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Migration to HD TV Migration to HD TV Mr Phillip Nottle Sony Abstract This presentation gives an overview of the various issues surrounding the migration to the HD environment. This presentation takes a broad look at all areas including sets and makeup as these need to be considered by broadcasters and production houses as they commence producing programs for the HD market. III-1 Migration to HD TV 1 2 3 4 5 6 III-2 7 8 9 10 11 12 III-3 13 14 15 16 17 18 III-4 19 20 21 22 23 24 III--5 25 26 27 28 29 30 III-6 31 ABOUT THE SPEAKER Philip Nottle has worked in the broadcast industry since 1967. His experience has covered both the radio and television areas within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as well as four years outside the ABC as a contractor with the SA Film Corporation and various production houses. From 1986 he was responsible for providing technical training to the ABC's technical staff. Philip joined Sony Australia in 2000 as the Training Manager for all Broadcast and Professional products. He prepared and presented courses on the DVCAM, DVW, DNW, XDCAM, XDCAM- HD, HDC and HDW product ranges. He currently holds the position of Technology Manager for the Broadcast and Professional Products (Asia) and provides support to Sony's Sales Companies and customers throughout the Asia Pacific region. He holds a Certificate IV in Workplace Training (Category 2) and is a member of SMPTE. He is also involved in the ARSG6, CT-2 and D27 standards committees. III-7 Building the TV Audience-Is HD Enough? Mr. Trevor Francis Worldwide Marketing Manager, Broadcast, Quantel Ltd, UK Abstract This paper sets out some thoughts on how the broadcasting industry might fight back against the global movement of advertising revenue away from television and radio and towards the internet. I'm going to draw on the experiences I've had while working for Quantel, and focus on the two major areas of my company's business which are movies / high-end production and news/sports. Or as I would often characterise them, productions with lead times of weeks to months, versus minutes to hours. Broadcasting as we know it has a lot to offer the world, of course. Like other related industries threatened with change, we have an opportunity to adapt to the new competitive landscape. Like the movie industry when television came along – offering lavish colour on wider and wider screens to tempt us back to the cinema. And now, the music recording industry is busy re-inventing itself in the download generation. Paying for music is almost a voluntary action now. I'm going to look at the opportunities offered by Stereo 3D to both the movie and broadcast industries. Very high quality digital production techniques can now lift the 3D experience out of its patchy history and transform television from a purely passive 'viewing' to an involving 'experience'. We know that news stories can flash around the world in moments now. Not agency to agency, or broadcaster to broadcaster, as in the past. But from individual to individual; group to group. Social networking sites allow us all to share information with our friends, families and peers – in an instant. But can we always trust we what see and read on these sites? How do we get the fuller picture? Who provides that background and the context? There's an important role for news broadcasters here. III-9 Building the TV Audience-Is HD Enough? The future's here Three or four decades earlier, many pioneers To quote the author William Gibson, “The around the world had been developing future is already here. It's just not very evenly techniques for capturing and displaying a distributed yet.” Speaking in 1999, he obviously moving image. It took a few commercially- wasn't describing the current state of world minded inventors, like Thomas Edison in the economics, nor was he describing the United States, to see how this new technology broadcasting industry as we approach the end of could be developed to generate cash. And it did the first decade of the twenty-first century. But of course. Lots of it. his words do have an interesting resonance and Both the film and radio industries suffer from a admit more than one interpretation. We could major short-coming: they can't recreate the true be depressed; we could begin to panic; we could experience of 'being there – live'. I can hear predict the end of broadcasting as we've known what's happening, now. Or I can see and hear it it. Or, we could stand back and look at what's all, but later. Television was, to use a more happening; we could see some opportunities to modern expression, going to fill a gap in the adapt to the new circumstances; opportunities market. Even when it appears that other for our industry to fight back, based on some technologies have grabbed all the business, as it very traditional ideas and values. did to the nascent TV industry in the 1920's and Today's entertainment media industries – film, 30's, it's possible for a new idea to enter and win. television and radio – are all the product of Just as important, it's perfectly possible for the technological developments begun at the end of older technologies to re-invent themselves and the nineteenth century. Some seminal ideas were fight back. seized by a few visionary individuals and developed into practical realities. But none of Back to the future them could really develop until they became a There's nothing new about the term High business. Of the three, television was probably Definition. It's been around since the end of the regarded as the least commercially attractive to 1970's, hasn't it? Well actually, it was coined a lot begin with. Another quote, this time from a earlier than that. After all, High Definition isn't British journalist of the time: “Television? The really an absolute term, it's comparative. When word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can the UK made the transition from 405 lines to come of it.” So said C P Snow. This may sound 625 back in the 1960's, the improvement in very odd today but it wasn't so very different image quality was quite striking. But at one time, from the opinion of the founder of the BBC, even 405 lines seemed unattainable. John Reith, who was far from convinced of the social value of television. Reith wanted 'Nation One of television's pioneers, largely forgotten to speak peace unto nation', which is still the these days, is John Logie Baird. Baird, a serial BBC's motto. Radio could carry the human inventor, you might say, became interested in the voice around the world and achieve this aim. idea of relaying moving images by radio. Like What need for pictures? everyone involved at the time, he realised that III-10 some method was required for dissecting a live concept of television. He went on to develop a scene into incremental parts. He chose a colour television system and even experimented mechanical method based on a spinning disk, with stereoscopic 3D in 1928. Nineteenth pierced with a spiral of holes to 'scan' the image. century photographers had made stereo 3D still cameras, so it seemed logical to Baird that a Baird understood was the need for publicity to television process should attempt to follow the generate interest in this new idea. He persuaded example. the owner of Selfridges, a large London department store, to host demonstrations of television. They were very popular. He also The second HD revolution developed techniques, involving 'live' scanning The second high definition revolution isn't of received images to moving film, with pushing out the old standards as rapidly and continuous processing and display by cinema easily as in the 1930's. Even where mandated by projectors. Horrendous by today's standards, governments, such as in the United States or but the public were able to see distant events, like Australia, the uptake has been very slow. In the horse races, long before the cinema newsreel early days the choice was very clear; a system caught up. with lots of disadvantages and a poor picture – or a robust, reliable, highly marketable product Eventually, when the BBC became interested in with a high-definition picture. A no-brainer, we experimenting with a television service, they would say. Today, the issues are far less clear. organised a trial between Baird's system and an electronic television process. The electronic There is a complex relationship between the scanning and display system, still familiar to us broadcasters' ability to upgrade their systems, today, achieved 405 scanning lines, using 50 the content producers' willingness to meet the interlaced fields per second. This became known additional costs of producing in HD and the as 'high definition' television. Compared with consumers' desire to spend extra cash in order to Baird's, it was. Just as importantly, it did not rely see a better picture. Who's going to make the first on complex, noisy and unreliable mechanical move? parts. So the electronic television process, backed by two major organisations, Marconi Let's look at it from the consumer's point of view. and EMI, won the day. He has a considerable investment in TV sets, VCRs, DVD players, set-top boxes and other The point to be made here is that, in the 1930's, peripherals to build his domestic system.
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