- Conrad Denke - Victory Studios - Moderator
- Annette Bouso - Warner Brothers
- Karl Meisenbach - HDNet
- Joe Kane - Joe Kane Productions
- Mike Croll - EBU Group BBC
- Martin Franks - CBS Network
- Harold Protter - Warner Brothers TV Network
While the title of this session begs the question
of where the HDTV content was, many took issue that there was
indeed a lot of content out there already - and growing rapidly.
After hearing the speakers, we would have to agree. But this illustrates
a key point - we are potential consumers of HDTV content and we
are in the HDTV set industry - yet we had poor awareness of the
plethora of HDTV content development activities and availability.
The message is that better and broader-based awareness campaigns
are needed.
Annette Bouso, senior vice president for Distribution Services
for Warner Brothers (WB), kicked off the session by noting that
WB is the largest distributor of HD content and has the largest
library of HD content in the world. In 1997, it started transferring
all of its features to a 1080p HD format, and in 2000, began to
work through the library of film features, hoping to finish this
off by 2007. For television, fully 80% of everything is now shot
or transferred from film to HDTV - and next year, this will rise
to 100%. Between 75% and 77% of prime time content is now produced
and finished in HD. And, WB distributes some of this content globally.
While this level of commitment is impressive, WB does have concerns,
such as the cost of HD production. Currently, HD production costs
about 20% more than standard definition content, but less if produced
with an HDcam. But this premium is expected to go away within
a couple of years. Conversion of NTSC material to HD is only possible
by upconverting, but the quality is clearly not acceptable to
many potential buyers of this content. However, some older features
shot on 16 or 35 mm film that were protected for 16:9 (1.77) will
transfer to HD acceptably. Bouso said shows such as "Dallas"
would be fine in HD.
Also of concern are the higher distribution costs of HD content.
Since this is bandwidth dependent, improvements in compression
will help lower costs going forward, but it may take 5-7 years.
Bouso also wondered when an HD DVD would have an impact on the
market.
Karl Meisenbach, director of Advertising at HDNet, asked for a
show of hands to indicate who owned an HDTV set. Embarrassingly,
only about 5% of nearly 300 people in attendance raised their
hands. Meisenbach's reaction was to point to the banner hanging
in back of him pointing out that this was an HDTV Forum - so get
with the program!
He quickly explained what HDNet was: the world's only national
television network broadcasting a full 24-hour daily schedule
exclusively in high-definition 1080i. This content consists of
movies and general entertainment, and it is distributed over satellite
and cable. Meisenbach said that 75% of its movies are HDTV premieres,
which it has acquired and or produced internally - something it
began this year. It does not upconvert standard definition content
to maintain high quality. "Cablevision's new VOOM service
uses upconverted and stretched SD material, but we don't think
that is acceptable," said Meisenbach.
HDNet shows a lot of sporting events too, and viewers have migrated
to shows that feature bikini-clad women. "Well yea,"
exclaims Meisenbach. "We also create more non-sports 1080i/30fps
than all other networks combined."
He listed some innovations they have developed, such as the first
"HD flyaway pack," which gives them the ability to pack
and ship a complete HDNet remote uplink and broadcast live from
anywhere around the world.
"If HDTV takes off quickly, you will see the stocks of media
companies with big NTSC libraries suffer. "Content on tape
will be almost worthless - like black and white in a color world,"
explained Meisenbach. With high conversion costs, that is why
they produce everything in high def now. Further, cable companies
face a multitude of hurdles in their migration to HD. The bottom
line, says Meisenbach, is that there will not be much HD content
on cable for 2-3 years.
Joe Kane, president of Kane Productions, then riled up the crowd
by telling them that there is only one display in the world that
can actually show all of the content in an HDTV signal - a display
developed by him. But more importantly, he is concerned that the
full potential of HDTV image quality is not being realized and
that we will "settle" for something less, much the same
way many have settled for inferior NTSC image quality.
Kane contends there are many limitations in the current post-production
process, and displays used to evaluate the quality of a 1920 x
1080 signal are limited to only 800-900 lines. As a result, technicians
can't see the full HD resolution and produce work that may not
contain the full glory of the HD signal.
Yves Faroudja, who was in the crowd agreed. It was Faroudja, after
all, who became legendary for doing exactly the same thing to
NTSC signals.
Kane's mission to improve the quality of HD images appears to
be gaining some headway, but it's tough to be an evangelist.
