The Death of MUSE

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 26 Feb 94 16:31:22 EST
From: wfs () image mit edu (William Schreiber)
Subject: The Death of MUSE




Comments on the Official Death of MUSE.




Actually MUSE is not quite dead, according to the papers the next
day.




However, I think that is just face-saving.  I have believed for at
least a year that the Japanese decision makers (whoever they are) had
decided to let it taper off.  The best evidence was the high price of
receivers and the resultant small number purchased.  At the current
rate of sales, it will remain cheaper to buy back all the sets than
to continue broadcasting for at least the next several years.  This
gives everyone concerned some time to deal with the situation.




As usual, there has been a blizzard of misinformation about why MUSE
has failed.  I dealt with many of the issues in my EC paper last
year.  MUSE was OK for satellite transmission, although dated by its
decades-old source- and channel-coding technologies.  It did not fail
because it was an analog system -- it failed because the US and
Europe decided to use totally different technologies.




Japan is an exporting nation.  It is sure to get a large part of the
equipment market for whatever systems eventually get used outside of
Japan, and virtually all of the market within Japan.  It would be
very uneconomical to make totally different equipments for domestic
use and for export.


It has been clear for several years that the Japanese would
eventually adopt whatever system would be used outside.  This may
offend the engineers, but even Japanese companies have bean counters,
and those people always prevail in the end.




The editorial "HDTV blues" in the Financial Times of 2/23 was full of
errors.




1. The US is unlikely to come out ahead unless we solve the general
problem of the trade imbalance.  Furthermore, the GA system is on
thin ice in several respects, including coverage, reliability, and
spectrum efficiency.  From the business point of view, I don't see
any prospects of investment in HDTV.  What is getting attention is
squeezing several standard programs into one channel.




2. It is not true that only digital signals can be compressed.
Hybrid analog-digital transmission allows as high compression and
better channel efficiency than all-digital.  As far as manipulation
is concerned, that has been all-digital, even in NTSC, for some time.




3. What viewers want is more attractive programs.  Everyone knows
that, except, perhaps, some engineers.  It may well be that the
Japanese waited too long to put MUSE on the air, rather than rushing
standards.  Any waiting for "ideas to bubble up" that was done here
was inadvertent.  The FCC process is some three years behind
schedule.




4. The companies that came forward with proposed systems did, of
course, hope to make money.  I would hardly call that a market-led
approach.  The public will have nothing to say until receivers appear
on the market.  Once the GI system was announced, the Commission (it
is alleged) in fact put heavy pressure on all proponents to switch to
digital.




5. I had once hoped that HDTV might help revive the
consumer-electroncs industry, but I no longer believe that will
happen.  As for the computer companies, interoperability will help
them somewhat.  However, their main problem is staying in business in
the presence of dropping profit margins and very heavy competition.




6. Japan and Europe definitely will develop their own standards.


Interoperability among all three is probably technically feasible,
but it will never come about simply by market pressures.  Governments
will have to get involved heavily to bring this about.




7. HD-MAC never got to the point where programming was an issue. It
collapsed because it was not very good. This, in turn, was due, in
large part, to the requirement of compatibility with 625-line D2-MAC,
a sensationally bad idea.




8. Having spent so much money, Japanese manufacturers could easily
have sold many more sets by cutting the price.  They know very well
how to do this, although, in the past, they have generally soaked
their compatriots and sold very cheaply overseas.  I really believe
they consciously restricted the sales so as to be able to deal with
dropping the system later.


9. The main advantage of the US digital proposal is the use of higher
compression ratios.  However, there are many other problems that I
have pointed out previously.  Unless the US switches to OFDM or some
other channel-coding system of similar performance, I predict that it
will fail in the marketplace.  At least MUSE and HD-MAC worked as
advertised, with the sole exception of the 625-line compatibility
feature in the latter.




W.F.Schreiber   2/26/94


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