ARLINGTON, Va—Earlier this month, some two dozen television industry pioneers, technology leaders and friends gathered to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance.

Three decades ago, May 24, 1993 marked a significant milestone in the evolution of television technology, when seven companies—AT&T Corporation, General Instrument Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Philips Consumer Electronics, the David Sarnoff Research Center, Thomson Consumer Electronics, and Zenith Electronics Corp.—agreed to merge their competing digital HDTV broadcasting technologies into a “best of the best” system, blazing the trail for how we experience high-definition television (HDTV) today.

The Grand Alliance consortium enabled the development and standardization of a new generation of television broadcasting and receivers that would deliver breathtaking picture quality and immersive audio, forever transforming the way we engage with visual content. 

Surpassing each of the previous candidate systems tested at the Advanced Television Test Center (ATTC) located at the PBS headquarters in Alexandria, VA, the new, combined system was then codified into an international standard by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The Federal Communications Commission adopted the ATSC Digital Television Standard (A/53) based on the Grand Alliance system on Christmas Eve 1996.

Key consortium figures toasting the milestone—and celebrating the impact of their breakthrough innovations on a generation of viewers, manufacturers and broadcasters—were Robert Graves (AT&T), Robert Rast (GI), Prof. Jae Lim (MIT), Aldo Cugnini (Philips), Glenn Reitmeier and Terrence Smith (Sarnoff), David Arland (Thomson), and John Taylor (Zenith). 

Also present from that era were former FCC Chairman and Advisory Committee Chairman Richard Wiley (considered the "Father of HDTV"), Mark Richer (then at PBS, now President-emeritus of ATSC), Peter Fannon (ATTC), and Craig Todd (Dolby). Technologists Jeff Krauss, Chong Lee, Eric Petajan, Takashi Sato, Paul Shen, and William Zou were also in attendance, along with publicist Pam Golden, and spouses.

In addition to the celebration dinner organized by Lim and emceed by Rast, Grand Alliance representatives participated in an afternoon NextGen TV briefing led by Reitmeier, supported by Cugnini and Taylor, and featuring special guest speaker ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

The ATSC 1.0 standard has been incorporated as an ITU-R Recommendation, and has been adopted for digital broadcasting in the United States, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico. Building on the pioneering efforts of the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, the newest, next-generation digital broadcasting standard called ATSC 3.0 has also been incorporated as an ITU-R Recommendation, and is now being deployed in the United States, South Korea, Jamaica and the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago. 

86 Years Ago - Nov. 2, 1936: Following 18 months of breakneck construction, testing and hiring, the British Broadcasting Corp. launched the world’s first regularly scheduled “high-definition” television service. (Germany started TV broadcasts a year earlier, but with 180 lines.) 

The BBC startup was complicated slightly by a government requirement to give two competing television companies (and standards) an equal opportunity to prove themselves worthy of adoption. An agreement was struck in which the competitors would take turns in providing TV service during an initial trial period. 

Television pioneer John Logie Baird won the toss of a coin, and precisely at 3:00 p.m. the station’s “Vision On” and “Sound On” signs were illuminated, and his 240-line mechanically-scanned signals left the 200-foot “mast” at the Alexandra Palace event venue on its way to the small number of television “aerials” erected by early TV adopters in the greater London area. 

Baird’s competitor, EMI, with its higher-resolution all-electronic television system was ultimately declared the winner. The 405-line/50-field/AM sound standard developed by EMI remained in use—with an interruption caused by WWII—until 1985.  A special “Television Song” was commissioned in connection with the startup of the BBC’s service, with British vocalist Adele Dixon performing the composition in the inaugural broadcast. 

A film of her performance about “the magic rays of light that bring television to you” is available at   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rpfek-F8Rw. In addition to capturing Dixon’s performance, the film also provides a look at the 1936 television facility’s technical operations. 

OTHER NEWS FROM TV’S PAST:

75 Years Ago – November 1947: Just a few weeks after General Electric switched on its private microwave link to connect its WRGB Schenectady television station with the new AT&T Long Lines video switching center in Manhattan, AT&T inaugurated its own eight-hop microwave radio linkage constructed between New York City and Boston. (AT&T deemed their microwave video carriage “experiment” successful and started redrawing plans to augment its planned intercity video coaxial cable linkage with microwave repeaters.) 

In other news, in addition to the postwar interest in television station construction, the FCC has been receiving an increasingly large number of applications for new AM and FM stations. The Commission, concerned that there will not be enough commercial call signs to go around, issued a news release encouraging “economy” in requests for new station call signs, existing AM licensees asked to append their main AM call signs with an “FM” or “TV” suffix instead of requesting totally separate calls. Such suffixes would also be applicable for new “standalone” FM or TV stations, resulting in six-letter calls; i.e., WXXX-TV.

50 Years Ago – November 1972 : A next-gen videotape “format war” is underway, with IVC joining Sony in exhibiting a self-threading videocassette machine at the National Association of Educational Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. IVC’s new VCR-100 series utilizes 1-inch tape, as opposed to the 3/4-inch used by Sony in their U-Matic cassette machines. According to IVC, their machines are intended for “the top end of the closed-circuit television market,” but would also be at home in broadcast and cable TV applications. 

The company stressed that the tapes are backward-compatible with all previous IVC machines as the format is the same—just packaged differently. Meanwhile, Sony announced that it expected to produce at least 100,000 U-Matic machines before year’s end, and had broken ground on a new plant to keep up with the demand. (Sony’s U-Matics cost about half of the $2,700 introductory price announced by IVC for the color version of their VCR-100.)

25 Years Ago – November 1997: Although transitioning to a digital television platform is now “the law of the land,” there is still a lot of uncertainty as to exactly how this will be done and what form it will take. The initial goal was to bring high-definition video to consumers’ homes, but this has morphed a bit as some broadcasters are considering going with a 480-line SD “main” signal and equally standard-definition ancillary programming streams. 

Others are considering going on the air with a “fake” HD signal generated by upconverter devices now reaching the market. Even the networks are in a quandary as to what to do. This “HD uncertainty” is reflected in a recent study from the Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research organization, which found that even though most broadcasters were willing to spend sizeable sums to upgrade to digital and/or HD, they could expect to lose viewers to cable once they commenced transmitting digital signals. According to the study’s 10-year consumer viewing habit projection:

"Local stations will find their antenna and transmitter adjustments go for naught as 71 percent of households in 2007 eschew rabbit ears in favor of cable's broad offerings." 

WASHINGTON—A group of about 40 digital HDTV pioneers gathered online Nov. 30 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a vote by the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service that ushered in high definition television.

Among the HDTV luminaries appearing on the Zoom celebration was former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, who later chaired the advisory committee and is credited with convincing the organizations working on HDTV systems to compromise and agree on incorporating the best elements of each system into what would become the world’s first digital high definition television standard.