Mike Croll, head of the BBC's R&D Image Unit and chairman
of the European Broadcast Union's (EBU) B/TQE Group, explained
that this working group has been formed to allow EBU members to
design a roadmap to improve future image quality. This group must
consider EBU's commitment to digital SD broadcasting, the addition
of HD, and the use of the spectrum over the next 10 years. As
a result, there are four main activities of the group: track relevant
display development and production; get the best out of SD delivery;
exploit HD islands within production and delivery; and deliver
HD at the appropriate time.
One of the principal, yet tentative, conclusions of the B/TQE
(Television Quality Evaluation) Group is that Europe will see
distribution of 576, 720 and 1080 line image formats in the future.
Consequently, Croll called on TV set makers to abandon displays
that offer 768 lines and not 720 lines. "720 line is the
TV standard - not 768," said an excited Croll. He also called
on manufacturers to produce displays that offer even higher pixel
counts.
Croll then questioned the viability of the interlaced formats,
noting that interlaced formats are old, not related to how cameras
capture information, and are harder to compress. He then displayed
data showing the results of observers' impressions of image quality
for 1080i and 720p signals that were compressed at various rates.
At a 10MB/sec rate, for example, the image degradation vs. an
uncompressed signal was measured for both signal formats. The
observers found the 720p image quality was 42% degraded, but the
1080i signal was 65% degraded. But at a data rate of 22MB/sec,
the image quality degradation of each format was roughly the same
at 27%.
Following these presentations, two senior vice presidents
- Hal Protter from The WB Network and Martin Franks from CBS -
made some remarks to the audience. Marty Franks explained that
CBS is now in its fifth year of HDTV production. It has been a
leader in this area as it sees this as a way to differentiate
from the other networks, and from cable and satellite providers.
The network is now broadcasting sports about 30 weekends per year
and moving to 52 weeks per year soon. However, live sports broadcasting
is very expensive in HD; it costs $200-$250K to do a live football
game, for example.
He noted that the cost of HD production for film has come way
down recently and says HDTV must be experienced to appreciate
it. "Watching "CSI" in HD is a totally different
experience than watching it in standard definition," claimed
Franks. CBS doesn't just promote HDTV, but also the full benefits
of DTV, such as multicasting. "Even ads can be different
in HD. After the Super Bowl, for example, those who watched it
in HD were talking about one ad that featured 5.1 Dolby sound
that was very effective," explained Franks. "But in
SD, this ad was not even mentioned."
Franks then made note of several factors that need work in the
HDTV transition. For one, he observed that the retail environment
could be vastly improved. "We broadcast live HD sports on
the weekends, but very few retail stores are running this material,"
said Franks. "We think this is a big missed opportunity to
let consumers experience HDTV."
He agreed that more needs to be done to educate consumers, but
took exception to previous comments that nothing was being done.
"We put this big ugly sign on our programs that says, 'Hey
stupid, this program is available in high definition.'"
He also reacted to Jim Sanduski's call to the FCC to set a hard
date for the ending of analog transmission. "I would enjoy
the notion of millions of people marching on Washington to complain
about the perfectly wonderful analog set that they bought this
year being turned into an ugly end table." Franks was also
reluctant to give HDTV content that the network spent million
of dollars developing to cable TV operators so that they could
make billions of dollars in revenue.
Finally, he weighed in on the recent FCC decision to adopt the
"Broadcast Flag" option, saying this was a good thing.
"We were never going to allow the Napsterization of the broadcast
television business." While he conceded there was no perfect
copy protection solution, CBS wanted to put "speed bumps
along the way so that college kids were not sitting in dorm rooms
across America redistributing our programming around the world."
Protter then spoke about programming on the WB network, saying
that it now offers about 11.5 hours and that 85% of the cartoons
are in HD. The average WB network viewer is 31 years old, and
the majority are female viewers. He acknowledged that HD content
still costs about 20% more than SD, but that should come down.
Nevertheless, he said WB remains committed to HD content creation.
"But it is tough to convince my superiors to do more with
HDTV when they have experienced reception and installation problems
with HDTV themselves," observed Protter. "Retailers
should have maps that show the broadcast coverage areas."
He thinks the main problem with the HDTV transition right now
is confusion. "We have to unconfuse the public by making
it less confusing
The
full proceedings are available from the HDTV Forum.
Contact:
Insight Media
Annmarie Gabisch, 203-831-8464
annmarie@insightmedia.info
GET
OUR NEWS ALERTS
|
