Advanced Television Systems (December 1996)

SIGGRAPH
December 1996

In July SIGGRAPH responded to the FCC's Fifth Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making (FNPRM) by sending the letter Tom DeFanti wrote in October 1993 with a cover letter by me.

There was a panel at the SIGGRAPH 96 conference in August entitled: Advanced Television for the United States: Status and Issues. The panel was organized by Gary Demos of DemoGraFX. Panelists included: Alvy Ray Smith, Microsoft, Craig Birkmaier, Pcube Labs, Mark Richer, Advanced Television Systems Committee, and Glenn Reitmeier, Sarnoff Labs. The panel description and position statements can be found in the proceedings, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 1996, pp. 501-502. The panel addressed the issue of suitability of the current proposed standard for computer graphics in a lively and heated debate.

On October 28, 1996, in a copyrighted story, by Rory J. O'Connor, the San Jose Mercury News provided an update on the situation. It reviews the arguments from broadcast, computer, and consumer electronics groups and states that the "FCC Chairman Reed F. Hundt has increasingly adopted the computer industry's position".

The computer industry position is explained by Alvy Ray Smith (dead link to http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/graphics/alvy/) under the Digital Television section and Gary Demos in their WWW pages. The broadcast industry position is presented by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the consumer electronics industry position is presented by the Consumer Electronics Manufacturer's Association (CEMA)