Those organizations, which together formed the Grand Alliance, included AT&T, General Instrument, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Philips Consumer Electronics, David Sarnoff Research Center, Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics. Key players from many of these organizations participated in the online celebration.

Wiley began his remarks by recognizing the people who participated in the meeting to recommend a new digital HDTV transmission system to the FCC and those who worked on its development. They are “the real heroes” of making HDTV happen in the United States, he said.

Recalling early opposition from some in government, business and “the wise savants in the television field” to digital HDTV, Wiley expressed gratitude to those who “just continued to plod along and do your work—criticism not withstanding—and stay the course and make HDTV a reality,” he said.

“The profusion of crystal clear, widescreen digital HDTV sets in almost every American home and office, you know, we just take for granted today,” said Wiley. 

Wiley acknowledged the important contribution of those who made up the Grand Alliance, saying “and how truly grand it was,” as well as those of the late Joe Flaherty, senior vice president for Technology at CBS; Mark Richer, former president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee; former ATSC chairman James McKinney; and Peter Fanon, former executive director of the Advanced Television Test Center.

(TVTechnology conducted an interview with Wiley in May 2018 on the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Grand Alliance.)

Several others online for the celebration reflected on the anniversary. Fannon recalled the important role the late Joel Chaseman, former CEO of Post-Newsweek Stations, played in advancing early HDTV acceptance among broadcasters.

McKinney recounted receiving a phone call from Fannon one day while running WRC-TV, the model HDTV station in Washington, D.C., to say something was wrong with the station’s HDTV camera. 

“That was probably because Pete and I were the only ones that had [HDTV] receivers in the Washington area at the time,” he said.

In his comments, Richer recalled how instrumental Wiley was in advancing HDTV. “One of the many remarkable things I learned and experienced in working with the advisory committee was to see how a good chair can chair a meeting and make something happen,” he said.

Glenn Reitmeier, at the time an engineer at the Sarnoff Research Center, praised the broader impact of the Grand Alliance and the ATSC standard on consumer electronics. “…[W]ithout ATSC, I think the whole concept of digital consumer electronics would have taken much longer to come about,” he said.

Jae Lim, at the time professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, expressed pleasure in seeing everyone on the call and thanked them for their past efforts. Recounting how important HDTV development has been to him, Lim said, “… when I first participated in the ATV [advanced television] research in 1986 or ’87, I never thought that it would shape my… professional career,” he said.

Bob Rast, then vice president of HDTV development at General Instruments, acknowledged the role of broadcasters in digital HDTV.

“Maybe they backed into it, but broadcasters were the first to launch digital HDTV at a time when cable and satellite were thinking about multichannel SDTV,” he said. “So, broadcasters never quite got the credit they deserve for that.”

Robert Graves, an executive with AT&T at the time, discussed how the advisory committee vote was really a “launching point” for a process that went on for another 13 months to advocate for adoption of the standard. “[T]hat was a Christmas Eve a year later when we finally got the FCC to adopt the ATSC standard,” he said. “And that was the end game… as far as getting the standard adopted as public policy.”

Wayne Luplow, retired vice president of Zenith R&D Lab, expressed how happy he was to see “so many old friends.”

“I’m really proud to have been a part [of digital HDTV development] with all of you gents in terms of… what we were able to do in that time frame,” he said.

Current ATSC President Madeleine Noland praised those involved in the process 25 years ago for the “incredible foundation” they laid for the broadcast industry. “I’d also like to thank those who are on this call, who have participated in both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0, because I have to say that without that continuity… we would not have designed as good [of] a standard as we have with ATSC 3.0,” she said.

The Zoom celebration was organized by Dave Arland, president of Arland Communications, and emceed by John Taylor, senior vice president of Public Affairs and Communications for LG Electronics.

WASHINGTON—Mark your calendars for Monday, Nov. 30, for a virtual celebration of the 25th anniversary of the FCC Advisory Committee vote that ushered in the HDTV era.

The Zoom celebration, scheduled for 3-3:30 p.m. ET, will include an appearance by former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, regarded as the father of HDTV.

The Grand Alliance responsible for developing the world’s first digital high definition television system demonstrated its work to the public for the first time April 10 during a press conference on the eve of the 1995 NAB Show.

Members of the Grand Alliance included AT&T, General Instrument, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Philips Consumer Electronics, David Sarnoff Research Center, Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics.

Wiley, a partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein, was recruited by then-FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick to chair the advisory committee. (TVTechnology conducted an interview with Wiley in May 2018 on the 25the anniversary of the founding of the Grand Alliance.)

In 1992, when it appeared the companies—each offering its own competing HDTV system proposal—could not agree on a solution incorporating the best elements of each, Wiley nudged and cajoled them during a make-it-or-break-it meeting at the Grand Hotel in Washington, D.C., till they agreed on a system. 

The celebration is open to the public. Registration for the Zoom event is available online.  

Broadcast consultant Glenn Reitmeier released a series of never-before-seen videos on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the April 10, 1995, Grand Alliance World Premiere Demonstration and Press Conference in Las Vegas at the 1995 NAB Show.

Among the new clips are: the introduction of the first demo; the press conference presented in three parts; various questions and answers about the new digital HDTV system; and footage of the Grand Alliance interoperability demonstration and encoder tour from November 1995.

Reitmeier has also created a Grand Alliance history page with these clips, photos and documents, including the Grand Alliance press release announcing the debut of the Grand Alliance digital HDTV system.

Reitmeier was among the engineers who developed the Grand Alliance digital HDTV system.

The newly available video clips of the Grand Alliance digital HDTV rollout are available online. These videos are in addition to what Reitmeier previously released on the completion of the HDTV systems’ integration at the Sarnoff Field Lab.

PLUS: Richard Wiley Recalls the Grand Alliance on Its 25th Anniversary

The clips, photos and documents are available on the Grand Alliance history page.

DURHAM, N.H.—The traditional TV buying cycle, along with lower prices is helping to spur acceptance for 4K in the marketplace, according to a new report from the Leichtman Research Group. And although highly expensive 8K TVs are starting to hit the market, the retail outlook for TVs remains very active.

LRG’s recent study “Connected and 4K TVs 2019,” found that for the 15th consecutive year, more than 20% of adults said that they got a new TV set in their household in the past year. This pattern suggests that “TV sets are a recurring purchase item,” LRG said.

The researcher also found that, despite the proliferation of video screens on PCs, tablets and smartphones, the number of TV sets per household remains steady at 2.6, representing an estimated 320 million TV sets currently in American households.

LRG compared the move to 4K with the transition to HDTV in the mid-2000’s, estimating that, in the early years of HDTV, about half of all HDTV owners were watching HD programming from a pay-TV provider but that 25% thought they were watching HD from a pay-TV provider even though it wasn’t HD.

This lack of consumer knowledge over what constituted high definition decreased as more HDTVs appeared in American households.

“The prior confusion over HD content declined as HDTVs became more commonplace,” LRG said. “It is important to recall that after reaching 17% penetration in 2006, HDTV expanded to 69% of TV households in 2011.”

