No. 299 (July 2004)

Bookshelf Archive

Newnes Guide to Digital TV

Writing a book on digital TV is a challenge for two reasons. Firstly, there is already a plethora of excellent technical books and publications on digital television and therefore the expectations for a new book are high. The second reason is that the subject is incredibly vast and complex, and is evolving rapidly. Thus it is not easy to strike the right balance between the range of subjects covered, and the detail and depth to be considered.

The book is hyped as "a uniquely concise and readable guide – written by an engineer for engineers, technicians and technical staff and management". In the Preface to the first edition, written in 1999 and published in 2000, the author says that this Guide "is written for those who are faced with the need to comprehend the novel world of digital television technology". The second edition, written three years later, only adds short descriptions of Personal Video Recorders (PVRs), DV camcorders, digital editing software and DVD.

I have a lot of sympathy for the author's ambition to cover all elements of the digital television chain: production, broadcasting and consumption. The number of topics covered nevertheless requires some brevity and, thus, many of the topics are treated only superficially. If the book is intended for a beginner or non-specialist, it certainly provides some overview.

A technically more-advanced reader will however require more in-depth technical information on the key production and transmission elements – which are either not sufficiently covered here or are entirely omitted. For example, the DVB system (which is undoubtedly the most important DTV development worldwide) is only marginally touched upon in terms of modulation and service information. Significant projects such as Multimedia Home platform (MHP), the TV Anytime project, MXF (Material eXchange Format) are not covered at all. It can be understood that DVB-H and advanced coding technologies (such as H.264 and HE AAC+) are not mentioned, as they probably emerged after the 2003 publication deadline.

Spectrum and frequency planning issues for satellite and terrestrial television broadcasting are totally ignored, and yet they are critically important for the success of Digital Television. No consideration is given to IT and IP technologies used in broadcasting. No example of the synergies between broadcasting and telecommunications is given. Neither broadband television nor Internet streaming technologies are seen by the author to be worth mentioning, and yet they are an important part of the digital television landscape today.

This "guide" considers Digital Television only as a more-or-less interesting concept and not as a real-life experience. Which programmes and services are available? Which countries in Europe have embarked upon trials and regular services? How many people are able to enjoy these services? What are the business experiences of major public and commercial broadcasters? These are all unanswered questions.

The book lacks credibility. For a book that claims to be written by an engineer for engineers, I would expect to see a list of the main technical standards, ITU recommendations and other reference documents. There is not even a glossary or any "further reading" references.

In conclusion, the Newness Guide to Digital TV – even in its Second Edition – requires a major remake and an urgent update. In its present shape, I am not able to recommend it to the EBU readership.

Newnes Guide to Digital TV, Second Edition
Richard Brice
Hard bound volume of 294 pages
ISBN 0-7506-5721-9. Price: £25.99
Newnes, 2003
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

(back to top)

MMS – Technologies, Usage and Business Models

MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Services. MMS is an evolution and upgrade of the very popular and commercially successful SMS (Short Message Services), used in mobile telephony today. With MMS, mobile phones become a medium for exchanging not only text messages but also photographs, animations and sounds. It is not surprising that, in the future, other multimedia formats, even video, will also be added.

Today, it is too early to expect that a complete CD album or a feature film could be delivered over MMS. There are three reasons for that: a) network bandwidth prevents a large multimedia file from being sent to a handheld device in an acceptable time frame; b) current storage limitations on the devices prevent large files from being completely stored, and c) downloading or steaming the whole film would be far too expensive for the user. However, it is possible to distribute short video clips or a trailer via SMS.

Orange in the UK offers the latest news with accompanying pictures. The users can be sent the latest news, celebrity gossip, sport (news, previews, match reports for the user's Premiership football team) and the quirkiest of stories – all with pictures. mmO2 in the UK offers MMS across all its European territories. Mobile phones for use with Vodafone Live! are all MMS-enabled, with integrated digital camera, offering instant messaging, e-mail, polyphonic ring phones, downloadable games, location-based services ("find and seek" services) and various portal services. Vodafone-controlled Japanese operator J-Phone launched its Sha-Mail service as early as November 2000. By March 2003, nine million Sha handsets had been sold in an astonishing surge of growth. The low picture resolution of Sha phones does not seem to inhibit service adoption.

MMS is about moving multimedia content between two end points – whether two end users, or a content provider and an end user. Whereas the first scenario is typical of conventional communications (i.e. point-to-point) systems, the second scenario can be seen as a new distribution (i.e. one-to-many) channel, not too dissimilar to a broadcast channel. It goes without saying that we, as broadcasters, must keep an eagle eye on the use of communications networks as a broadcast delivery medium. Indeed, the Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) has been specified in Release 6 of the 3GPP standard (Third-Generation Partnership Project, which lays out the specifications of 3G standards for mobile telephony). MBMS introduces the idea of pushing multimedia content to multiple subscribers. SMS currently incorporates this concept – the "push" concept – in an albeit limited manner, as it is already possible to subscribe to a service such as football results and have them sent on to a number of subscribers located anywhere in the world and made retrievable on request at anytime.

[It is interesting to note that the book does not touch upon the concept of DVB-H, extensively promoted by Nokia and other manufacturers. Will the next generation of MMS embrace DVB-H for broadcast-mode delivery of multimedia content?]

So what is the rationale for mobile operators to roll out MMS? Well it is principally to generate additional revenues. And this is where the main problems lie. Not only are there competing technologies on billing and charging mechanisms, there are also problems of interoperability between different operators. The idea of paying not only for the connection but also for the content will also need to be established.

This book is a very comprehensive guide to all the technical standardization, operational and commercial matters related to MMS. The reader will appreciate the in-depth technical description and analysis of application and network layers, business models and operational systems worldwide. A list of system vendors, industrial forums, regulatory organizations and a very complete glossary are an asset. An uninitiated reader (as myself) will easily cope with a myriad of acronyms and abbreviations, as they are well explained; each figure contains a legend of the acronyms used.

Multimedia messaging is still in its infancy, with many operators trialling services to gain experience and get a feel for offering video content to subscribers. Mobile phones are thus becoming important devices not only for main voice communication but also for the reception of rich media content.

Broadcasters are being challenged to provide and package multimedia content for MMS-enabled phones. This book can be strongly recommended to Technical Review readers who need to inform themselves about MMS – and that includes not just the technical or technology issues but the business models as well.

MMS: Technologies, Usage and Business Models
Daniel Ralph and Paul Graham
Hard bound volume of 360 pages
ISBN 0-470-86116-9. Price: £55.00.
John Wiley & Sons, 2004
Web link

Franc Kozamernik

(back to top)

European Broadcasting Union L'Ancienne Route 17A CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex Geneva Switzerland techreview@ebu.ch