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Cable Companies and TV Makers Agree on HDTV
Posted by Raul Ruiz on Friday, December 20 @ 00:00:09 EST
Contributed by HowardGilbert
Telecommunications
HowardGilbert writes "The Consumer Electronics industry and Cable TV industry have reached agreement on standards for cable transport of digital and high definition TV signals. A news article can be found here. The text of the agreement can be found here. I will try to translate the agreement, as I understand it, into simpler terms.

Background: Currently broadcast TV stations transmit analog and digital programming interspersed within the standard range of channels. For example, in New Haven Channel 8 is the analog signal, and the same programming is broadcast digitally on Channel 10. Digital signals are ATSC with "8VSB" modulation of up to 4 separate streams (logical sub-channels) in what is called MPEG Transport Stream (TS) format. The famous "broadcast bit" is data in the TS packets. Currently cable TV transmits analog programming on channels 2 to something (80?). What appears to be the digital cable channels (100 and above) are really Transport Streams that use a different modulation (QAM instead of 8VSB) on higher frequencies. No current consumer electronics can tune the digital cable signals.

One thing that will change is that future TV sets will be able to tune the digital cable channels without a set top box. That means that "cable ready" digital sets will be able to tune QAM signals from cable (and maybe satellite) as well as the 8VSB signals from a broadcast antenna. They will also come with a slot into which the consumer plugs a card from the cable company to decrypt premium channels. Digital broadcast channels will presumably be converted from 8VSB to QAM and relocated above 100. Now for the bad news ...

Digital cable signals will come with a digital version of the "broadcast bit" function. Instead of being part of the TS packet, this more complicated signal will be separate digital control data transmitted with the program (like the program guide information that can pop up with current digital cable boxes).

If you rent a set top box from the cable company, it will have to come with both DVI and Firewire connectors. Both will support the existing standard industry encryption for premium content. They will provide digital output to consumer grade recording equipment (tape or PVR) that is designed to honor the content restrictions.

If a digital program is not marked with any restrictions, it can be freely recorded. However, if a digital program is restricted, then 1) any conventional analog TV output from a set top box or any other tuner will be output in Macrovision (like the output from all DVD players today) so it can't be recorded, and 2) digital output over DVI or Firewire will be encrypted and can only be processed by consumer electronic devices that enforce the content restrictions. This means that a PVR device that accepts the DVI or Firewire input will not record content that is labelled "Do not Record" (except that it can pause the content, but only for 90 minutes). If the content allows one generation of copying, then the PVR can record the program on disk and keep it for as long as you want, but will not allow copies to be made to another device. Any device that copies the data to plausibly removable media has to encrypt it so it can't be read except by other devices that honor the content restrictions.

None of this protection technology is new. The DVI and Firewire encryption schemes have been around for a year and some devices are already being sold with these interfaces. The problem of cable TV and digital or HDTV content has been hanging around for years and is regarded as a major issue in DTV acceptance. This agreement seems to mostly gather together some pieces that already exist to come up with something, anything, that will get things moving. This agreement did not have any participation by Hollywood and there are some gaps in the protection. However, in practice it will limit the ordinary consumer who buys standard retail equipment.

People who don't like digital rights management will dislike this agreement. Hollywood will probably dislike the gaps that could not be plugged by an existing standard. However, enough companies have endorsed this that the FCC will probably accept it as proposed. "
 
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