June 17, 1996

In today’s escalating struggle for control of the
nation’s communications networks, the Federal
Communications Commission is where the battle between
commercial and public interest rages visibly — and
where the winners can be different one day to the next.

For example, the FCC lost a big chunk of influence last
week when a three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia
resoundingly rejected as unconstitutional the
Communications Decency Act, which was intended to ban
so-called “indecent” speech on the Internet. The FCC had
been designated as the CDA police.

On the heels of the CDA decision (which the justice
department plans to appeal directly to the Supreme
Court) comes another challenge for the FCC, in the form
of the long-awaited broadcasting standard for
high-definition television, or HDTV.

A reluctant FCC is under pressure from the broadcast
industry and consumer electronics manufacturers to make
a final decision on an HDTV standard by Aug. 12 –
despite opposition to the proposed standard by today’s
fastest-growing industries, including the computer and
software industries, and those in medical imaging,
electronic publishing, graphics and entertainment.

The result of all this self-interest is very likely to
be a half-baked standard for digital television that
ignores the potential of today’s digital networks — one
that we’ll be stuck trying to patch up with baling wire
and chewing gum for 20 years.

How did this happen?

In 1991 the FCC agreed to allocate a portion of the
broadcast spectrum for the transmission of HDTV
broadcasts. As part of that decision it also agreed to
reserve these channels for existing broadcasters instead
of opening up the spectrum to newcomers.

The theory was that existing broadcasters could bring
new, high-definition programming to market more quickly
than newcomers — even though they had no incentive,
since there was no demand.

(Of course, because of the last five years of explosive
growth in data networks, this decision now has
broadcasters holding deed to a goldmine. Nowhere is it
written that they can only use the new spectrum for
video services; as a result, once the standard is agreed
upon, they can deliver whatever data services and
programming they want, to televisions or personal
computers.)

As work on the standard progressed, it became apparent
that a Japanese HDTV standard — a hybrid of analog and
digital technology called Muse — was a shoo-in.

So a group of companies and researchers, including AT&T,
General Instrument, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Thomson Consumer Electronics and the Sarnoff
Research Center formed what they called the “Grand
Alliance,” to contribute the best of their research
toward a standard that would not only beat Muse but
would be fully digital, allowing any kind of data to be
piped over telephone, cable and wireless data networks
for display on computers as well.

But the broadcast industry’s engineers who were asked to
participate in this process were not happy with a number
of the features required to make this vision a reality.

Most notably they were loath to abandon a TV-display
technology called interlacing, which paints the screen
in two alternating scans, in favor of the computer
industry’s progressive scan, which sends information to
the screen in a steady stream and eliminates screen
flicker.

They put up such a fuss about interlace — one trade
journal wrote that it would be “decades” before any
camera would be able to shoot in a progressive-scan
format — that the alliance agreed to leave it in the
specification as a “transitional” technology to get the
issue resolved.

Since then, one alliance member — MIT, in conjunction
with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency –
has proved that prediction wrong. MIT engineers invented
a camera that was capable of shooting 60 frames a second
(movies today are shot at 30 frames a second) using the
progressive scan format.

The camera, now manufactured by Polaroid, won a
best-of-show award at the National Association of
Broadcasters convention earlier this year.

The timing could not have been better for the FCC
chairman, Reed Hundt, who has been looking for a good
reason to stop the proposed digital television standard.
He’s quite cranky about being forced to “enshrine in
law” any kind of technical standard in the midst of such
rapid innovation.

“The Grand Alliance was a creation of the broadcasting
industry, the primary purpose of which was to make sure
they could get the spectrum” for free, says Hundt. “It’s
not widely reported that way, but that’s my opinion.”

In addition, Hundt says, plenty of industries are not
buying into the standard already. “I got a letter from
Kodak saying, don’t do this. I got a letter from Steven
Spielberg saying don’t do this. Bill Gates came in and
said that the standard we’ve tentatively adopted isn’t
the standard that the computer industry would like –
that it needs progressive scanning.

“It’s not an industry consensus if only broadcasters and
manufacturers agree.”

Hundt believes the various industries can come up with
an open, nonproprietary standard for digital television
that works for everyone, without the FCC mandating a
standard now.

Whether or not this happens, Hundt wants to stop short
of mandating a standard now.

“If there isn’t an adequate business plan that addresses
reaching PCs and using the power of the digital
technology,” says Hundt, “the real tragedy is that no
one will be able to use the spectrum well.

“It’s the most valuable spectrum that exists on the
planet — it’s like Manhattan. I’m willing to give it
away for a necklace, but I’d like to build Manhattan on
it, not dairy farms.”

Denise Caruso

Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company