HDTV Partners Get Key Boost
AT&T; and Zenith Electronics, already among the front-runners in the race to develop an American high definition television (HDTV) system, got a further boost Wednesday when television equipment vendor Scientific-Atlanta agreed to join their HDTV effort.
The AT&T;/Zenith system is one of five HDTV broadcasting proposals undergoing technical evaluation at a special test center outside Washington, D.C. In 1993, the Federal Communications Commission is likely to choose one as America’s HDTV standard.
HDTV provides pictures that are much clearer and brighter than traditional TV images, as well as compact disc-quality sound.
Scientific-Atlanta will contribute its expertise in satellite and cable television transmission to the AT&T;/Zenith team’s effort to develop a system for carrying HDTV signals via satellite from their point of origin to television stations or cable systems.
Satellite transmission is also the forte of General Instrument Corp., another strong contender in the HDTV competition.
For AT&T; and Zenith, the tie-up with Scientific-Atlanta “would be their answer to what we’ve done already,” said Jerry Heller, executive vice president at General Instrument. Scientific-Atlanta, he noted, is a long-standing competitor and could hardly have been expected to back the General Instrument system, which is being developed in San Diego.
Observers said satellite capability would not be a factor in the technical evaluations now under way but noted that it would give the AT&T;/Zenith proposal another dimension that could be an important factor when the FCC makes its selection.
Zenith and Scientific-Atlanta also said Wednesday that they are working together on a new type of cable TV transmission system that could dramatically increase the number of traditional TV channels available on cable and smooth the transition to HDTV.
The companies submitted a joint proposal to Cable Television Laboratories, an industry research consortium that is trying to develop ways of using new video compression techniques to increase the capacity of cable systems and cut the cost of program delivery.
A Cable Labs spokesman said the group had received eight responses to a request for proposals on video compression, including the Scientific-Atlanta/Zenith proposal and one from General Instrument. Eventually, the new technology could allow cable operators to send as many as 10 TV programs on a single cable channel.
Both the HDTV systems and the proposed cable systems use the ones and zeros of computer code to mathematically sample and compress video signals, thus making it possible to send far more pictorial information along a given channel.
While many hope that the use of digital techniques will give the United States an advantage over Japanese competitors in HDTV technology, it remains unclear whether the approach will work for over-the-air broadcasting.
General Instrument this week became the first company to demonstrate a working prototype of a digital HDTV broadcasting system. But Zenith and AT&T; are not far behind, and some analysts say their system is more advanced.
