The Development of Digital Television in Great-Britain
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The development of digital television in Great-Britain Université Paris IV- Sorbonne Aurélie CLERC UFR d’Anglais Sous la direction de Mme GALLET-BLANCHARD Année universitaire 2003-2004 Table of contents INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………...1 I. THE DIGITAL VS. THE ANALOGUE…………………………………………3 I-a Advantages of the digital………………………………………………………….3 I-b The offer…………………………………………………………………………..7 I-c Technique of the compression of images and sound…………………………….12 II. INTERACTIVE TELEVISION………………………………………………..17 II-a The origins : the United States…………………………………………………..17 II-b British experiments……………………………………………………………...20 II-c Interactive services : VoD and Personal TV…………………………………….24 II-d Web-like TV…………………………………………………………………….28 III. THE BEGINNINGS AND THE EVOLUTION……………………………...33 III-a The 1990s………………………………………………………………………33 III-b The DTT : from OnDigital to Freeview……………………………………….34 III-c Sky Digital : the domination of the satellite……………………………………40 III-d Difficulties of the cable………………………………………………………...44 III-e Technophobia : the future of the digital in question……………………………48 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………..51 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..54 ANNEX……………………………………………………………………………...61 Adds to the first Chapter……………………………………………………………..61 Adds to the second Chapter………………………………………………………….65 Adds to the third Chapter…………………………………………………………….68 Introduction The digital is the new technology that is invading and revolutionizing our Western societies. Nowadays there are digital cameras, digital phones, and, already in a few countries, digital television. The United Kingdom was one the pioneers concerning digital television. In 1998, it became the first country in Europe to propose a digital terrestrial service. It was the achievement of almost ten years of work and research made by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project. At the end of the 1980s, the idea of broadcasting digital pictures for the general public seemed very far in time, and researchers did not think that they could do it until a great number of years. Though, by the will of the British government and the advances made in a relatively short period of time, this was made possible before the end of the twentieth century. The DVB Project centred its research on the compression of images and sound, and with the MPEG-2 system they obtained a very good quality for the viewers, much better than the analogue transmission, this was the first great step towards the extinction of the analogue. The digital was introduced in British homes and it slowly gained ground, as other systems were found for the satellite and the cable network. The giants of the British television understood that there were great profits to be done for them : the BBC, BSkyB, Telewest and NTL launched their own digital services, with more or less success. In spite of the difficulties some met during the development of the digital, they all found their place on the market. Now they gain a great number of subscribers each year, and keep their existing ones. Digital television brought new services to the viewers, like the Internet on their television screen, or the video-on-demand, all that interactivity permits : new kinds of programmes appeared, and the specator can now play games on line, having the possibility to order every fifteen minutes the same title of a movie, shopping from his/her home, or pause during a live-show. Almost six years after its launching, what are the results of the digital TV in the UK ? We will see the evolution of this new technology, from its beginning in the United States to its arrival in the United Kingdom, the technique it demands, the repercussions it has on the viewers’ way of watching television with the interactive services, how it was welcomed by some viewers and rejected by others, as well as its expansion in the next coming years. 1. The digital vs. the analogue a) Advantages of the digital The digital is gradually replacing the analogue system in television, and in this chapter I will try to show the reasons why. The word “digital” refers to the numbers. This is the main difference between the analogue and the digital systems. Indeed, when you want to make up a digital TV programme, the information needed is “coded” into a digital stream of ones and noughts, just like the way a computer works. The digital signal is compressed and converted into the binary language of computers through the digital decoder. That is why I will first compare the digital and the analogue referring to the computers. According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 376, a digital computer “uses a binary system”, while an analogue “calculates things by measuring changing quantities such as of Voltage rather than using a binary system of counting” (Longman 41). Nowadays we are entering a digital era, and this is because this new technology permits many services that the analogue cannot offer. We can say that in comparison with the analogue, digital television is clearly the television of the future. Technically speaking, digital television is the synonymous of quality, thanks to the new video and audio compression. More programmes are available, because the digital stream takes up much less capacity in the airwaves, so that “the space need in the past for just one analogue channel can now carry five, six or seven different programmes”. The digital gives as well the viewer access to Internet pages, through his/her television set, and to advanced interactive services. In relation to the Internet, new technologies such as Wi-Fi are evolving rapidly, and may be associated with the digital television. Wi-Fi, or Wireless Fidelity, is a wireless Internet access. It is a wireless technology like a cell phone. It is already a big success in the United States, because in only four years, it “has evolved from for-geeks-only status to a feature that’s included in most new laptops.” The Wi-Fi standard is monitored by the Wi- Fi Alliance, a non profit organization. The Wi-Fi Alliance was created in August 1999 as the Wireless Elthernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA). It is composed of the leading manufacturers of wireless systems, and its board includes representatives of the most known companies in the world concerning technology, such as Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Philips, Sony, Nokia, and so on. Its aim is “to certify interoperability of Wireless Local Area Network products based on IEEE 802.11 specification.” The Wi-Fi technique uses radio waves that travel through the walls and floors, so that the user can have access to the Internet anywhere. This is a technology “that creates “clouds” of wireless internet access, of around 200m radius, operating at broadband speeds.” The computer must be configured with a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED radio. The radio technologies are called IEEE 802.11b or 802.11a. The IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, based in New York. This membership organization includes engineers, scientists and students in electronics, and it sets standards for computers and communications. The 802.11b is the international standard for wireless networking, it provides a throughput of up to 11 Mbps (Megabytes per second) and it operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range (a very common frequency, used by microwaves ovens, cordless phones, or Bluetooth devices). The 802.11 is another specification of the IEEE, it operates in the 5 GHz frequency range, with a maximum 54 Mbps data transfer rate. A Wi-Fi network can connect computers to each other, to the Internet, and to some wired networks. It can be used for example by many persons of the same family, living together : A Wi-Fi network can connect a family’s computers together to share such hardware and software resources as printers and the Internet. That means everyone in the family can share stored files, photos and documents and print them out on a single printer attached to one desktop computer -all without unsightly cables running throughout the home. Wi-Fi can also be used in public places, and it is already present in airports, hotels, and coffee shops in many countries. The big interest is that it provides high-speed Internet : “it’s several times faster than the fastest cable modem connection.” So Wi-Fi seems to be a revolutionary technology, but there is still a question of security which does not seem to be solved at the moment : “The need for end-to-end security and users' laziness are the key obstacles blocking widespread adoption of Wi-Fi wireless LAN technology - but they are being overcome.”, according to Tony Hallett, journalist for Silicon.com, a website for IT and Business Decision makers. He adds that “an answer is to use encryption over the air”, and that a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is “a must for corporate connectivity and even smaller client devices such as PDAs and ultra- thin laptops have enough processing power to support triple-DES encryption without slowing connections to a crawl.” Digital television can also be “widescreen”. It is the term used to describe the new picture format to television broadcasts. It is a key part of digital television. It is also called sixteen by nine (16x9), and it is “a more natural view for the human using both eyes”. The site of the DTG (Digital Television Group) explains the origins of this technique : If you move the palms of your hands vertically and horizontally towards the side of your face until you can just see them, then a 16x9 field of view is apparent. The relationship between the width of a film image and its height is known as its “aspect ratio”. Standard televisions use a 4 : 3 aspect ratio, meaning four units of width for every three of height. Motion pictures use several formats, all of which are wider than a standard television screen. So when the movies are edited for display on a standard television, one-third of the image is just cut out.