeleCommunications, Inc. (TCI), the largest cable operator in the United States; Viacom, which is both a huge operator and a program originator (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc.); and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). This past month, two of those companies, Viacom and PBS, announced their intentions to purchase and install digital compression and delivery technology. TCI made its announcement at The Western Show in Anaheim, CA, in early December.

True to its word, CableLabs and the cable industry appear to be moving much more rapidly than anyone outside the cable industry had thought possible — certainly much more rapidly than virtually anyone in the computer industry had expected.

Different initial objectives. The initial focus of both Viacom and PBS is to use digital technology to deliver programming to cable operators, broadcasters and hotels via satellite. Digital technology will allow many more programs to be delivered over the same satellite channel. It also should be able to deliver higher quality images, and, as an interesting by-product, foil satellite viewers (at least for a while) who try to pick up the signals via the analog receivers attached to their dishes.

TCI, on the other hand, appears to be interested in moving directly to digital delivery of programs to the home.

Setting standards. CableLabs’s charter is to evaluate new technologies and help the operators implement successful technological upgrades without becoming entirely incompatible with each other. It is funded by the cable operators, and has no authority to enforce standard procedures, nor does it make any purchase decisions for its constituency.

Instead, it evaluates and leaves decision making to the individual companies. According to Mike Schwartz, vice president of communications for CableLabs, each company has its own set of criteria, market dynamics, business relationships, etc., and it would be impossible for centralized decisions of this kind to be made.

However, CableLabs understands the importance of standards, both within the cable industry and cross-industry. This is why it has been working closely with the computer industry (to increase the chances that the cable industry and the computer industry will pick the same digital video standards) and with the Japanese consumer electronics giants (to insure that the new generation of digital VCRs, due out this coming year, will be compatible with digital cable).

CableLabs would very much like the cable industry to use a widely supported digital video standard, which is why it has had a strong bias toward MPEG-2 (see accompanying story).

Different directions. Unfortunately, PBS and Viacom chose different, incompatible systems. Viacom announced its intention to purchase a system from Scientific Atlanta, which is based on the MPEG-2 compression standard. But PBS chose an implementation by General Instruments, which employs a proprietary compression algorithm.

At first glance, it would appear that the cable industry is heading for a mess of incompatible data formats and systems. This would be a disaster not only for the cable industry, but also for consumer electronics and digital communications in general. However, things are not so bleak as they seem.

HOW THEY’LL USE THE DIFFERENT SPECS

The MPEG-2 specification is almost, but not quite, complete. According to David Taylor, director of marketing for communications products at CCube Microsystems, the MPEG2 spec will be finalized in March, and the first chips won’t be appearing until later in the year.

C-Cube has been a leader in the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards-setting process and is the primary manufacturer of the chips that compress and decompress the video signal. However, the company has been manufacturing chips that are compatible with the latest specs of the MPEG committee, and will continue to update its chips as the latest developments occur. Scientific Atlanta’s implementation will be installed in stages, with the capability simply to swap cards in the hardware at each site as the new MPEG-1-compliant chips become available.

Hotels and motels. Viacom will first use the digital video system in 3,000 hotel and motel sites with satellite downlinks. Each downlink location will have a receiver and decoder/decryption unit. According to Bob Meyers, vice president of corporate communications for Scientific Atlanta, the first products will be available this December, and the entire network will be in place by the end of the first quarter of 1993. Soon after will follow the “backyard market,” or home satellite dishes, and ultimately television set-top decoder boxes.

General Instruments, which is a major player in cable and broadcast delivery systems, had developed its own, proprietary algorithm for encoding and compressing digital video. Recently, however, the company became very involved in the activities of the MPEG committee, and is trying to make its technology comply with MPEG. In fact, according to C-Cube’s Taylor, the MPEG committee is “just converging outstanding issues of technical diligence,” including some proposals from GI that might move its technology toward that of the MPEG standard.

Wake-up call. Other satellite and cable suppliers have now awakened to the importance of standards. Both Hughes’ DirecTV and its rival in direct broadcast satellite, PrimeStar, have become participants in the MPEG-2 process. Both products are MPEG compatible, if not quite compliant, and both Meyers and Taylor see the rest of the industry following suit.

So the questions remain: Why did PBS choose a system that was not already MPEG-compliant? Why is Scientific Atlanta installing systems that will have to be upgraded almost immediately?

Shoot first, ask questions later. The reason, according to Schwartz, is that “the cable industry can’t wait for the standard process to play out.” Viacom and PBS made their announcements immediately after the FCC hosted a technology demonstration of video over telephone lines, and Bell Atlantic demonstrated its version of the video dial tone. With competition from the telephone companies heating up fast, the cable industry will not be waiting for the MPEG committee to finish its work.

We can expect to see the first implementations of digital video compression and delivery systems in 1993. In the meantime, manufacturers and suppliers will develop more extensive systems, including digital video to the home, which will, or should, follow cross-industry standards and guidelines.

TCI MOVES TO THE SET-TOP

In an announcement made just before Digital Media went to press, cable vendor TeleCommunications, Inc. (TCI) announced its plans for digital compression and delivery. As expected, the announcement included plans for delivery of digital information directly to the home. What was not as expected was the scope and speed with which TCI is planning to implement such a system.

The company’s partners and suppliers of the compression technology are General Instruments and AT&T, using the same technology chosen by PBS. However, the announcement explicitly states that TCI’s new technology will be MPEG-2 compliant by the time it is deployed.

In addition, TCI, General Instruments and AT&T will license parts of their technology to other cable television suppliers, like Scientific Atlanta. In this way, their technology may become the standard of the entire cable industry. The concept is not out of the question: TCI has more than 10 million subscribers in the United States, and is the largest of the nation’s multiple service operators, or MSOs.

The agreements (in the form of letters of intent) with GI and AT&T call for the purchase of one million TV set-top decoder boxes. TCI also said it will be negotiating with other vendors for additional purchases. It will begin digital satellite delivery in mid-1993, and digital home delivery, via fiber and coaxial cable, by January 1994.

TCI made no announcement about the deployment of fiber optic systems, or the upgrade of its infrastructure. However, the compression and transmission technology it announced will ultimately be able to acheive a compression ratio of 10:1.

That means that for most of TCI’s customers, who have 54 channel systems, the new technology will provide the potential for 540 channels. TCI is already entertaining proposals for new services outside the realm of traditional cable television broadcasting, such as interactive video, information and data services and personal communications and voice services.

David Baron, Jonathan Seybold