Similar confusion is taking place in the current transition to 4K, however, LRG’s study found that “59% of 4K HDTV owners strongly agree that picture quality on a 4K TV set makes everything look better even when not watching 4K content, while just 7% disagree.”

LRG says the transition to 4K is entering a similar growth stage of the product lifecycle for 4K TV with nearly half of non-4K TV owners (48%) planning to purchase a new TV in the next 12 months “very interested” in buying a 4K TV and 41% of current 4K TV owers interested in getting another 4K TV. 

With the passing of Joseph Flaherty, former senior vice president of Technology at CBS last month, I had the opportunity to discuss Flaherty’s life and professional contributions with a few industry leaders. One thing I learned seems particularly apropos to where the TV industry stands today.

While Flaherty is credited as perhaps the No. 1 broadcaster advocating for development and adoption of a digital high-definition television standard and a treasured right-hand man to former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley who chaired the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service at the time, another theme emerged as I spoke to various associates about Flaherty.

That trend was pegging film for termination in the television industry. As Bob Seidel, CBS vice president of engineering & advanced technology, who was mentored in his early career at the network by Flaherty, wrote in marking his passing:

“His [Flaherty’s] foresight led to the replacement of 16mm film to gather news, supplanting it with Electronic News Gathering (ENG), thereby eliminating the painstaking and time-consuming process of exposing the film negative, transporting the film to the station, developing the film and transferring the film to television.”

Even Flaherty’s advocacy of a new digital HD television standard was motivated in part by the desire to get film out of TV production with the goals of saving time, expense and effort to produce episodic television, I learned in my conversations.

[Read: Remembering Dr. Joe Flaherty]

The lesson for today that the television industry can take from Flaherty is: Don’t fear jettisoning the past and embracing the future—not recklessly, but with forethought, planning and purpose.

Who could imagine NTSC rather than digital HDTV in today’s living rooms across America? What Hollywood TV producer or station news shooter pines for the days of film?

We stand at the threshold of the next generation of television with countless opportunities within grasp and little certainty about which will prove to be winners, and which will end up as mere footnotes in some future Wikipedia citation.

Regardless of the uncertainty, however, now is not the time to cling to the past but to embrace change prudently and begin to carve out another successful generation for television.

Dr. Joe Flaherty, former Senior Vice President of Technology at CBS and an instrumental figure in the worldwide development of high definition television died last week at the age of 87. TV Technology reached out to some of his industry colleagues for their remembrances of Joe.  

Peter Fannon was president of the Advanced Television Test Center and recently retired after a long career with Panasonic.

"It is very hard to imagine a television world without Joe Flaherty. He was—over six decades—a persistent force for global technological progress and industry advancement. Whether responsible for conceiving, building, or integrating new technologies and systems, Joe was a master at inspiring—and yes, sometimes terrifying—others in order to accomplish with him the progressive changes he could foresee would improve television for both content creator and broadcast company, for both TV viewer and online consumer alike.

His personal drive was, to be sure, formidable. He was relentless in pursuit of the new and better, the smarter and more efficient ways in broadcast and satellite spectrum use, studio and newsgathering design, camera and recording technologies, computer-generated imaging, facilities and network interconnection, and display technologies of all sorts. Throughout his career he supported or led research and development in-house, and he worked tirelessly with manufacturers around the world to bring to life new concepts in all of these arenas. He spent uncountable time traveling and working with broadcasters in all parts of the globe, and in international standards bodies, seeking to align ever-improving television technologies in order to effect easy global program exchange, and to spur competition for the best solutions whatever the issue.

Most famously, it was Joe Flaherty who first propelled the notion of high-definition TV in the United States, calling up all his persuasiveness to rally engineering, business and then political forces to bring “advanced television” to American broadcasting. Under the aegis of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS)—which he had lobbied to have created—he chaired the all-important Planning Committee, which set out the technical and operational criteria for what became, barely a decade later, the world’s first all-digital HDTV terrestrial broadcast system. 

And during that time he gave time and attention to every advanced TV system proponent in order to solicit the best ideas; participated in every Advisory Committee meeting and activity; served on the Board and technical committee of the Advanced Television Test Center; spoke frequently to domestic and international gatherings about the television of the future; and lobbied Members of Congress, Commissioners of the FCC, and both White House and Federal agencies’ leaders on the need and means for a smooth, nationwide transition to the new system.

It will be impossible indeed to see and enjoy television at all without thinking often of the passion, commitment and contributions of Joe Flaherty to making it all happen."

Richard Wiley is former chairman of the FCC, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television and is partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein.

"I worked closely with Joe during the eight-plus years of ACATS (FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service). He always kept his eye on the end game—high definition television. We had people suggesting systems that were lesser than HDTV but that was never going to be satisfactory from his standpoint. He helped develop the rapid deployment of HDTV on a worldwide basis and I learned a lot by reading a number of his papers.

He was a true visionary and could find pragmatic solutions to the innumerable technical problems that we confronted during those eight years. For example, when we had to test these different systems, he went to the NAB to lobby for developing the Advanced Television Test Center—he was instrumental in getting it built.

I went with Joe on many international trips and everybody knew him, he was the ambassador for television at large. He was known worldwide and I don’t think anyone else had that status—he was a unique figure. He was soft spoken but determined. He might have ruffled some feathers from time to time but he had a dream. He and Mark Richer were the two engineers I relied on the most because they would always give me the unvarnished truth as they saw it."

Larry Thorpe is Senior Fellow at Canon U.S.A. and spent more than 20 years at Sony Electronics pioneering the development of HDTV and digital production technologies in the U.S. broadcast and motion picture industries.

"My positive response at an initial meeting with Joseph Flaherty in the mid-1970s was probably the fact that we were both of modest physical stature. But I was soon to learn that his industry stature soared far above my own. Maybe it was my being Irish that formed the early bond between us (he regularly vacationed in Ireland). While that manifested itself largely in cordiality over the next decade whenever we sporadically met, it was to blossom into a working bond in the early eighties when then Dr. Flaherty learned that I was Masahiko Morizono’s point man on driving Sony’s HDTV agenda in the U.S. The very close relationship between those two giants was forged more than a decade earlier when Joe Flaherty’s drive behind electronic newsgathering was flanked by Morizono-san’s drive behind ENG cameras and recorders—first the Umatic and later the Betacam.

At a time when HDTV was looked askance at by most broadcasters, Joe Flaherty had instantly seen the future of video imaging and indeed the future of broadcasting. If he was relentless in his drive on ENG, he was positively titanic in his unwavering leadership on HDTV. His vision of 1080/60.00 as a potential worldwide HDTV production standard never faltered over the next decade and a half. I spent countless hours with Joe at endless formal meetings of the various HDTV standardization groups, the multiple strategy sessions within CBS, and supporting the never-ending demonstrations that he organized at every conceivable venue around the globe. While the latter could at times create tensions between us, Joe would always make things right with a fine-dining lunch or dinner.

