Message from the President

It’s been a busy time for us this spring, with a number of conferences and industry events taking place. CDTV has been active in these events, as a keynote speaker, panelist or participation in working sessions. The National Screen Institute, the CFTPA annual meeting, CSUA panel and sponsorship with Sony and ExpressVu of HDTV demonstration, International Institute of Communications Broadcast Forum, a briefing for CRTC Commissioners as part of a CRC initiative, the New Media Conference, and the upcoming World Television Forum, are some of these events.

The Working Groups have also been busy, as the various reports in this newsletter indicate. For your reference, these reports are excerpts of more comprehensive articles, which can be found on our website, www.cdtv.ca.

I encourage you to visit the site, to review the complete articles. We welcome any and all articles and ideas for the newsletter as it is an important tool in sharing information within CDTV.

We are pleased to welcome 2 new members to CDTV; ATI Technologies, and Ottawa based La Cite Collegiale. This brings our membership to 38, and we’re still growing. In fact, we have created a new Working Group in the Production and Training sector, to complement work being done by the Economic & Marketing Group, the Regulatory & Policy Group, and the Technical Working Group.

Digital Television is heating up as a category in retail, with many Brands offering a variety of models and features. As we monitor activity in Canada, it is interesting to note the progress of the DTV roll out in the U.S.

• 1485 (87%) private TV stations have filed DTV construction permits with the FCC.
• 128 stations are on the air with DTV/HDTV programming.
• CEA predicts sales of 600,000 DTV display units by the end of the year.
• The CEA is pushing for more wide screen and HDTV programming from the Broadcasters. A second HDTV channel is planned for US DTH services and a number of pay and specialty services are also making plans for the fall season.

As you know, CDTV is an active participant in the RF Transmission Task Force that the ATSC has established to review the 8VSB / COFDM broadcast transmission issues.

Finally, our Board of Directors is reviewing a number of proposals for new initiatives from the Working Groups that, if approved, will keep us all even more busy that we are now.

We’ll keep you posted as the news comes in.