Example research essay topic: Century Broadcast Networks Advanced Television Systems Hdtv - 1,403 words

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Table of Contents Introduction 1 About CBN 1 HDTV Integration 2 Area Researched 3 Technology Involved 5 System Architecture 5 Implementation 6 Future Trends 8 Future Products 8 Companies Involved 10 Regulatory Issues 11 "Dual Carriage" and Multicast Requirement 11 "Must Carry" Requirement 11 Global Implications 11 Technology 12 Data Size and Bandwidth 12 Cost and Fees 12 The HDTV Advantage 13 References 14 Introduction About CBN Century Broadcast Networks, CBN, is a premiere home entertainment television network with five distinctly different channels. Each channel has its own unique name, most channels use the CBN name, and one in particular uses an entire different name. Each channel is maintained at a separate geographic location called broadcasting stations. Each five different broadcasting stations "Channels" have a structured content to them. Meaning CBN supplies different channels to different market segments. According to FCC laws each network must have a family station with all there other broadcasting stations.

CBN has that and much more. The five stations include CBN, which is an exclusive channel. We are a local Television Network; our four biggest competitors include FOX, ABC, CBS, and NBC. On this channel you will find, sitcoms, your local news, sports, nation news, Saturday morning cartoons, movies, and some paid programming. CBNN, which stands for Century Broadcast Networks News, is devoted to give the nation the most unbiased news possible. It stands as being one of the most balanced and unique news station around.

Another station is CBNF, which stand for, Century Broadcast Network Family. This channel is devoted to the family; here you will find cartoons and other family friendly shows. CBNVG is devoted on the information of video games, hence the "VG" of CBNVG. This channel you will find all sorts of information on your favorite system, games, and all other forms of knowledge in the video game world. As for the last channel, here you will find our only station that doesn't use the CBN trademark. It's called AEE; it stands for adult entertainment extreme.

This channel is not for kids, and we will just leave it at that. HDTV Integration Century Broadcasting Network has thousands of shareholders which we have pledged to continually strive to provide the highest quality of television programming at the lowest possible cost. This ensures that ROI's are profitable without compromising quality. This is a great challenge considering the rate to which the technology used in entertainment programming is changing. With analog equipment we easily can get 10 + years out of the components. Conversely with HDTV we would be lucky to achieve 4 - 5 years for most components.

Because of this rate of change and our promise to shareholders, we are exploring new ways to use COTS, commercial off-the-shelf, components to accomplish our goal of transitioning our entire line-up to HDTV format. Area Researched "Nearly every night you " ll see prime-time network TV shows that begin with a 'Simulcast in High Definition' message. " (King) The fact is that the number of programs broadcast in HDTV is steadily increasing. But when did it all begin? Television began in the United States in 1941 when the NTSC adopted the analog television standard. This standard included only a black and what format. It wasn't until 1953 that the NTSC standard was modified to include color broadcasts.

Modification to the standard was made only after RCA demonstrated that its 525 -line color TV system was compatible to the NTSC black and white standard. In January 1954 the first color TV broadcasts began. Television remained relatively unchanged for approximately twenty years. In 1974 Panasonic was the first company to demonstrate an 1125 -line analog HDTV system. A Japanese prototype of Hi-Vision soon followed in 1981. In 1983 the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) was formed to assist in documenting and testing the new advanced television systems.

The ATSC was instrumental in the adoption of the digital television standard. After Japan's NHK network began it's satellite-based broadcasting of Hi-Vision analog HDTV, experts in the electronics industry began to push for the United States government to support a development program for HDTV. The industry argued that if the US government did not get behind HDTV development that the United States would be left behind and disadvantaged in the industry. In March 1990 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) outlined what must be included in a new standard for advanced television. The new standard had to be distinct from the NTSC standard and offer true HDTV quality of at least twice the resolution of conventional TV; HDTV signals had to be sent on unused frequency bands simultaneously with the analog NTSC broadcasts; and conventional signals had continue for a period of time. After the March 1990 decision the development and testing of HDTV exploded.

In 1994 a group of companies -which included AT& T, the David Sarnoff Reasearch Center, General Instrument, MIT, Phillips, Thomson Consumer Electronics, and Zenith - became known as the Grand Alliance succeeded in building the video encoder and decoder as well as transport and modulation subsystems. In July 1996 WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina (a CBS affiliate) and WHD-TV in Washington DC (an NBC affiliate) were the first to broadcast HDTV Commercial signals. Two years later in October 1998 DIRECTV (R) began the first colt-to-cost delivery of an HDTV programming channel. By the end of the year 41 stations across the country included digital broadcasts. In April 1997 the FCC gave billions of dollars worth of broadcast spectrum that allowed digital and analog signals to be broadcast side by side until the last day of December 2006.

On that day all TV stations must permanently turn off their analog signals. Technology Involved It is to our advantage that CBN hasn't been the first-to-market with HDTV and that many, and much larger, corporations have pioneered broadcasting HDTV technology. This allows us the luxury of analyzing what has been the most successful approach to the technology and how to implement HDTV and hopefully with the least amount of investment. Many production houses have implemented 100 % fiber-optic LANs to facilitate the internal transferring of digital format for the various stages of production.

Fiber is the "flavor-of-the-decade" because it provides the bandwidth needed to transfer gigabytes of information without the need of compression, which leads to inevitable artifacts in the data from compression to decompression hops. Since the fiber infrastructure is a hefty cost to implement, and technology in video formats has made major recent advancements, we are recommending the use of traditional IP infrastructure utilizing the mature Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). RTP provides a solid protocol which includes error correction algorithms to ensure that packets are received with the lowest possible collisions and exclusions. System Architecture The system architecture is primarily built on top of a gigabit LAN. The capability to transfer large amounts of data quickly through 1. 4 Gbps pipelines allows for uncompressed communications between workstations without the incurrence of costly fiber LANs. Utilizing UDP/IP and Real-time Transfer Protocols (RTP), the transfer speeds easily reach 1. 4 Gbps threshold.

This is especially important to ensure a minimum level of high-quality broadcasts is maintained and not compromised with compression / decompression hops between workstations. Each workstation is running a Linux OS, with gigabit Ethernet cards and can provide immediate playback of HDTV format on workstation monitors through the X Windows system with X video extension. There are two commonly accepted methods available in transferring data between workstations: circuit emulation and native packetization. Circuit Emulation maps the SMPTE- 292 M signal directly onto IP regardless of the contents. While this method will accommodate any formats prescribed by the SMPTE- 292 M, it is difficult to optimize. Therefore we are choosing to embrace the Native Packetization method which allows for optimization since it can recognize the video data in the packets.

Native Packetization also allows SMPTE- 292 M to remain on each workstation without the overhead costs of transference. The utilization of the existing network topology has only recently been made possible since computer processing speeds have increased tremendously and Gigabit network adapters has entered the mainstream consumer market. These advancements have made it more attractive and affordable for CBN to broadcast HDTV. Implementation The network topology will change drastically from its current implementation. All CBN offices are running 10 / 100 base-T LANs connected to the WAN via T 3 lines. Additions will include acquiring new production workstations and a gig...

Research essay sample on Century Broadcast Networks Advanced Television Systems Hdtv