Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know
Sony, Philips, Toshiba and other electronics heavyweights this week unveiled new standards that set minimum requirements for high definition TV receivers. It also unveiled the logo that will help consumers identify compliant devices.
High definition TV, or HDTV, is set to be the next generation in television broadcasts, allowing signals to be broadcast with a much higher resolution than with traditional formats. But until yesterday there was no European standard setting out the types of receiver both suitable for receiving the signals and compatible with TVs capable of showing the broadcasts.
The new requirements were set by the European Industry Association for Information Systems, Communication Technologies and Consumer Electronics, known as EICTA. Other members include Panasonic, Dell, Bang & Olufsen, Hitachi, Thomson, Samsung, Siemens, JVC, Fujitsu, Kenwood and Sanyo.
The requirements and the logo are designed to set out a clear market specification of what constitutes a compliant receiver.
The specification applies to free-to-air and PayTV HDTV receivers, and covers fully integrated HD digital TVs, HDTV receivers without a display that can be connected to “HD ready” display devices and HDTV receivers with recording capability.
The initiative builds upon minimum requirements EICTA announced last year for devices, such as televisions, that will display the broadcasts. Again, those requirements were backed up by a logo – “HD ready”.
Both logo programmes are the result of collaboration between the European digital technology industry, the European public and private broadcasters and infrastructure and service providers, and both will be based on a self-certification regime.
Speaking at the IFA trade show in Berlin, Rudy Provoost, President of EICTA and CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics, said:
“HDTV is going to be the biggest thing to hit the consumer electronics industry since the advent of colour TV more than 30 years ago. We believe HDTV is going to acquire critical mass in 2006, which is why it is so important that EICTA has created these specifications and the logo program now.”
An HD ready display device won't display HD broadcasts unless it also has an HDTV receiver device whether that is integrated in the TV or separately in the set-top box. So consumers need to look for both logos.
A display device can be used to watch pre-recorded HDTV movies even if there is no receiver. The problem here is that such movies are unlikely to fit on conventional DVDs – the file sizes are too large so new formats are required. And EICTA members do not agree on a single new format. Echoing the VHS versus Betamax war of the 1980s, Toshiba and NEC are fighting for HD DVD while Sony is battling for Blu-Ray.