DESPITE THE CLOSING OF Canadian Digital Television (CDTV) at the end of August 2006, both the Canadian television industry and government still saw a need for further collaboration on technical and operational issues surrounding the roll-out of digital television in Canada.
To that end, a new group called the Digital Television Technology Group (DTV-TG) was formed about one year ago.
The Technology Group (whose web site can be found here) carries out collaborative investigative projects and research “to provide decision makers in industry and government with the technical information they need to plan for, and advance, the roll-out in Canada of all forms of digital television from HDTV through standard definition TV to lower resolution TV services delivered over various media, including traditional broadcasting, IP, and mobile applications,” says DTV-TG co-chair Michele Beck, whose day job is director, network engineering with Telesat.
Unlike CDTV, which also had a consumer education mandate, the DTV-TG is an industry-focused technical forum which gathers, analyzes, and disseminates technical information about DTV, from voluntary standards, new developments, research, tests and demonstrations, and reports on planning, execution, timelines/schedules, and guidelines/best practices for DTV.
Paul Hearty of Ryerson and Beck were appointed as co-chairs at the inaugural meeting held November 26, 2006. Beck (pictured) recently chatted with Cartt.ca editor Greg O’Brien to discuss the new group and its goals. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s just start from the start. What are you up to right now with this new group?
Michele Beck: Well, we’ve got a working plan that has been developed by the various working groups. Some of the example projects include the Dolby or digital audio working group… which is working to try to normalize the audio loudness level, both within the service and across the program services.
GOB: Which would be a good idea as far as I’m concerned as a viewer.
MB: Absolutely. And you know what? I have representatives from BDUs and they say this is a critical item and they’re actually pleased that we’re certainly willing to undertake this loudness level issue.
Another issue that we’re taking on under that particular working group are lip sync problems.
GOB: That’s also a problem on my high definition as well, where the action and the sound isn’t quite in the same time.
MB: And what we’re doing is we’re also co-ordinating with a couple of the U.S. based working groups. The intent here is to share our findings. Some of the best practices and guidelines that we develop to understand sort of the root causes in how to sort of develop solutions or processes to overcome that. And they are also prepared to do the same in the U.S. (through the ATSC and SCTE).
GOB: So, this is mainly an industry group. It’s not meant to be for consumers like the old CDTV was?
MB: Right. This is mostly an industry forum. And we have representatives, actually broader representation in this new technology group (including) representation from the major telephone companies for their IPTV services, the major cable companies, which is great because CDTV didn’t even have that, in the end.
We’ve got broadcasters, we’ve got equipment manufacturers, we’ve got universities. Again representation from government, so we’ve got heritage industry as well as the CRTC.
GOB: Why do we have this? Why is this group needed?
MB: Well, one it’s basically a forum where the goal and the objective is to collect, analyze and distill information about DTV.
And the concern was that it’s a huge issue. The industry is going through a major transition and the view is we can all benefit by collaborating and discussing, mostly purely technical issues, but we’re actually getting into transition issues, some communications. At the last meeting, we looked at the issue of using decoders to basically assist or help those that are still going to have analog TVs (at the analog sunset date on August 31, 2011).
What approach is government going to use? Are they going to look at subsidizing the roll out of decoders similar to what’s occurring in the U.S.? Are those decoders going to satisfy the needs of Canadian users because we do have some regulatory issues that mean slightly different requirements, that are slightly different than in the U.S.?
So that’s one of the issues that we are, in fact, looking at.
GOB: Any solutions?
MB: Well, one of the things that we would like to do is just to assess how large that problem or issue is going to be in 2011 when we hit that sunset date.
GOB: And how will you be able to tell that?
MB: Well, we’re urging the government to conduct a study to try to assess the size of the marketplace – those (Canadian consumers) who are still going to rely – or those that currently do rely – on analog over the air transmissions: Those that rely on it for second, third, fourth sets in a household. Or those that rely on it as they go up to their cottage.
It’s just assessing how many TV sets are going to be out there… Will it amount to hundreds of thousands of sets or consumers…
GOB: Who maybe don’t know that they can keep on using those TVs as long as they have a (digital decoder) box.
MB: Exactly. So, part of it is going to be communication.
GOB: You mentioned that you’ve been working with some of the U.S. groups as well. How far is Canada behind the rest of the world?
MB: Well, you know the initial goal was to be a year or two behind the U.S in terms of our transition. Some will say that we have fallen farther than that behind the Americans because Canadian broadcasters have not really started the roll out, you know in a large scale in terms of over the air transmitters.
While inside the U.S. market, they are probably well over 90% of the way there… They have all the programs, they’ve made the capital investment so on and so forth.
We’re far from being there. And in fact, I think a lot of the (Canadian) broadcasters are still analyzing how they’re going to come to terms with HDTV and what their plans would actually be to get though that transition.
GOB: They’re still worried about the spend – not so much in large markets, but in the smaller markets.
MB: There’s a possibility that over the air, it may not exist in the future in those smaller markets where broadcasters may not be transmitting HDTV.
GOB: Now, and this is more than just about HDTV. You already mentioned audio and compression, but can you talk a little bit more about mobile and IPTV as well?
MB: In terms of the mobile services, there is a working group that is looking at the new technology platforms for mobile TV. And Tony Caruso (CBC engineering) has gracefully stepped up to chair that particular working group.
It’s actually a working group that is of interest to many parties. They’re looking at various technology platforms and at the last meeting, Tony did present on literally all of the developing technologies that would support mobile TV. While he didn’t make any recommendations, he certainly did indicate that some of them most likely won’t deploy.
GOB: Like?
MB: I don’t know if I want to disclose that. But you know there are some that are further along in terms of their development, let’s put it that way. You can’t say conclusively which ones are actually going to make it to market. There are some in trials… and certainly the regulatory framework in Canada is not developed yet, so there’s a bit of an issue there. Industry Canada did indicate that they would be going out for consultation on that in the near future.
GOB: On what exactly?
MB: …Consultations on looking at the spectrum utilization policy, how it can be used and what types of applications. It will likely cover L bands but could actually be extended to others.
GOB: How much does this group deal with regulation?
MB: Not much at all. Mind you, you can’t escape it. And because Industry Canada and the CRTC do participate, it does play a bit of a role as we’re talking about, or as we’re examining or analyzing launches of new types of services such as mobile TV. Regulation actually does come into the discussion and one of the things noted by the CRTC at the last meeting was the fact that mobile TV applications that are made available over telephone or wireless cellular network, they’re typically point to point applications where you literally will pull in or make a request for a particular program or clip. Typically they don’t consider that basically as a broadcast distribution undertaking service because it is clearly just point to point.
GOB: Right.
MB: So, it’s not truly broadcasting. And you don’t require license. But some of the mobile TV applications that we were looking at in this forum clearly would require a broadcast license
GOB: Yeah, I mean some of the WiMax stuff I’ve read about would certainly looks like broadcasting.
MB: It could fall under that category, absolutely.
