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The rush to digital

Huh? At CES and afterwards you are going to hear about how the TV set manufacturers are suddenly in a panic to get digital-ready sets. This is happening since the FCC’s announcement last month that moved up the deadline on which “TV receiver devices such as VCRs and digital video recorders must include the capability to receive broadcast digital television ...

Robert Dow

Huh?

At CES and afterwards you are going to hear about how
the TV set manufacturers are suddenly in a panic to get digital-ready
sets. This is happening since the FCC’s announcement last month that
moved up the deadline on which “TV receiver devices such as VCRs
and digital video recorders must include the capability to receive broadcast
digital television signals.” The date was moved up by three months
to March 1, 2007, and it covers large-, medium-, and small-screen TV
sets, as well as any peripherals that include a TV tuner.

Three months!? That’s a big deal when the FCC first
told the TV set manufacturers in 1987 that the switch-over was coming.
Now, we know these companies don’t move fast—in fact they don’t
move at all unless some government puts a cattle prod to their butts.
But a three-month move up after 13 years has gotten them nervous, excited,
and scared? Jeez, maybe we should take up a donation for them; start
a TV trauma clinic.

So the semiconductor suppliers to the CE market will
be rolling out their solutions for the CE box builders. Presumably,
the TV box builders will be running around CES cutting deals as they
look at the parts from which they have to choose. Don’t stand in their
way, it’s an ugly sight—herds of TV box execs in their freshly
starched white shits with monogrammed cuffs and gold cufflinks, perfectly
styled and slicked-down hair running amok in the crowds waving program
guides trying to get the attention of formerly ignored and now overwhelmed
semi suppliers.

But the semi suppliers are up for it. They’ve trained
for this for years. They knew one day they’d be validated, valued, no
longer vilified. “Our day has come,” one TV semi exec told
me, “and we’re going to put it to those bastarÉ, that is, we’re
prepared to work with the set builders and help them with time-to-market
issues and feature sets,” (“the SOBs,” he muttered).

You can’t blame them, the semi guys. After all they’ve
been knocking on unopening doors for a decade trying to get the TV box
builders to pay attention to the changes in technology. It was a major
breakthrough when PIP was introduced—imagine, two pictures at the
same time, like, ah, whatcha call it, Windows.

Now the TV box companies are sticking their wetted
finger into the sky to see if they can feel the digital signals pulsing
through the air and potentially getting stuck to their competitor’s
aerial and not their own. After all, if someone comes home from Costco,
Dixons, or Big Camera’s Shinjuku-Nishiguchi store, turns on the new
TV, and all they get is the OSD, well, that’s not going to make for
a happy consumer, and the retailer is going to experience his worst
nightmare: returns.

So the ever-resourceful, swift, and forward-thinking
TV box builders, led by their well-fed and slightly over-served crack
executives, will scoop up all the TV decoders, digital tuners, de-interlacers,
demodulators, decryptors, and decoders, and design and develop digital
delights for the easily deceived and distracted consumers, who will
of course be shopping in droves during Q1 2007, the major selling season
for TV, right? Just in time to get the thing installed and ready to
watch the Beijing Olympics; and believe me, watching it on TV rather
than with a surgical mask in polluted Beijing will definitely be the
preferred way to see it; for one thing, you may actually be able to
see it.

What’s ironic about the FCC’s big timetable shakeup
is the agency’s keen understanding of technology and trends in TV. The
lobbyist run agency included the number one item on everyone’s entertainment
rack, the venerable and always amusing VCR. Huh? VCR? Who in their right
mind would build a VCR with a digital tuner? When we asked the crack
TV box builders this question, they quickly responded, “The Chinese.”
What? Is China the eBay of outmoded technology? The Chinese don’t want
dopey VCRs, they want, and mostly have, DVD players, and some leftover
CDVs. But the erstwhile FCC is protecting us, and making sure that if
any new VCRs come into this country (from China) they will have digital
tuners, so rest easy, America, your government is still on the job.

This speedup of digital-capable TVs and VCRs (snicker)
is for the small to mid-size screens, 13-inch to 24-inch. One 100 percent
of TV receivers with screen sizes 25 inches to 36 inches have been mandated
to include digital reception capability by March 1, 2006, a whole year
earlier, but that didn’t seem to get the box builders excited. And receivers
with screen sizes 36 inches and above must include DTV tuners effective
July 1, 2004; 100% of such units must include DTV tuners effective July
1, 2005—go figure. So it’s a little difficult to understand this
sudden alleged panic on the part of the TV box builders.

If this stuff interests you, you might enjoy reading,
“Requirements for Digital Television Receiving Capability”:
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-190A1.doc.