Digital TV Facts: The Latest

Because of deficiencies in the U.S. digital TV broadcasting standard, viewers will lose access to over-the-air TV when analog broadcasts end, according to a Sinclair Broadcast Group official.

For years, Sinclair has objected to the digital format chosen by the FCC. Their latest objection comes in a pull-no-punches editorial by Nat Ostroff, Sinclair’s vice president of new technology, for a trade publication. Ostroff charges that the transmission standard, known as ATSC 8-VSB,

simply is not capable of meeting the needs of the average non–cable-connected viewer.

That transmission system, by the very admission of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, is only a rooftop receiving-antenna system and always will be. All efforts to date to make the digital system work as well as the analog system of today in terms of simple antenna reception have failed.

He criticizes the National Association of Broadcasters for supporting a firm 2009 deadline for ending analog TV broadcasts and mocks the idea that a “‘magic’ set-top converter box” will allow viewers to receive digital TV broadcasts on their old analog sets. “Such a box does not yet exist,” he writes.

An earlier FCC report found that in the top ten TV markets, 50 percent of locations in urban centers would have difficulty receiving 8-VSB digital TV. While the competing COFDM standard, used in Europe, was found to work better in urban areas, the U.S. standard was given an advantage in “fringe” areas further from a broadcast transmitter.

Sinclair, which owns 61 TV stations, is no stranger to controversy. A boycott against the broadcaster was organized last year after it ordered its stations to show a film attacking Sen. John Kerry in the final days before the 2004 presidential election. Earlier that year Sinclair pulled a Nightline broadcast, devoted to reading the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, from its ABC affiliates.

• Source: Broadcasting & Cable editorial in AVS Forum
• Also: 8-VSB vs. COFDM from TV Technology