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A GRAND PLAN to provide European countries with a common television
system to give clearer pictures on existing sets, and at the same time to
provide a stepping-stone to high-definition pictures of cinema quality,
is at risk of collapsing like a pack of cards. With it will disappear an
attempt to beat Japanese industry at its own game, using patents to control
the import of new-format TV sets into Europe from low-wage production lines
in the Far East.

There is currently a bewildering diversity of systems round the world
for transmitting colour TV signals, with varying degrees of incompatibility
between different countries in Europe, even where the favoured system, PAL
(phase alternate line), is used.

In 1986, the European Broadcasting Union, which represents all major
broadcasters in Europe, and the European Community, reached agreement. They
decreed that the new MAC system (multiplexed analogue components), developed
mainly by the Independent Broadcasting Authority in Britain, should be the
future European standard for satellite broadcasts.

Like PAL, MAC builds each TV picture from 625 horizontal scanning lines,
and conveys 25 full pictures each second. But MAC takes advantage of the
wider frequency bandwidth of a satellite channel (up to 12 MHz instead of
around 6 MHz for terrestrial TV channels) to transmit wider and more detailed
screen images as well as digital signals carrying data and sound.

The extra bandwidth also makes it possible to double the number of scanning
lines to 1250 for high-definition pictures of near-cinema quality, while
allowing 625-line sets to continue to receive the programmes. If all goes
according to plan, Europeans will get their first taste of wide-screen HDTV
in 1992 with the Olympic Games in Barcelona.

The plan centres on Europe’s Eureka HDTV research project, EU 95. This
began in July 1986 and gathers together 30 European electronics companies,
research laboratories and broadcast authorities with expertise in TV technology.
The British government has contributed Pounds sterling 4.8 million.

Japan began work on an HDTV system (with 1125 lines) in the early 1970s.
It took more than 10 years for Europe to wake up. By then Japan had a working
system and was proposing it as a world standard.

In May 1986, the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR),
part of the International Telecommunications Union, met in Yugoslavia to
discuss the issue. After heavy lobbying from France, West Germany and Britain,
and a snowstorm of leaked memos, the committee decided not to decide on
a standard until it met again in 1990. This meeting is now scheduled for
May in Dusseldorf, West Germany.

The delay gave Europe four years’ grace and spawned the Eureka project.
The European Community’s RACE and ESPRIT programmes are both also encouraging
research and development into HDTV technology. And the European Commission
is even setting up a special new bureaucracy, the European Economic Interest
Group, to take responsibility for HDTV.

In April 1989, the European ministers approved the plans for implementing
HDTV and ‘articulating’ a plan of action. The timetable is supposed to begin
this year with the manufacture of a full range of HDTV production, transmission
and reception equipment, ready for the introduction of services throughout
Europe from 1992, to coincide with the Barcelona Olympics.

Once EU 95 was moving, there was no shortage of interested firms. The
project galvanised a fragmented industry into concerted action. In October
1989, Nokia of Finland joined Bosch of West Germany, Thomson of France and
Philips of the Netherlands as the leading participants.

Ten separate project groups spread across Europe, including the IBA,
the BBC and Ferguson in Britain, are now developing different strands of
the transmission and reception system. The Eureka directorate in Brussels
says the project is ‘not simply a technological tour de force, it is also
proof of European unity and combined innovative energy’.

The technology behind EU 95 is undeniably clever and based on a hierarchical
approach. Evolution, not revolution, is the project slogan. The fatal flaw
is that the project was so late starting, and vital components for MAC receivers
so late coming into production, that Europe’s home-grown HDTV may never
have a chance of commercial success.

The first working prototype of the Eureka system was unveiled in autumn
1987 at the International Radio Show. It was shown again at the International
Broadcasting Convention in Brighton in September 1988, and again in Berlin
in September 1989.

Conventional MAC sets will simply ignore the digital assistance code,
which carries HDTV information, and display an ordinary MAC picture, albeit
with lower definition and missing the wide-screen picture. (With their 4:3
aspect ratio, ordinary MAC sets will miss some of the side action.) The
new technology works in prototype form, but HD-MAC has a future for domestic
use only if European viewers decide to install MAC equipment in their homes.
This now looks increasingly unlikely.

The grand plan to make Europe MAC territory began to collapse when different
countries in Europe adopted different variants of MAC. France and West Germany
chose D2-MAC, which reduces the signal bandwidth by halving the number of
digital channels carrying sound and data.

The reduced bandwidth lets the signal travel through the cable TV networks
which already exist on the Continent. Britain, with only limited cabling,
adopted the D-MAC system, with a wider bandwidth that gives eight digital
channels. British Satellite Broadcasting, the private company licensed by
the British government and the IBA to provide a direct broadcast satellite
service, is obliged to use D-MAC.

The split standard delayed the production of the MAC microchips on which
the satellite receivers depend. These delays have, in turn, sapped trade
confidence in MAC technology.

The rot was first noticed in June 1988, when Rupert Murdoch shocked
the electronics and broadcast industries by revealing that he would use
PAL to broadcast his Sky Channels from the Astra satellite owned by Societe
Europeene des Satellites, a private company in Luxembourg. Alan Sugar of
Amstrad, previously a supporter of BSB, had warned Murdoch that MAC chips
would not be ready in time for Sky’s proposed launch in February 1989.

In an equally unexpected and far-reaching move in December 1989, the
four West German cable and satellite channels (Sat I, RTL Plus, Pro 7 and
Teleclub) began broadcasting from Astra in PAL. In so doing they voted ‘no
confidence’ both in MAC and in their two national satellites, TV-SAT and
Kopernikus.