Leadership emerges under various guises but Joe Flaherty based his on a sharply focused determination that was at times disguised by his remarkably quiet voice. Entanglements with the separate and competing HDTV agendas of European broadcasters, the computer industry, and Hollywood never daunted Joe. His international diplomacy was unwavering as he sought to persuade all to his mission of a unified HDTV standard. And indeed, Joe could be uncannily persuasive. The emergence of the worldwide 1080-line HDTV standard (albeit at international frame rates) is testament to his persistence.

I was sad to see Joe fade quietly from the world scene over the past decade—but impressed and heartened by the fact that he was in his eighties when he did start to withdraw. Everything he dreamed about over the past 50 years—from ENG to HDTV—are today colossal global realities. Joe Flaherty can surely rest in peace having left a legacy of jobs superbly done. Goodbye, my mentor."

Mark Richer is president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

"Dr. Flaherty’s lifetime commitment to the advancement of television technology was extraordinary. Among his many contributions to the industry was the pivotal role he played in the formation of ATSC in 1982. He served on the ATSC Executive Committee and Board of Directors until 2010 when he was named to the honorary “Member Emeritus.”

Dr. Flaherty’s unwavering commitment to the standardization of HDTV was contagious, motivating the industry to develop the highest quality system possible. He had the vision to understand that the specifications for HDTV should not be limited by the capabilities of the cameras and displays available at the time.

Joe pushed industry groups to establish long term strategies often quoting one his favorite proverbs, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

Representatives from the former DOW Stereo shared this video marking the 20th anniversary of the retailer’s first HDTV sale — a 56-inch Panasonic model — complete with plenty of rich nostalgia. How many faces do you recognize? 

On August 7, 2018 the television industry saw the passing of a true technology icon, Dr. Joseph A. Flaherty. Television viewers around the globe are still benefiting from the technology innovations of Joe Flaherty.

Dr. Flaherty received his degree in Physics from Rockhurst College, Kansas, City, Missouri, in 1952. During 1953-1954, he served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and in 1955 joined NBC in New York City as a Television Engineer.

In 1957, he joined CBS as a Television Design Engineer. In 1959, he became the Network's Director of Technical Facilities Planning, and in 1967, he was promoted to General Manager, and subsequently appointed Vice President and General Manager of the Engineering and Development Department, a position he held for 23 years, and then CBS Senior Vice President of Technology.

In the 1970’s, Joe revolutionized the television news industry by changing the process by which news stories were captured. His foresight led to the replacement of 16 mm film to gather news, supplanting it with Electronic News Gathering (ENG), thereby eliminating the painstaking and time-consuming process of exposing the film negative, transporting the film to the station, developing the film and transferring the film to television. The development of ENG enabled TV viewers to experience the world’s events in real-time, rather than watching history unfold, thus eliminating the catch phrase, “film at 11 PM.”

In the early 1980’s, Joe began developing High Definition Television (HDTV). On Feb. 7, 1981, he demonstrated “Hi-Vision” or HDTV to the Hollywood production community at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineer’s (SMPTE) annual technical conference.

This led to Joe’s appointment as the Chairman of the Planning Committee for the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, which produced the United States present day Digital High Definition System. His efforts made the United States the first country in the world to convert to a digital HDTV system. Not satisfied with revolutionizing the television system in America, Joe became a Television Technology Ambassador to the world. Joe’s push for a worldwide HDTV program exchange standard at the United Nation’s technical arm, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), led to the rapid deployment of HDTV on a worldwide basis.

Joe also challenged and successfully convinced the Hollywood production community to replace 16/35 mm film, used for prime time television production, with HDTV electronic acquisition and postproduction. Today, all prime time television dramas and comedies are electronically captured and edited in HDTV.

Joe was an active author and lecturer, presenting over 188 published papers and lectures during his career. Joe’s technology leadership was not only acknowledged in America, but throughout the world by the presentation of numerous major Broadcasting awards and honors including:

• Honorary Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE’s highest award), and the SMPTE Progress Medal Award, David Sarnoff Gold Medal

• Four Technical Emmy Awards - the development of Electronic Newsgathering (ENG), development and installation of the first Digital Computer Automation System, Electronic Editing System of Film Capture, Vidifont electronic character generator.

• Two Personal Life Time Achievement Emmy Awards – The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences “Lifetime Achievements in Contributions to the Development and Improvement of the Science and Technology of Television.” and the “Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award” from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Hollywood.

• National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Engineering Award

• NAB’s “Award of Honor” for “Introducing High Definition Television to the World”

• “Giants of Broadcasting” award from the Library of American Broadcasting

• Broadcasting & Cable Magazine “Hall of Fame” Inductee

• Consumer Electronics Association “Hall of Fame” Inductee

• Two French Legion of Honors - Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur by President Mitterand of the Republic of France and in l989 he was decorated as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and later promoted to the rank of Officer de l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur by French President Jacques Chirac.

• Swiss Montreux Achievement Gold Medal for Electronic News Gathering

• Fellow of the British Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE)

• Fellow of the Royal Television Society of the United Kingdom

• Fellow of the Chinese Institute of Electronics

• Honorary Member of the German engineering society Fernseh-Kinotechnischen Gesellschaft (FKTG)

• Honorary Members of the Institute of Television Engineers of Japan

• International Vladimir Zworykin award for Technical Achievements in the field of Television from the Russian National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters

Dr. Joseph Flaherty’s lifetime of television innovation is unmatched in the television industry. His efforts have brought real-time global events into our living rooms and through the clarity of HDTV made the viewer feel “as if they were there”. If anyone is to be credited with creating the “Television Global Village,” it’s Joe Flaherty. Thank you Joe, for being a Television Technology Ambassador to the world.

Joe is survived by his wife Jan Flaherty, his sons Patrick, Daniel, Michael, Timothy, daughter Margaret and eight grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass for Joe will be held 10:00 AM, Tuesday, August 14 at St. Agnes Church, 523 Front St., Greenport, NY. Relatives and friends will gather at the Horton-Mathie Funeral Home, 735 First St., in Greenport, on Monday, August 13 from 2:00-6:00 PM.

Burial will be private at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, NY.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be sent to Community Fund of Peconic Landing 1500 Brecknock Road Greenport, NY 11944 St. Agnes Church 523 Front Street Greenport, NY 11944, or give to your favorite soup kitchen or homeless shelter 

WASHINGTON—This month marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of the Grand Alliance—a milestone in the history of television.

The alliance came about when a number of enterprises involved in developing an HDTV standard for the U.S. set aside their individual interests and agreed to work cooperatively to develop the world’s first digital high definition television system. Members included AT&T, David Sarnoff Research Center, General Instrument, MIT, Philips Electronics North America, Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics.

