EBU Technical Review : No. 273 (Autumn 1997)
Is in-house R&D an unaffordable luxury?
The articles in this issue reflect the proceedings of a seminar organized earlier this year in Munich by the EBU' s Broadcast Systems Management Committee.
A recurring theme at this seminar was the need for R&D establishments to prove that they were cost-effective. Given that almost all broadcasters are under pressure to cut costs and to improve productivity, nobody would suggest that R&D activities should be immune to close financial scrutiny. Unfortunately, it is difficult to produce a traditional analysis of the costs and benefits of R&D activities, because of the long-term nature of many projects.
The outcome of R&D projects is uncertain – indeed, if the outcome were predictable, the project would not be a true R&D project. Given that it often takes 10 years, or more, for an idea to progress from the laboratory bench to embodiment in a practical product, it is understandable that R&D engineers cannot give an accurate and early assessment of the potential value of a particular project.
Some years ago, I was asked how to judge the performance of an R&D team. I suggested various indicators, but concluded by saying that an accurate assessment would not be available for 10 years! This response might seem flippant but, since then, I have become even more convinced that it is impossible to determine the value of current R&D projects. Some very promising ideas may yield no valuable results, whilst other ideas may become surprisingly important.
Managing creativity is always difficult. Some people might challenge the idea that R&D engineers are creative in the same sense as the "creative" staff elsewhere in broadcasting, such as television producers. An engineer gaining a patent is able to prove that he or she was the first person in the world to register a genuinely new idea. How many TV producers can claim such an honour?
The management of R&D activities can become very difficult in an organization where long-term job prospects are uncertain, particularly if their managers increasingly demand short-term results. Recognizing that unsuccessful projects could jeopardise their jobs, R&D engineers might opt for safe and conservative solutions. To avoid being judged harshly 10 years from now, they must resist the temptation to become more cautious. R&D managers must encourage risk-taking as this is an essential element of the very best R&D projects.
It has become fashionable to decry "technology-led" projects. This is exemplified by the idea that the choice of R&D projects should be made by non-technical users – certainly, not by engineers. However, using the benefit of hindsight, we can see that engineers were responsible for all of the broadcasting technologies that are in use today. For example, teletext was not invented by R&D engineers in response to a request from producers or programme controllers. It was developed by engineers who dared to think of something new. Even worse, they thought of something for which nobody, except the engineers, could foresee a practical application.
Nobody, except more senior engineers, asked R&D engineers to work on digital compression of audio and video signals, on DAB, on digital TV or on a huge variety of other projects. All of these projects were driven, if not by technology, by engineers!
Nevertheless, R&D engineers are not infallible. With the benefit of hindsight, the HD-MAC project seems to have resulted in "collective madness". This affected not just R&D engineers in broadcasting, but also consumer electronics manufacturers, network operators and, even, Governments. At the time, many of those involved in the HD-MAC project were, privately, extremely sceptical that HDTV was a commercial proposition, but such fears could not be voiced in public for fear of being seen to be disloyal to an important European initiative.
In retrospect, HD-MAC has left a substantial legacy. On the technical front, the HD-MAC project did pioneering work on multi-channel audio and on the compression of pictures, including motion detection and estimation. Such results have proved immensely valuable in other areas, particularly for digital TV and standards conversion. However, the most important lesson from HD-MAC is that it is very easy to be seduced by technology and, consequently, to over-estimate consumer demand for technological innovations such as HDTV.
Too often, R&D engineers have spent too much effort trying to achieve minor improvements in picture quality. For example, the phenomenon of cross-colour on PAL signals was disturbing to many engineers, despite the fact that members of the public were not concerned about such minor imperfections. Most non-technical people were either unaware of the problem or dismissed occasional spurious rainbow colours appearing on striped jackets as one of those oddities about television, just as it sometimes showed wheels going backwards!
R&D engineers must avoid pursuing a technology simply because it is the "best". They must also never reject technology on the grounds that it was "not invented here". The objective must be to select the "most appropriate" technology for a particular application.
Broadcasters, in particular the most senior managers, must be well informed about the strategic implications of technological developments, without being burdened with unnecessary technical detail. Engineers must overcome the existing communications gap, which seriously reduces their influence on non-technical colleagues. Nevertheless, communications is a two-way interactive process: both parties must try harder in the future.
As broadcasting enters an age of unprecedented competition, broadcasters need to maintain or, ideally, expand their investment in R&D. Now is certainly not the time for reduced expenditure.
Philip Laven
Director
EBU Technical Department
European Broadcasting Union
