OTHER TECH

WRAL-DT has also been experimenting with multicasting. This past March marked the third consecutive year that the station divided its digital bandwidth to deliver three standard-definition NCAA college basketball tournament games simultaneously, with a fourth broadcast carried on WRAL's analog channel. But WRAL-DT also keeps its HDTV fans happy by reverting back to a high-def broadcast for the Final Four in late March and the championship game in April.

In addition to the occasional multicast, WRAL-DT carves up its bandwidth on a more regular basis to maximize the services it offers viewers. The station's full 19.4-megabyte-per-second (MBps) digital channel allocation is used for sports broadcasts, but at other times it gets divided between 1080i-format programming, a 24/7 NewsChannel, and DTV Plus, a free service that allows viewers to download compressed versions of recent newscasts and other programs to a PC equipped with an AccessDTV card and antenna. The bulk of the bandwidth goes to HDTV (13.5 MBps), while the rest is divided between the standard-def NewsChannel (3.5 MBps or more) and the DTV Plus datacast (1 MBps). According to chief engineer Turner, this distribution allows the station to deliver both high-def programming and additional content without any compromises in image quality. As a safeguard, the station also employs statistical multiplexing, a technique that allows it to "borrow" bandwidth from the standard-def NewsChannel on an as-needed basis.

Wide World of News

With its spacious, circular layout, the studio where WRAL's staff trains its high-def cameras at the on-air announcers resembles the high-tech CNN and MSNBC newsrooms. But a peek into the hectic control room - where a news director juggles live camera feeds with taped segments and graphics - reveals something even more special going on.

I witnessed a live broadcast of the station's News at Noon program during my visit. The control room is built around a large widescreen monitor, and when I came in, it was filled with the image of a local man who had just been released from jail after serving a five-year sentence for a crime authorities are now not sure he committed. As the man waded through a crowd of supporters and into the arms of his mother, the widescreen image helped capture the emotion of the mother/son reunion. If I hadn't been standing in a newsroom, I could have sworn I was watching a movie.

After speaking with WRAL's camera staff, I found the movie comparison wasn't all that far off. According to Jay Jennings, the station's senior photographer and the chief lensman on many of WRAL-DT's high-def documentaries, the shots are composed for widescreen presentation. "I used to refer to other TV programs for inspiration," said Jennings, "but now I look to filmmakers - guys like Spielberg and Lucas." But since the station's analog broadcast is also sourced from the high-def feed, the camera operators have to pay attention to marks on the viewfinder that indicate the boundaries of a 4:3 aspect-ratio picture to ensure that essential information isn't cropped from the standard TV frame.

HDTV is a bona fide hit with WRAL-DT's viewers, but the standard-definition NewsChannel has also proved popular. Similar in style to the Bloomberg Information Channel, the program mixes video with text-based news and other information. During my tour of WRAL's engineering center, I was impressed to see that NewsChannel's production is fully automated. Recent newscasts and CBS business programs like Marketwatch are cycled by a software program that combines them with content from WRAL.com, the station's Web site. The only task left to the station's human personnel is to monitor the process and make sure it runs smoothly.

Cable Comrades

During the first few years of the DTV transition, we've seen broadcasters and cable operators ferociously squaring off over policy issues like must-carry, where the cable provider is forced to carry each channel in a local broadcaster's digital signal. But not here in North Carolina, where WRAL-DT and the local Time Warner Cable operator have forged a cozy partnership. WRAL occupies five channels on Time Warner's digital cable service: one each for HDTV, NewsChannel, and digital retransmission of the station's analog broadcast and two for WRAL-DT multicasts. With cable operators around the country moaning about bandwidth limitations, the WRAL/TWC partnership proves that deals can be struck that are beneficial to both sides - and also to viewers, who benefit from the increased program options.

We're now more than three years into the transition to a new digital TV system, and no other station can equal WRAL-DT's achievements, which include the country's only newscast fully produced in high-definition and a library of locally produced HDTV feature programs. If WRAL's belief that HDTV is the shot in the arm over-the-air broadcasting needs to survive is true, other stations will have to catch up or find themselves out of the game. In the meantime, if you're an HDTV fan, right now nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina.

17 Days of Glory: The Olympics picked up the high-def torch and ran with it

Salt Lake City, UT - It's Day 9 of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and I'm standing in a cramped trailer outside the International Broadcast Center, better known as the Salt Palace. Darrell Ewalt, producer/director for HDNet, counts down as the clock approaches 1 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (MST), the beginning of another broadcast day. "Music," he says.

Drums pound. Trumpets blare. A crisp view of snow-capped mountains fills the wide screen of a 52-inch DLP rear-projection TV mounted at the front of the trailer. "Announce," he says.

"It's a spectacular view of the Wasatch Mountains - made even more dramatic in high-definition TV brought to you on NBC's Digital TV affiliates and HDNet. It's like being there. Now, let's be there at the E Center where Team USA men meet Finland."

On a Clear Day

Before 2002, you had to be in Japan to see any of the Olympics on HDTV. But for 17 days in February, Americans fortunate enough to receive one of NBC's 60 DTV affiliates (serving most large American cities) or HDNet (Channel 199 on the DirecTV satellite service) saw the analog haze lift and the picture widen to reveal 8 hours of original high-definition programming per day. These broadcasts were a true milestone in our transition to a digital broadcasting standard, which otherwise has had the breathless pacing of a curling competition.