Encouraging them to find common ground and move forward together was Richard Wiley, former FCC Chairman (1974-1977) and partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein. Recruited by then FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick to serve as chairman of the FCC Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, Wiley pressed, prodded and cajoled these high-tech interests to form the Grand Alliance and in so doing put the nation on the path to digital HDTV. In this interview, Wiley recalls that effort.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology: When I think back to the period just before the Grand Alliance, I remember that Japanese broadcasters were rolling out a direct broadcast satellite system to deliver analog HDTV to viewers in that nation. Did that light a fire here in the United States to get serious about HDTV here?

Richard Wiley: I think Congress and the FCC had noticed that there was research and development going on not only in Japan but also to some extent in Western Europe about the possibility of advanced television.

So, I got a call one day from the chairman of the FCC, Dennis Patrick, who asked if I would head up a federal advisory committee [Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service] that would get the United States into this whole effort. They were concerned about being left behind.

You’re quite right. The Japanese had the MUSE analog system, which was pretty advanced. We saw pictures of it in operation at various conventions like the National Association of Broadcasters. So, they were moving.

TVT: What was your strategy as the chairman of the advisory committee?

RW: Basically, what I decided to do was try to have an international competition, inviting people to put forth by June 1, 1990, their individual entries. And they had to be entries that could be subject to testing under objective standards, including the MUSE system.

So, overall there were 23 entries –all of them analog. Many of them were not subject to testing; they were just kind of concepts.

We got it down to about seven systems that could be tested and put through a testing laboratory headed by Peter Fannon in Alexandria, Va. Over a long period of time, we tested each one of them.

TVT:They were all analog, but we ended up with digital television. Tell me about how that happened.

RW: Believe me, when we started out, nobody had digital in mind. It was all going to be advanced analog. That’s why we called it Advanced Television.

I had heard rumors and rumblings that there could be digital systems out there. I went up to New York one time to make a speech at a conference –not at all on high definition—and [former CBS SVP for Technology] Joe Flaherty came over to me. “We just saw a presentation on a digital system,” he said.

I said, “For goodness sakes Joe, tell them to get in here if there is such a system,” because June 1, 1990, we had to cut off the competition. The rules of the competition were you had to have a system to be judged in by that date.

So just before Memorial Day in 1990, the guys from General Instrument came east, and I went over to see their system a couple of blocks away from my office here on K Street.

They had developed a digital system. I said, “Well, give me a check for $175,000, which was the entry fee to do the testing and all the rest of it, like everyone else has done, and we will get you certified, and you will get in the competition.”

That was a big moment, I think.

TVT: There were A/D and D/A converters going back to the first digital time base correctors and frame synchronizers. But an entirely digital video systems was uncharted territory, it seems to me. What do you remember about that period when there was the decision to go digital?

RW: We tested seven systems, and they were all sort of developed on the fly. They were making improvements, so I wrote them a letter and gave them two options.

Testing cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and took well over a year. I knew they were going to be reluctant to go through it again.

But I also knew they were learning from each other and becoming closer, so my second alternative was why don’t you all get together and form –what my term was—a Grand Alliance.

Let’s put them all together and get a “best elements” system that would combine all of your entries.

TVT:How did they respond?

RW: They started thinking about the idea, and meeting on it. They had various meetings in different cities. One of them was in Chicago.

They decided to have a final meeting in 1992 at the Grand Hotel, of all things, here in Washington, D.C., to see whether they could do it.

I got a call from Robert Graves of AT&T, which was one of the companies with an entry, saying they had failed, and it wasn’t going to work. I said, “Stay there. I’m coming over.”

I went over and said I know what you disagree on –some wanted interlaced scanning, some wanted progressive scanning, but I said, “Can’t we all agree that we want over 1,000 lines of resolution?” They said yes.

“And we want widescreen.” They wanted that –16:9.

I said, “Guys, we can make this happen.”

Finally, I got them all to reconsider. The last one was MIT. Jae Lim was uncertain. I said, “Jae, call your people up in Boston. We’ve got to do this. This is our opportunity; the one thing that’s got to happen.”

He finally went along with it, but he wanted to have progressive scanning. And we dropped a footnote saying that would be something we would look at in the future.

Obviously, later Intel came along with a chip that obviated the difference between the two for the purpose of the set.

So, the Grand Alliance was formed. Obviously, it had to be built, and it had to be tested again –not only in the laboratory, but also in the field. That took another year to year and a half.

[Read: Grand Compromise Could Resolve DTV Transition]

Finally, after eight and half years we were able to come up with the final standard recommendation, went to the FCC in late 1995 and it was adopted by the commission in the fall of 1996.

The Grand Alliance was really what made this thing happen.

TVT:We’ve just gone through the ATSC 3.0 standardization process, and I am always fascinated by how these tech companies with competing interests can come to an agreement, especially when there are big bucks on the line. Can you tell me a little bit about the horse trading and how you got the individual companies in the Grand Alliance to come together and agree on the underlying technology of what we now call ATSC 1.0?

RW: I think peer review was the great thing we initiated there. We had all of these experts, and they had to get up in an open meeting, because the advisory committee had to operate under federal advisory committee standards and meetings had to be public and all open.

I think the fact that one company’s expert would get up in front of the whole group, drove people to a common result.

And, of course, I was in the background pushing everyone towards a single solution because otherwise we could have had a lot of litigation. I certainly wasn’t an engineer, so I certainly didn’t design the system, but the one thing I had my eye on was we all wanted high definition television.

That to me was the Holy Grail I was going to push for –digital high definition television.

TVT: How did you all get on the same page with MPEG-2?

RW: Well, I sent them that letter, and I started talking to them and urging them.

Along the way, a lot of people had different ideas. They wanted to have line doubling, and some people just wanted to have advanced television. They didn’t want high definition. They just wanted better television.

But Al Sikes, who was chairman of the FCC, and I agreed we should try to go for the gold and get the best standard we could possibly have, and that was digital high definition television.

So many of these systems were excellent, but when they got together and worked together, they made it even better.

TVT:What about 8VSB? How did that happen?

RW: We had committees and bake offs, that’s what they called it. They were done by the experts, and they came up with VSB as against the QAM cable system. And VSB got it.

At the very end of the game, some people suggested COFDM. So, I set up another special technical advisory committee. They tested it again. I think COFDM had great potential, but it was not quite as developed. So, the engineers I talked to all suggested staying with VSB.

TVT: Tell me a little more about the Advanced Television Testing Center and Peter Fannon having to test and evaluate the performance of all these new TV systems.

RW: It was a tremendous effort by Peter and his gang down there over the years. And they had to develop a whole testing mechanism, and then we had to redo it because digital came.

We had spent years developing the analog testing regime, and when we switched to digital, they had to come up with a new system. And the first entity that went in there was tested improperly –not by the laboratory, but by the engineers who brought it in.

The other people wanted to throw them out, but I didn’t want to disqualify anybody. I wanted to have them all to have the best brains possible.

