FCC Approves New Industry Standards for Digital TV

The federal government formally adopted technical standards Thursday for a new generation of sharper, more versatile television that the industry hopes will become a fixture in living rooms in a few years.

After nearly nine years of testing and debate, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved most of the technologies that broadcasters will use for digital TV, which promises to bring better pictures and sound to viewers, along with a host of high-tech innovations.

Once known as “high-definition TV,” or HDTV, digital TV is a far more flexible system that someday may replace the existing analog technology that has been used by broadcasters since commercial television began nearly 50 years ago. To receive digital broadcasts, viewers will have to buy new TVs--initially costing from $2,000 to $3,000--or add converter boxes to their existing sets at a cost of about $400.

Local stations around the country aren’t expected to begin offering digital broadcasts until early 1998.

In adopting the new standards, the FCC essentially ratified an agreement reached last month among the computer, broadcasting and consumer electronics industries, all of which praised the commission’s action in statements Thursday.

“This really keeps the ball moving,” said Chet Massari, general manager of the broadcast division of Harris Corp., which supplies transmission equipment to TV stations. “Having a standard in place is important because it firmly establishes what people like us have to do.”

The industries agreed just before Thanksgiving that they would use digital techniques developed by a private-sector consortium known as the Grand Alliance, although that agreement came with two key exceptions: that no standard will prevail on the shape of digital TV screens nor on the manner in which the signal will be displayed on the screen.

The computer industry held out for these exceptions so that computer manufacturers and software makers could design and build receivers and create programming compatible with digital broadcasts. As a result, observers say, the distinctions between household computers and TV sets will eventually become moot once digital receivers go on sale.

“What we’ve done is repeal a 50-year policy in which the TV set was the dumbest appliance in the house,” FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said in an interview Thursday. TV set manufacturers “only wanted to make [equipment] that broadcasts pretty pictures. We’re now saying to the hardware and software industries, ‘You can put all the intelligence and interactivity you want behind that screen.’ ”

Before digital broadcasts can begin, the FCC must finish writing two more sets of rules. One will allocate additional pieces of the broadcast spectrum to existing TV station owners for transmitting digital signals; the other rules will determine how broadcast stations can use their digital signals, spelling out, for instance, the kinds of “public service” obligations they must provide.