HBO HDTV Seen By Select Cable Subscribers

As reported previously in our March 24 Todayís News story entitled ""HBO Broadcasts To No One,"" HBO was scheduled to being its first HDTV broadcasts March 6, although, as it turns out, no cable or satellite carriers were ready to transmit the new services to viewers with HDTV-capable sets. Well that is not exactly true. While not aggressively publicizing the service, HBOís HDTV service is currently being offered by New York City-area cable TV operators Cablevision and Time Warner Cable.HBO had previously acknowledged that its HDTV broadcasts of premium movies are currently being transmitted to no one, but says that it will use the early transmissions to fine-tune the system as it waits for carriers to catch up. Those few customers, who are receiving the service, are receiving the service at no additional charge. Reports are that HBO and the cable TV concerns are working out the bugs with these customers, who are on new system that have been ""rebuilt"" with fiber-optic wiring.Reportedly, both cable operators began carrying the signal almost immediately after it was launched at the start of March, but both companies consider the service experimental and so far no scheduling plans have been announced.Time Warnerís test is running a section of Manhattan, and Cablevisionís test covers rebuilt areas of Long Island. Both cable operators are reportedly transmitting service ""in the clear"" using the ATSC-standard 8-VSB (vestigial side band) modulation scheme. This allows for a DTV set-top decoder or DTV television set to decode and tune the broadcast without the need for a special digital cable box. Eventually cable operators will adopt a different modulation scheme. They plan to transcode the 8-VSB signals, which are used for off-air digital broadcasts, to the QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) scheme that cable engineers support due to the systemís more efficient bandwidth.In the meantime, satellite operators are not expected to offer the HBO-HD service until consumer equipment is available later in 1999. Both DirecTV (via USSB, whose acquisition will be complete midyear) and EchoStar (beginning HDTV service this fall) have announced plans to add HBO HDTV channels, but reportedly DirecTV must await its pending purchase of USSB to be finalized first, while EchoStar has not yet delivered HDTV-capable receivers and satellite dishes to market.There has been no announcements by manufacturers of satellite receivers and dishes of new products that would conform to the signal and antenna requirements to receive HDTV broadcasts, but certainly there will have to be a new generation of product introduced by fall as current receivers and dishes are incapable of HDTV reception.