Research may help bring digital TV signal into focus

[Gregg Lengling]

By Jon Healey
Los Angeles Times

 
Hoping to boost the appeal of digital television, News Corp.'s Fox Group unit and Philips Research announced a new technology Wednesday that they say will deliver perfect digital TV signals to more homes through indoor antennas.

The technology resulted from three years of research into digital TV reception in four major metropolitan areas. The companies' study found no fundamental problems with the way stations broadcast digital TV; instead, the shortcomings were in the digital TV receivers inside people's homes.

The work by Fox and Philips is just the latest in a series of efforts across the television industry to improve indoor reception, one of a handful of issues slowing the transition to digital TV. Such improvement is critical for viewers who use antennas but can't have or don't want one on their roof, particularly those in densely developed cities or hilly neighborhoods.

Even homes with cable or satellite TV frequently rely on antennas for one or more of their sets, such as a small TV in the kitchen. Researchers have found that up to 40 percent of all viewers receive some television through an antenna.

The study by Fox, the Australian National University and Philips Research, an arm of Royal Philips Electronics, found that the biggest difficulty for digital receivers is distinguishing between the original broadcast and the echoes bouncing off of buildings and hills. On a conventional analog TV, such echoes cause ghosts, or multiple images. But on a digital TV, those reflections can wipe out the entire picture.

Andrew G. Setos, president of engineering for Fox, said the team studied the reflections in hundreds of locations around the four cities. Researchers developed software that microchips in digital receivers could use to filter out the reflections far more effectively.