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Links to other sources of information about DTV standards
Links to standards organizations, newsletters and interesting sites about
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Articles, papers and technical discusions by Craig Birkmaier, related to
the convergence of digital television with other forms of digital media
content. These links will take you to the publication site, an
.html page at this site, or an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF)
file. PDF files can be viewed in your browser with an Acrobat
Plug-in , or downloaded to your computer for viewing with the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Limited Vision: The Techno-Political
War to Control the Future of Digital Mass Media
ACM Networker - June 1997
(14 pages - 209KB) 
This is a pre-release version of an article that will appear in the
June 1997 issue of Networker, a new publication from the Association of
Computing Machines. This article traces the history of the U.S. Advanced
Television process, and examines the opportunity to create a new medium...digital
television broadcasting. A number of important issues are examined, including:
display scalability; digital imaging hierarchies; data broadcasting; DTV
receiver architectures; and local image composition in digital television
receivers and set-top boxes.
A Visual Compositing Syntax
for Ancillary Data Broadcasting
Paper presented at the 31st SMPTE Advanced Motion Imaging
Conference, February 1997
(11 pages - 36 KB)
Ancillary data transmission using the MPEG transport
layer of the ATSC Digital Television standard can enable a wide range of
new services for television broadcasters, and other distribution channels
that carry DTV bit streams. This paper analyzes the data broadcast opportunity,
and requirements for standards to support the local display of information
carried as ancillary data. Managing the program multiplex to optimize the
utilization of MPEG transport packets presents a variety of opportunities
and challenges to broadcasters. The paper examines three types of data that
will be carried in the multiplex: programmed; periodic; and opportunistic.
Programming opportunities for each data type will be identified and the
technical requirements examined.
Resolution Independent Picture Based Coding
A technical overview of resolution independence in
MPEG-2 picture coding systems
(14 pages - 38 Kb)
The MPEG-2 video encoding toolbox, like it's counterpart for single
frame image compression, JPEG, has as its fundamental basis 8 x8 blocks
of pixels--these coding blocks are used to localize the effect of the Discrete
Cosine Transform. In recent years we have grown accustomed to using JPEG
to compress images of all resolutions and aspect ratios, yet MPEG-2 is typically
constrained by "profiles" with rigid image formats. This technical
paper and database illustrate how the MPEG-2 tools can be used to support
a wide range of image resolutions and aspect ratios; decoder performance
requirements are provided for a range of aspect ratios at 11 levels of vertical
resolution.
Report of the SMPTE Task Force on Digital Image Architecture
A 1992 Report on the Architectural Requirements for an Interoperable,
Scalable and Extensible Digital Image Architecture
The SMPTE Task Force on Digital Image
Architecture (TFDIA) was charged with developing and proposing a structure
for a hierarchy of digital image standards that would facilitate interoperation
of image systems. The major objective was to establish the basis for image
systems that are open, scalable and extensible, thus meeting the perceived
needs for image communications in the environment likely to exist as computers,
television and communications converge, enabled by pervasive digital technology.
As editor of the Task Force Report, Mr. Birkmaier worked with leading engineers
from the video, telecommunications and computer industries, to produce this
landmark report on the requirements for motion imaging systems in layered
digital imaging architecture.
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