Astra can broadcast up to 48 channels from several satellites at the
same place in orbit (19 degrees East), far more than the national services
at various other positions. This has made Astra the ‘hot bird’, the trade’s
name for a satellite on which viewers are most likely to train their receivers.

The fact that most programmes from Astra are now broadcast in PAL gives
Far Eastern manufacturers what they have been waiting for, a market opportunity
for TV sets with satellite receiver built in, rather than clumsily balanced
on top of the set as they are at the moment.

The swing to PAL also removes legal obstacles to integration. The IBA
holds patents on the MAC system, and had hoped to use them in the same way
that patents on PAL protected European manufacturers against cheap colour
TV sets imported from the Far East. The PAL patents expired during the 1980s.

But if there is no demand in Europe for MAC receivers, Far Eastern firms
do not have to worry about the MAC patents. They can simply make all-PAL
receivers. This will have the domino effect of making Astra even more popular
than it is now.

To add to MAC’s woes, engineers now question whether people will want
HDTV in the living room. The advantage of doubling the number of lines becomes
visible only on a screen so large that few homes could accommodate one.
And research both in Japan and Europe over the past five years has shown
that existing TV systems can be significantly improved to offer the sort
of pictures and sound quality which will satisfy most domestic viewers.

‘Clear Vision’ TV sets are already on sale in Japan. These have improved
reception circuits which for the first time do full justice to the 525-line
system (called NTSC) which is used for all broadcasts in the country. The
new sets also incorporate memory circuits which store each picture line
and display it twice to give an illusion of HDTV’s doubled line structure.

Technology similar to Clear Vision is ready for use in European 625-line
sets, but allegiance to HD-MAC has until recently deterred all but the brave
from showing too much enthusiasm. Now there is a wind of change.

In November, Bernard Rogers, chairman of the Technical Committee of
the British Electronic Equipment Manufacturers’ Association, BREMA, surprised
delegates at an electronics industry conference in London when he said that
European homes do not need the high-definition system which is currently
being developed as a Eureka project. BREMA has traditionally supported the
upgrade path to HDTV, seeing it as a way of stimulating sales of new television
sets.

‘HDTV only makes sense for big pictures,’ said Rogers, ‘a lot bigger
than now. So people will have to put up with a big box receiver, or a wall
screen. Where will people put the screen? I don’t want a big coffee-table
TV projector either.’

Further words of warning have come from Antoine Lefebure, director-general
of the French company Technique Media, who described Europe’s HDTV plans
in the French press two weeks ago as having ‘the same effectiveness as the
Maginot line did in 1939. And the Japanese offensive has already started.’

If the Eureka project fails, and Europe remains a PAL community with
TV stations and cinemas screening programmes shot with Japanese Hi Vision
equipment , it will not be the fault of the engineers who have pulled together
on EU 95 and achieved more than even the most optimistic pubicists thought
possible. For many, the blame will lie with those technology policy makers,
both in the political field and in Europe’s electronics companies, who once
again have failed to adopt the long-term view of research and development
which has made Japan so successful.

* * *

How Japan may win the race . . . again

JAPANESE companies have watched Europe’s HDTV plans evolve with undisguised
scorn – in particular Sony, which has spearheaded the development, manufacture
and sale of HDTV equipment that meets the Japanese Hi Vision standard.

Hi Vision operates at 1125 lines, transmitting 30 pictures a second.
The broadcasting company NHK has ‘filmed’ the last two Olympic games, at
Los Angeles and Seoul, with Hi Vision equipment.

Only political concern over the use of advanced technology in the Soviet
Union prevented tests during the Moscow Olympics. During the Seoul games
NHK broadcast two hours of highlights every day by satellite to 200 public
locations in Japan, such as department stores and railway stations.

NHK is now transmitting edited highlights from the Seoul games by satellite
for electronics firms to use as an aid to developing and demonstrating Hi
Vision receivers. The pictures are so crisp that the unpleasant incident
at the opening ceremony, when doves of peace settled on the Olympic flame
and were burned alive when the gas was lit, was all too clearly visible.

NHK plans to broadcast an all-day, three-channel Hi Vision HDTV service
from August 1991. The industry is aiming to mass-produce wide-screen HDTV
receivers in Japan for 1 million yen (Pounds sterling 5000). This target
can be met only if production is heavily subsidised, either by the government
or by manufacturers who want to see Hi Vision create a new world standard
for production and transmission – albeit with minor variations to match
local require ments – just as VHS has become the standard for home video.

Even the subsidised target price for Hi Vision receivers will be too
high to attract a rush of customers. So the Japanese have come up with an
idea which matches the hierarchical MAC-to-HD-MAC strategy in Europe. The
Hi Vision signal is broadcast in a modified form, known as MUSE (multiple
sub-nyquist sampling encoding). Like HD-MAC this squeezes the HDTV signal
into a single satellite channel. An HDTV set produces wide-screen, high-definition
pictures; a MUSE-to-NTSC converter box, that sits on top of a conventional
TV set, converts the 1125-line HDTV signals into a signal which matches
Japan’s 525-line NTSC standard.

So Hi Vision is made to be compatible with the TV receivers already
used in virtually every home in the country. To complete the hierarchical
strategy, the converted 525-line signal will be compatible with Clear Vision
sets that are already on sale in Japan.

The heart of this pump-priming strategy is the MUSE-to-NTSC converter.
It must perform the difficult task of storing each incoming 1125-line picture
in solid-state memory, analysing and averaging the content, then reconstructing
each picture afresh from 525 lines, all in real time.

The first prototypes relied on more than 2000 complex integrated circuits.
This has now been reduced to 80 and the target is a full converter on just
five chips. It was a breakthrough for NHK when Texas Instruments signed
a deal to make MUSE chips in Japan.