[opendtv] News: DIGITAL TV OPENS UP TWO-WAY OPPORTUNITIES
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:03:44 -0500
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/02/28/daily.4/
TECH SPOTLIGHT: INTERACTIVE BROADCASTING
DIGITAL TV OPENS UP TWO-WAY OPPORTUNITIES
TVNEWSDAY, FEB. 28, 7:30 AM ET
Richard Chernock, CTO of Triveni Digital, is leading the effort at
the ATSC to develop a standard for "non-real-time services" that will
allow broadcasters to offer near-on-demand news and weather, to
target ads and to download TV shows, movies and music.
But it doesn't have to be that way forever. In fact, right now, the
Advanced Television Systems Committee is busy developing a standard
for what it calls "non-real-time services" as an add-on to the DTV
standard.
It's not full-blown interactivity as you get on the Internet or on
cable, but it may be close enough. It has the potential for taking
broadcasting where it has never gone before.
Richard Chernock is chairman of the ATSC committee working on
standardization of a non-real-time system. He is also the chief
technology officer of Triveni Digital, an LG Electronics subsidiary.
And, for the moment, he is TVNEWSDAY's expert on broadcast
non-real-time interactivity.
In this interview, Chernock says that within certain limitations
there is little broadcasters can't do with the technology: they can
offer near-on-demand news and weather, they can target ads at
individual viewers and they can download TV shows, movies, games and
music.
And, he says, the interactivity will work not only with broadcasters'
fixed DTV service, but also with their planned mobile services.
An edited transcript:
What do you mean by non-real-time services?
OK. Like most people, you probably watch linear television where
things are broadcast at a certain time. If you want to watch
something, you turn your TV on, you tune to the right channel and sit
and consume. Non-real-time services is essentially content that's
pushed to the receiver usually ahead of time so that it's available
to you to consume whenever you want.
So it's stored locally for recall whenever the consumer wants to use
it or consume it.
That's different than how the Internet and cable VOD works.
Essentially, yes. It is a bit different. Part of the reason for the
difference is that the Internet and VOD are point-to-point. Two-way
communication is possible with each person. In television broadcast,
it's really a one-way broadcast scheme. So setting up point-to-point
connections really doesn't work.
Do you think the broadcasters' digital channel-19.4 megabits per
second-is sufficient for interactivity?
Yes. You can do some very interesting things within the current bandwidth.
How much of that bandwidth do you need to set aside for this kind of service?
It depends on what you want to do. There are some scenarios that
involve sending relatively small amounts of information that take
very little bandwidth. You can essentially trickle this stuff and you
can make quite a bit of use of that little bit.
Talk about some of the possible applications.
Targeted advertising. Cable is already working on the ability to do
targeted ad insertion at the home. All sorts of ads are downloaded
into the receiver. So, if you happen to be actively shopping for cars
and you tell your receiver that, the receiver is going to show you
ads for the kinds of cars you're looking for. Those might be ads that
you actually watch.
And you're saying broadcasters could do the same thing?
Yes. That's one possibility. My guess is that will be a very viable
thing for broadcast. The same exact kinds of mechanisms could be used
for enhanced television shows.
What do you mean by "enhanced" TV?"
Say a PBS show has extra content that somebody might be interested in
pursuing after they watch a show. It could be pushed out so when
they're done watching whatever the Nova show on dinosaurs was, they
could be informed that there's more content available, sitting in
their receiver.
Right now, they tell me to go to the Internet for the extra information.
What's wrong with that?
With non-real-time enhanced TV, I just push a button on the remote. I
don't have to go to my PC. I don't have to change from a 40-inch
viewing experience to a 19-inch viewing experience.
What else can you do with this thing?
You can do almost anything on demand in a television broadcast environment.
You mean entire TV shows could be downloaded this way?
Or even movies.
That sounds like it would take a lot of time and bandwidth to download.
Not really. There's a popular movie released for VOD. It goes out
overnight during the wee hours when there are not many people
watching. It doesn't take long to get a full movie across that pipe.
This is all happening in the background. The viewers are not aware of
how long it takes because it's there when they want it.
Of course, this all involves another set-top box to store the
programming, right?
Not really. What's starting to happen is more and more storage is
becoming available. You know, the DVR is spreading around. There are
even televisions coming out with that capability built in.
So all you've got to do is get the DVR to recognize the broadcast
signal and record it.
That's right.
But how many people could this system realistically support?
Well, remember this is broadcast so it doesn't matter how many people
are receiving. One of the broadcast advantages over the Internet and
other things is that the signal goes to everybody. So if I put a
movie in and I decide I'm going to do it at night when I've got a
little bit of extra bandwidth, it doesn't cost me anymore to get that
movie to land on one person's receiver then 10 million. It reaches
all of them.
But you can't have 1,000 people ordering 1,000 different movies.
Right, this is aimed more at the very popular stuff.
And you can use the technology to just send basic stuff like news,
weather and sports, right?
And there's even somebody who came up with the notion of a
personalized news program. You send out different clips of news and,
depending on what you've set up in your receiver, it will filter it
out and create a news program just for you.
So if I want to only get the fire stories, I can get the fire stories?
That's right. These guys can get really creative. There's a whole
bunch of different scenarios that could be realized-download
services, music distribution, game distribution. There's also a
notion of pushing the station's Web content to the very edge and
leaving it in the receiver. So if you wanted to augment a news show,
instead of going over to your computer to look at wabc.com, you just
push the button and the site comes up on the TV.
So what's going on over at the ATSC in terms of standardizing this?
We're making significant progress. The goal is to have the standard
available by the analog turn-off date, February of next year. That's
what we're shooting for.
This seems like a natural pay medium. Is there a way to encrypt and
charge for these services?
Conditional access encryption will be part of the standard. It's not
going to be a requirement, but the option is there. The idea is to
leave it to the service provider to decide how they want to run their
business.
You work for a technology company. Is there any push from
broadcasters to set this standard?
The major push is coming from the broadcasters.
We've been talking about non-real-time standard in fixed
applications. How would it work in mobile applications?
Exactly the same way. One of our goals is to make sure that it's
compatible with the mobile standard.
And so the non-real-time services could be just layered on top of the
mobile DTV standard that ATSC is working on.
That's exactly what we're working towards.
Is this Triveni's technology that we're standardizing?
Actually, no. There are a number of companies. Triveni does have very
complete products in this space, but there are a few other companies
that have products. What we're doing is really looking at what's
available through different deployed products as well as looking at
standards that exist in the world. We're sort of picking and choosing
among the best.
Richard Chernock will present a paper on non-real-time services at
the NAB convention. It's scheduled for Tuesday, April 15, at 10 a.m.
in LVCC room S226/227.
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