So, we gave them a redo, and when I ordered the redo, I had a bunch of people come in here and argue with me about it and giving me all sorts of heat.

But I didn’t have any dog in the hunt. That was the good thing about it. There wasn’t anybody that I was cheering for. I just wanted to get the best system possible because otherwise we would really goof up our television system in this country, which everyone had enjoyed since the ‘50s when it first came out.

TVT: As you look back at the Grand Alliance and what was accomplished, are there any other thoughts you’d like to share on its 25 Anniversary?

RW: You know, the advisory committee was only 25 people. It was the Rupert Murdochs of the world. The head of CBS at the time, Larry Tisch.

But the heart of it really was the cream of our nation’s video engineering technology talent. Those are the guys who developed this in a peer-reviewed process. Those are the heroes in my opinion that made it happen.

[Read: ATTC Closing Marks End Of An Era]

I take a lot of pride when I see what a milestone it was in their lives. It was for me as well. It was a great development.

Editor’s note: Readers interested in learning more about how digital HDTV came to be in the United States may wish to read “Defining Vision” by Joel Brinkley.

To put context on the curious crossroads at which the U.S. television industry finds itself in 2018 it is useful to recall the protracted HDTV transition from 1985–2005.

In the 1980s, HDTV represented a very significant advance in television image sharpness and it greatly challenged the related video production technologies (primarily analog-based) of that time—imaging, recording, and display. It is significant to note that HDTV was initially heavily driven by manufacturers of professional production equipment while the consumer electronics manufacturers continued to cling to analog standard definition televisions into the 2000s.

Today, the reverse is true as the industry move to 4K UHD is being largely driven by the consumer electronics manufacturers who appear united in the propulsion of 4K home display systems as alternatives to purchases of new HDTV televisions. This appears to be highly successful (forecasted to reach 30 percent penetration in the U.S. this year)—primarily because these new displays embody built-in upscaling systems that accept traditional 1080i and 720P HDTV signals which very effectively portray on their 4K display panels.

To date, the U.S broadcast industry has shown little appetite to grapple with all that is entailed in updating broadcast infrastructures to handle the far more data-hungry 4K UHD video signal. The cable industry has also remained largely dormant. The central dilemma for 4K UHD is the available sizes of consumer home displays. At the average home viewing distance of 10 feet a screen having about a 140-inch diagonal is desirable to fully stimulate a viewer (having 20/20 vision) with the full “wow factor” of 4K. Therefore, presently available 4K UHD screens—in the range of 55 to 84-inch diagonal—fall short.

More importantly, upscaled HDTV is virtually indistinguishable from native 4K UHD at the average home viewing distance. It is this failure that has convinced many delivery services (broadcasters and cable MSOs in particular) of the futility of making huge investments in new infrastructures that support 4K UHD as adequate returns on such investments are considered elusive.

ALTERNATIVE UHD DELIVERY SERVICES

OTT services of 4K UHD are presently offered by some of the major new video delivery players (primarily the tech giants who have enormous internet user bases that are now accompanied by huge supporting production budgets) and that is further spurring the penetration of the associated home display system.

In the satellite delivery domain, DirecTV is now offering 4K UHD delivery. In terms of the current highest quality delivery to the home. the new Ultra HD Blu-ray disc supports 4K UHD video at frame rates up to 60 frames per second with the program material encoded using High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

THERE IS UHD, AND THEN THERE IS UHD

Adding to the global confusion is the looming specter of possible premature obsolescence of an era of 4K UHD. Hardly had 4K UHD been born as a blueprint for the more immediate future of television when drums began beating for 8K UHD (4x more resolution than 4K and 16x the resolution of HDTV). On the standardization front it arguably made a great deal of sense to simultaneously deal with both 4K UHD and 8K UHD within the international ITU standardization effort because it created a blueprint for the very long term future (spanning many decades) of video services.

[Read: Large Vs. Small Sensor: A Q&A With Canon’s Larry Thorpe]

But in terms of a planned rollout of these new digital television delivery services, one has to wonder at what we are seeing unfold (or trying to unfold) today. 8K UHD makes little sense for home viewing but it surely does make enormous sense in the context of digital cinema and large screen venues like stadium displays and digital signage. What does remain a certainty is that any major industry commitment to 4K UHD will require a lifespan of at least one or two decades to justify the enormous related investments.

TELEVISION’S FUTURE IS MORE THAN ENHANCED RESOLUTION

It is remarkable that the global television industry has remained hugely preoccupied for almost four decades (approximately 1980 to date) with the singular drive for ever-increasing resolution. But, more recently—over the past half-decade—video production has become enveloped in other technological advances that are having significant impact on virtually all of the multiple dimensions of what constitutes image quality, including resolution, dynamic range, color reproduction, picture capture rate, and digital bit depth (Fig. 1).

In most cases these are not the incremental changes to which we have been accustomed over many decades. Rather, they are all now simultaneously in play, their advances are all substantial, and they are all happening very fast. These advances are such that isolated demonstrations of each gain high attention. Center stage is High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG), closely followed by High Frame Rate (HFR) and higher digital bit depths. In terms of related technological developments the industry is positively buzzing with numerous activities on many fronts. In addition, advances in spatial audio promise to make the viewing experience closer than it has ever been before to reality.

NEW GENERATION OF UHD PRODUCTION GEAR

On the television production front, the two-third inch image format size has been center stage for some four decades—in television studios, sports broadcasting, broadcast newsgathering and documentary production. About a decade ago, large image format digital cameras escalated a drive to replace 35mm motion picture film. Today many digital motion imaging variants on the Super 35mm image format are available from a broad range of global manufacturers and they are steadily penetrating all forms of television production as well as moviemaking. Now, discussions of cinematic aesthetics accompany all of the ongoing debate on HDR, WCG, and HFR—in television drama, magazine shows and more recently in sports production. The two-third inch image format is being squeezed, as it were, from above.

Despite this, in the domain of sports production, and also the majority of broadcast television studios, the two-third inch format continues to remain center stage. And, starting about three years ago, a move to 4K UHD lenses and cameras based upon that image format abruptly surfaced—spurred by the recognition that UHD might possibly take off in the not too distant future, and that once again, sports would be one of the most significant driving forces.

What is particularly interesting is that all of the major camera manufacturers are now offering multiformat cameras and camcorders—switchable (albeit via licensing for some) between 4K DCI and 4K UHD as well as 2K DCI and HD. These products speak to the uncertainty of today, which sees the transition to HDTV still underway but also some industry angst that 4K UHD may at some juncture become inevitable during the next decade due to competitive dynamics between disparate delivery services.

In particular, near-term purchases of new 2/3-inch lenses, because of their anticipated long life, argue for consideration of 4K even if HDTV origination remains the near term priority. These lenses do have the distinct advantage of ensuring a visibly higher HDTV performance while also future proofing against some downstream transition to 4K UHD.

