Is DTVís Purported Improved Picture Quality All The Picture Quality Intended?

While there has been much hoopla about DTV and DVD picture quality, one must read the fine print to know that while theoretically, digital technology can offer great pictures, in the real world, economic and time dictates as well as less than stellar demands for quality can cause image quality to be degraded from that intended by its creators.While there are numerous examples of anamorphic widescreen DVD releases that deliver stunning picture quality, there are many, many more DVDs whole image quality is poor. All sorts of digital MPEG artifacts are apparent throughout for a mediocre, if not very poor visual experience. The same scenario is destined to result with digital broadcasting. Compared to short path DVD post-production has to our living rooms, digital broadcasting, using the MPEG data reduction system process, is subject to constant alteration ñ and degradation ñ and a lot can happen to the image quality in what is often a hostile environment. As a result, hard-earned production values contained in the program master can easily slip away with no assurance of consistent picture quality from market to market. A program or commercial may look fine on one station and awful on the next, depending on the series of technical choices the broadcaster can make. Frank Beacham, a New York City-based writer and media producer, noted in a recent article in TV Technology, that during the DVD mastering of ""The Hunt For Red October,"" a motion picture that includes scenes of moving waves in the deep blue sea, it was extremely difficult to successfully encode those ocean scenes. Finally, after much work, an acceptable result was achieved. Beacham says that, ""unfortunately, that result is limited to the DVD release. If ëRed Octoberí is shown on digital television, those shots of the sea will be recoded without the extreme care given during the original MPEG mastering process. With each recoding (which can vary from market to market), those scenes will appear in a different way, causing the filmmaker to ultimately lose control of the look of the movie.""Beacham says that a digital broadcast plant can be a house of horrors for a video image, ""Just look at the possibilities: A tape is received, decoded as baseband, a logo added and then the content is made part of the program stream,"" states Beacham. ""It has been decoded and recoded, perhaps several times. When the process is finished, one thin is certain: The image will not be the same as the original.""Who decides what is acceptable DTV image quality ñ the broadcasters or the content creators? That is an issue that is certain to affect image quality. Beacham says that already, content creators with economic clout thank itís the broadcasters who will ultimately be forced to guarantee a consistent and acceptable standard of image quality. As for a motion picture, no studio contracts deal yet with the issue of DTV broadcast quality, but high-profile directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas are expected to raise the issue in regards to their projects.Writer/director Joel Schumacher (""Batman,"" ""The Client,"" ""A Time To Kill,"" ""St. Elmoís Fire,"" ""8MM"") told Beacham that he is closely involved with the DVD mastering process on his films, but loses quality control beyond that first encoding. ""Itís the same as when we approve a print,"" Schumacher told Beacham. ""The first one may be fine, but what about the next 2,000 of them. No one is going to look at all 2,000 prints to make sure each one is acceptable. Once a film leaves your hands and goes to television, we donít know what they are doing. You can call them and complain, but they are going to pump whatever they want into it.""Beacham says, ""Itís technically possible ñ at a cost ñ to ensure that the original MPEG encoding decisions are maintained throughout the broadcast chain and delivered to the viewerís home TV set. However, the broadcast industry has yet to adopt a universal strategy to guarantee to program producers that viewers will actually see what the creator intended.""