Significant Regional Differences
According to Warren Hobson, director of corporate strategy at Tandberg Television, there is no reason why the European trend will not mirror the more evolved HDTV roll-out in North America. "The affordability of displays remains an issue, but we already can see the volume of HDTV set production growing quickly and driving down prices as a result," says Hobson. "The competitive dynamics in North America, where service providers are using HDTV very effectively to win subscribers, are becoming more apparent."
Hobson sees a subtle link between a new wave of advanced new set-top boxes (STBs) and the widespread migration to the new advanced encoding and DVB-S2 modulation solutions. He does not rule out the possibility that cable service providers and DBS operators alike might end up with a mixed base of legacy and advanced STBs.
"The fairly high bandwidth requirements of HDTV on delivery channels can burn into multiplex capacity quickly," says Hobson. "Hence the interest in vastly enhanced compression, along with the DVB-S2 advanced modulation solutions, which will start appearing late this year and in 2005."
Along with a new SD/HD statistical multiplex solution, Tandberg is rolling out an integrated E5784 and E5788 HD DSNG encoder with QPSK/8PSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Modulation/Eight Phase Shift Modulation) satellite modulation, all integrated into a single 2RU (two rack unit) package.
"Nobody is going to await the arrival of the new technology," says Hobson. "HDTV event coverage, such as the upcoming Summer Olympics, with HDTV contribution links back to the United States from Europe will create a flood of HDTV content, adding considerable momentum to HDTV display sales, particularly in the United Kingdom."
Long Cycle To Achieve Mass Penetration
HDTV is still a luxury item, and early adopters are still playing an important role despite rising HDTV sales, according to Carlo Basile, president, Americas at Israel-based Scopus Network Technologies Inc. "The sales curve here is a hockey stick. It is just the same as we saw with the 15 year color TV roll-out starting in the 1950s," says Basile. "The HDTV infrastructure is there, but it is still maturing from the standpoint of the customer accessing integrated capabilities and benefiting from greater bandwidth efficiencies. There is substantial room for future growth."
NBC Olympics is installing Scopus E-1100 SD and E-1800 HD encoders at the International Broadcast Center in Athens, Greece, to beam two HD channels and up to 25 SD channels back to its viewers. NBC has Scopus IRD-2800 integrated receiver decoders (IRDs) at its facilities in the United States. A pair of digital satellite newsgathering (DSNG) trucks will be equipped with these Scopus encoders as well. Scopus also offers the Intelligent Video Gateway (IVG), an HD/SD video router capable of performing transcoding, rate shaping and grooming, all in a single 1RU (one rack unit) device.
"The satellite industry can use a very powerful grooming platform. Given that bandwidth requirements for HD content are five or six times higher than the bandwidth requirements for the delivery of SD content, the IVG with its 4 Gbs routing/grooming capacity is ideal for any headend," says Basile. "Satellite operators also benefit from the digital-to- digital processing--bit rate adaptation and rate shaping--capabilities in digital turnaround scenarios."
The Scopus' Intelligent Video Networking (IVN) concept, which includes the IVG, focuses on IP-based headends where all the different components--encoders, receivers, video processing units--are interconnected through an IP network. "With our IVN and IP-based architectures, the complex and expensive matrices of traditional ASI [Asynchronous Serial Interface] based headends are eliminated," says Basile. "An IP headend has another attractive feature. It facilitates the implementation of redundancy, a much-needed ingredient in mission-critical satellite distribution."
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