It was with this imperative in mind that Canon introduced no less than six new 2/3-inch 4K UHD lenses at the 2018 NAB Show. Canon also introduced B4 to PL/EF mounts that allow these lenses to be used on large format cameras.

In terms of the most contemporary industry discussions—as noted at NAB 2018—there is a growing consensus that a more pragmatic UHD transition would be to 1080P combined with both HDR and WCG. In the views of some, HFR must also be factored in. This movement is premised on the fact that 1080P is already inherent within multiformat cameras and most of these latest products also offer HDR/WCG and even HFR capabilities.

It also has to be borne in mind that in addition to all of the video imaging implications of 4K UHD / HDR/WCG, the industry is also now very heavily preoccupied with planning (and implementing by many) the transition from SDI infrastructures to IP infrastructures. While related standards have also finally emerged on this front, the uncertainties are many and the costs somewhat unknown.

It is arguable that the television industry has never had to grapple with so many technological variables—all in the same approximate time frame—as we see today.

Larry Thorpe is a Senior Fellow at Canon U.S.A.

MONTREAL—Rochester N.Y. PBS affiliate WXXI TV has bought nine Grass Valley LDX 82 Flex cameras as part of a recent upgrade to its two production studios. The station has long utilized Grass Valley’s server-based solutions and opted to extend the partnership further when rebuilding its two production studios.

According to Grass, the cameras offer the best sensitivity in all HD formats, including 1080p and a wide color gamut. The LDX 82’s leverage GV’s patented Xensium-FT CMOS imager which allows for better sensitivity, higher resolution and XDR (Extended Dynamic Range) operations with a full 15 F-stops. LDX 82 Series cameras are compatible with the XCU Elite camera base station which features a unique cradle. The cradle can be pre-mounted and pre-wired in the rack, making a secure mechanical and electrical connection, and automatically memorizing all the configuration settings of the production environment, permitting the XCU base station to easily slide in and out whenever needed.

[Read: Grass Valley Unveils LDX 82 Series Cameras]

For increased flexibility, WXXI TV also chose to enhance its new studios with Grass Valley’s RefleX SuperXpander Kit which acts as a large lens adapter to covert handheld cameras into studio-ready production systems.

BELFAST, IRELAND—An international team of researchers has developed a method to cluster together quantum dots to boost fluorescence and deliver a significant increase the number of colors that can be displayed, leading to what they foresee as a new generation of improved HDTV.

The team, made up of scientists from Queen’s University Belfast and experts from Florida State University, ETH Zurich, Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, calls this new process aggregation-induced emission, or AIE, according to a press release from Queen’s University Belfast.

The researchers created quantum dots containing methylammonium lead bromine. They found that by placing fine layers between different materials, or lamellar structures, the material re-emitted much of the light it absorbed and created colors that were quite intense, it said.

“Through this research discovery, we anticipate that the number of colors a display can present can be increased more than 50 percent,” the press release quotes Queen’s University team lead Dr. Elton Santos as saying. “In practice, this means that we may have a new type of ‘high-definition’ because of the number of color combinations that the material can display. Therefore, the next HD generation is just as close as three to four years away.”

Normally, brightness degrades as quantum dots aggregate forming crystals; however, the AIE process actually achieves higher brightness levels, said Chih-Jen Shih, a professor at ETH Zurich.

To date, the researchers have used the AIE process to create what it said is the brightest green ever achieved by any nanomaterial. When integrated with red and blue, the number of color combinations could exceed the 1 billion colors that are achievable with the latest quantum dot technology due for release to the market, said Santos.

Next up is finding a similar process for blue and red, which will enable the display to replicate all of the colors that can be captured by the human eye, the release said.

The new process, which has been reported in Science Advances, offers the added benefit of being highly energy efficient, added Shangchao Lin, the Florida State University research lead.

WOODBURY, NY—Legislative television service The FLORIDA Channel has purchased three Z-HD5000 HDTV cameras from Hitachi Kokusai to enable high-quality video acquisition for its studio productions. The new studio cameras join 26 Hitachi DK-Z50 box cameras installed earlier in the Capitol building’s chambers and committee rooms. 

Located in the state Capitol building in Tallahassee, The FLORIDA Channel is a public affairs programming service funded by the Florida Legislature and produced and operated by WFSU-TV, the PBS member station owned by Florida State University. It features programming covering all three branches of state government, and is Florida’s primary source for live, unedited coverage of the Governor and Cabinet, the Legislature and the Supreme Court. It produces more than 2,500 hours of original programming each year that can be seen on PBS multicast channels, cable systems and PEG (public, education and government access) channels across the state. The FLORIDA Channel also offers 18 web streams that provide live coverage of all proceedings. 

See also: UMass Lowell Goes All In With Hitachi Z-HD5000 Cameras 

Binghamton University Athletics Shoots With Hitachi Z-HD5000 Cameras 

Complementing its live session feeds, The FLORIDA Channel produces studio programs including live “Capitol Update” newscasts, the “Florida Face to Face” interview series, and “Perspectives,” which lets members of the Legislature introduce themselves and discuss their priorities. When the channel recently performed a total overhaul of its production studio—including a new set, new lighting, new teleprompters and more—they took the opportunity to also replace their decade-old cameras as part of the project. 

Picture quality was similarly a key factor when The FLORIDA Channel first selected the DK-Z50 box cameras to replace outdated, non-widescreen models in select rooms. 

Eight DK-Z50 cameras are now used in the House chamber, with six more in the Senate chamber and another six in each of the two largest committee rooms in the Knott Building. All of the DK-Z50s are paired with FUJINON HAs18x7.6BZD-T5DD zoom lenses and operated robotically on Ross Video CamBot 500 Series pan/tilt heads. 

PARK RIDGE, N.J.—Sony Electronics unveiled its new flagship Z-series 4K Ultra HD TVs with what the company called a significant leap forward for high dynamic range (HDR)contrast and color over its previous flagship X series.

The new Z series incorporates the Backlight Master Drive backlight boosting technology that Sony introduced as a prototype at CES 2016, which expands brightness and contrast, the company said. To further enhance contrast, the Backlight Master Drive features a dense LED structure with a more accurate lighting algorithm, discrete lighting control, and a unique optical design with a calibrated beam LED to deliver deep blacks and brighter lights.

Previously, local dimming was controlled by zones with several LEDs whereas the discrete LED control feature dims and boosts each LED individually. A unique optical structure — a calibrated beam LED design — gathers the emitted LED lights in a spot and focuses the drive area more narrowly to display higher contrast. It also reduces light diffusion and the flare effects.

The Z series also features a newly developed 4K image processor, the 4K HDR Processor X1 Extreme, with 40 percent more real-time image processing power than Sony's previous 4K Processor X1. It Incorporates three new technologies: object-based HDR remaster, dual database processing, and Super Bit Mapping 4K HDR, which analyzes images in each scene and corrects the color and contrast of each object individually.

