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Our April DACS meeting was a fascinating look into how a high tech company prepares for its future.

Our speaker was long time DACS member, Rich Chernock. Rich received his PhD from MIT in Nuclear Materials. As things happen, however, he got involved with computers and has worked for IBM for the past twenty years. For the last several years he has been deeply involved in research on digital TV and HDTV in particular. He did not talk about IBM projects at all. The only specific reference to IBM came in the form of a mesmerizing screen saver where clip art images of an eye and a bee buzzed around the letter "M" and morphed into the IBM logo. The impact of his overall presentation, however, was that we saw how IBM supports the development of new technology that may, or may not, be a part of its future. It is reasonable to assume that the other high tech players do the same.

The future of TV is digital. Everyone knows that. But is this something that IBM can or should get involved with? The road to our current media environment is littered with the wrecks of companies that either underplayed or overplayed the game. At some point a Lou Gerstner or Sam Palmisano (or whoever) has to bet the company on his (or in Carly Fiorina’s case, her) gut feelings. Those gut feelings, in turn, are formed from digesting the over optimistic wishful thinking of the customer base people, and the over creative, can-do excursions of the technical people.

So how do the decision makers of a company assess the developing technologies for the crucial decisions that have to be made? First of all, the best and brightest are assigned to something nebulously called "research." These researchers are encouraged and supported to get involved with outside organizations and standards committees. They freely participate in the tradeshows and conferences. They smooze with all the others. On top of their own study and work, they are the technical reference. When decision time comes, it all pays off.

The first half of Rich’s presentation was an intro to digital TV (DTV) and the business considerations, both present and future. The second half was a technical description of current developments and capabilities.

Rich’s intro to digital TV started off mentioning some of the various organizations involved, including NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) with which Rich is deeply involved, NTSC (National Television Standards Committee), and others. Several more slides emphasized the scope of the development going on. The government mandate to move to digital, the challenges to both manufacturing and presentation companies, and the business opportunities that will most surely develop, somehow, somewhere, sometime along the way. He pointed out the fundamental change from transmitting pictures to transmitting data from which pictures are derived and the implications inherent in the fact that pictures are only one thing that can be derived from this data.

Rich also pointed out that DTV is reshaping the fundamental nature of the home computer, as we know it, but emphasized that it is definitely not just one more Internet transmission.
He covered the all-important relationship that production companies must have with the audiences that DTV will reach as the interactive service capabilities get into the home. He described the "beer test" adhered to by the developers which says that if the viewer has to put his beer down to interact with a feature, that feature is out.

He continued with an overview of current network presentation of HDTV, which is more than I realized, and the current trend of prices, which are coming down faster than I realized. He brought up a slide showing that DTV is being acquired faster than any media of the past, including PC’s, color TV, and even CD’s.

The intro was broad in scope and established the case for the inevitability of data that both encompasses the entire spectrum of the user’s life pattern and enables his/her immersion in the content of the transmission.
The second half of Rich’s presentation was technical. He toned it down a bit from what he would present at a research-level seminar, but the basic elements of technical edge were there and he delivered it in the same meticulous and comprehensive style he would anywhere.

He described DTV development as defined in system, picture, compression, transport, and transmission layers. The various layers are implemented in various technologies and imply widely varying potentials. This is the time-honored breakdown of a problem to its individualistic components. From the definition comes the approach. Classic research.

Next Rich described the ATSC transmission system; basically, how data can be included in the TV streams. This is the key to expanding the function of the TV box from passive viewing to an immersion, an interactive experience in which the viewer participates. This is Rich’s particular interest. He is a principal in the ATSC committee and the lead author of the reference book of the field, DATA BROADCASTING: Understanding the ATSC Data Broadcast Standard by Richard Chernock, Regis Crinon, Michael Dolan and John Mick, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2001. The book is a bit too far out to make the regional libraries, but it is available from Amazon for $65.
Rich next described set top boxes as basically computers. He covered the technical aspects of handling the data stream by conventional electronics.

The various MPEG-x standards were described. Their differences and functional capabilities were covered and MPEG-2 was described in detail as the method for DTV with packet streaming and multiplexing.

Several slides went into more detail on the transmission factors of separation, encapsulation and packetization. The slides showed the similarities to the mechanisms of current data networking systems.

This technical half of Rich’s presentation concluded with a couple of more slides detailing program specific information and information protocols. They were beyond the ken of most of the audience, but they did add to the technical ambiance and served their purpose in that respect.
During the meeting I sat next to another long time DACS member, Jack Froehlich. Jack and I both worked at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago in the ‘60’s, and at Perkin-Elmer in Danbury during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. We were in on a lot of technical presentations over those years. The second half hour of Rich’s presentation was a déjà vu experience that brought out the "been there" recollections to both Jack and me. At the end we looked at each other and smiled. This was a technical briefing the way it is supposed to be.

Rich would probably not do very well selling some user-friendly software package. He has a deep, resonant voice, but he tends to mumble. He ignores the mike when he gets engrossed in his topic of the moment. Most of his slides were hand lettered and many of them were too hard to read and in too small type. His final DV demo needed explanation, it lost what could have been an impact. On the content side, however, he explained his points, clearly and succinctly. He had no hesitation about telling it as it is, the obscure elements, the copyright morass and the commercial roadblocks. In summing up the overall effect of it all, Jack Froehlich and I both agreed that this was the most meaningful and technically excellent program we have ever experienced at DACS. A substantial number of the audience apparently agreed as there were 25 minutes of questions afterward, mostly highly technical.

Was this the "best" DACS meeting ever? Certainly not in terms of entertainment, raffle prizes, or software package pitch. Meaning is in the resonance of the beholder, but from a background of research and development, I came away feeling that this was the best DACS meeting ever.