The 4K HDR processor has a database specifically for noise reduction which searches through thousands of picture patterns in the database, analyzing each pixel individually in real-time. The processing removes unwanted noise and up-scales every image to a 4K-quality image.

The Z series also runs on Android TV a new Sony user interface Content Bar with enhanced content navigation, along with voice search and a genre-filtering function.

The Z-series 65-inch and 75-inch class TVs are available for presale immediately, and are on sale at Amazon, BestBuy.com and other authorized dealers nationwide, with expected delivery this summer. The XBR75Z9D retails for $9,999, and the XBR65Z9D is $6,999.

A 100-inch model, the XBR100Z9D, will be available later this year with pricing to be announced.

"The Z series is a generational advance in TV technology, which brings the 4K HDR viewing experience to a whole new level. Our best and brightest HDR Ultra HD television is proof of Sony's continuing commitment to deliver the ultimate home entertainment experiences to our customers," said Mike Fasulo, Sony Electronics president. "With expertise in both the creative and the technical aspects of 4K HDR shooting, editing, recording, transmission and display, Sony understands 4K HDR like no other company. The Z series is a direct result of that unique partnership between our engineering and creative teams."

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication TWICE.

The year 1996 was a landmark one for broadcasters in the United States. In that year, the federal government revamped the rules governing the industry with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was also the year that the HDTV era was launched in the United States when WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. commenced HDTV broadcasts in July; and it concluded with the FCC’s approval of the ATSC DTV standard at the end of the year. On their own, these were momentous events; in the aggregate, they represented a series of milestones that have influenced the industry ever since.

WRAL Reporter Brian Schrader introduces ATSC 3.0 to Raleigh viewers. That path to digital television was a rocky one, however. The rollout suffered from a lack of content and skepticism on both sides of the aisle; consumers were lukewarm about the cost of HDTV sets (with little to no HD to watch) and broadcasters were skeptical about the costs of transitioning to new technology. There was market confusion over what constituted “DTV” and “HDTV” and the fact that the two were not interchangeable. What drove the move to DTV was a government-mandated transition to digital; with HD being the “icing on the cake.”

Despite such skepticism, some early pioneers took the plunge, most notably WRAL. In the summer of 1996, when the station began broadcasting in HD, there was no approved DTV standard yet, little to no HD content to watch and much of the technology to produce and transmit in digital had yet to be developed. “A TV station will have to completely rebuild,” the station’s chief engineer Tom Beauchamp told TV Technology at the time, adding that “there are a lot of unknowns.”

Perhaps it’s appropriate then that 20 years later—almost to the month—WRAL again made industry headlines with the launch of the nation’s first commercial ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. Operating on Channel 39 under an experimental license from the FCC, the official launch began on June 29, with a WRAL News at Noon newscast and a simultaneous second channel broadcasting a sports documentary shot, edited and posted in 4K/UHD HDR.

The Capitol Broadcasting Corporation-owned station said it planned to use ATSC 3.0 to showcase the capabilities of next-gen TV, including on-demand content, access to multiple sources of video to enhance linear viewing and a number of other 24/7 streams of TV and radio programming in a representation of what it terms “the marriage of broadcasting and broadband.”

WRAL is relying on a number of forward thinking technology vendors including ERI, GatesAir, Harmonic, LG and Triveni Digital to develop and test new ATSC gear. “We will be broadcasting throughout Raleigh and Durham, N.C. and performing test measurements to learn about the characteristics of this new delivery platform,” said CBC Director of Engineering and Operations Pete Socket. “We will share this information with fellow broadcasters and equipment manufacturers to test their new designs in the real world.”

The NAB, along with several broadcast groups are urging the FCC to approve use of the ATSC 3.0 standard by Oct. 1. Coupled with WRAL’s test launch, we’re seeing a rapid move towards real implementation. Where it goes after that will depend on a number of factors, both within and out of our control, but with pioneering broadcasters like WRAL—who continue to demonstrate their technology leadership throughout the past two decades—the chances for success are that much greater.

IRVINE, CALIF.—Vizio and Dolby Laboratories have announced the pricing and availability of the new Vizio Reference Series HDTVs, with a 120-inch version going for a starting price of $129,999.99; the 65-inch model starts at $5,999.99. The TV features Dolby Vision playback technology for High Dynamic Range support, Ultra Color Spectrum for a wider color gamut, an 800-nit, Full-Array LED backlight, 384 Active LED Zones, and a quantum dot panel in the 65-inch model.

Vizio Reference Series Ultra HD HDR LED Smart TV with Dolby Vision content support

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment offers a slate of remastered 4K Ultra HD movies available in Dolby Vision via Vudu, including “San Andreas,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Magic Mike XXL,” “Jupiter Ascending,” “Man of Steel,” “The Great Gatsby” and more. Dolby Vision is also offering content through Vudu, while Netflix has also announced it will remaster content in Dolby Vision.

Additional features for the Reference Series include 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi; Vizio Internet Apps Plus; support from HEVC H.265 codec and Vizio V6 six-core processor; HDMI ports; and audio technologies Dolby and DTS.

ODESSA, TEXAS—According to a recent study from ShoppingNexus.com, 86 percent of all U.S. households own at least one HDTV, with 64 percent saying they own two or more. Of the type of HDTV’s, LED displays are the most favorable at 60 percent, with LCD and plasma displays coming in at 26 and 14 percent, respectively.

For customers looking to purchase an HDTV, price (30 percent), brand (28 percent) and TV size (16 percent) were the three biggest factors. ShoppingNexus.com says a majority of people polled go online to find out relevant information on HDTV deals, with about 12 percent reading reviews. And while brand is important, as indicated by the 28 percent, 58 percent of people say they prefer to shop for the best deal and only 7 percent describe themselves as brand loyal.

ShoppingNexus.com also asked participants about curved HDTVs, but only 3 percent said that they were “actively considering” buying one, while 70 percent claim they are not seriously considering a curved HDTV.

To see the full report, click here.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Chinese regional broadcaster Wenzhou TV is making the upgrade to full HD production from studio to screen. To assist in the transition, the broadcaster has acquired production infrastructure , conversion and switching systems from Snell.

Wenzhou TV will install a Kahuna 6400 production switcher for simultaneous support and conversion of SD, HD and 1080p across all inputs and outputs. For conversion, the broadcaster has gone with a KudosPro dual channel motion adaptive standards converter and a Pyxis router for multi-format signal routing. Lastly, the addition of the Snell IQ Modular provides video and audio processing infrastructure, including D/As synchronization, conversion and audio processing modules.

Wenzhou TV’s HD news service is scheduled to go live in September.

We’ve known about TV personalities and make-up artists and their concern over how HDTV is a little “too revealing,” but film makers also have to weigh the pros and cons of how movie fans react to higher frame rates (“The Hobbit: Un Unexpected Journey,” one of the more notable examples). 

Bloomberg has a story about how prop masters deal with this dilemma as well.