Dr. Richard R. Green is president and CEO of CableLabs, the non- profit research-and-development consortium established in 1988 by the US cable industry. CableLabs will be holding its members-only Winter Conference in Broomfield, CO, next week, at which it will present some of the R&D projects it has been working on over the past year, review various new technologies from 3rd parties, and give members an opportunity to discuss the technological, business and legal issues currently facing the cable industry. Dr. Green recently spoke to [itvt]'s Tracy Swedlow about his background, about his involvement in early digital TV projects, about the first time he met John Malone and Brian Roberts, about developments he would like to see take place in the set-top box market, about ongoing efforts to unify CableLabs' OCAP specification with the ATSC's DASE specification, about the potential impact on the US cable industry if Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquires satellite-TV provider, DirecTV, about what CableLabs is doing to foster the development of ITV, and more.

[itvt]: Could you tell us a little about your background?

Green: I started out in a research laboratory environment, as a research physicist, a theoretical physicist. I have been fortunate in a lot of ways because I've been able to combine that kind of background and knowledge with telecommunications and media. There are not too many other people that have that kind of background and experience, and it helps me a lot in addressing particular problems.

[itvt]: What got you interested in television?

Green: Well, I was always interested in radio, and so I became interested in television when television first came along. I went to work for the television station in Colorado Springs, back when it had one black-and- white camera. At the same time, I was going to college studying physics, so I never really thought of television or telecommunications as a career. I always thought of myself as being a physicist, and of laboratory physics as my career.

[itvt]: How did you end up working in television, and ultimately at CableLabs?

Green: I worked for a while for the US Army Research Laboratory at Fort Monmouth. Then I went to Boeing and worked for the Boeing research laboratory. Following that, I went to Hughes in LA and worked in a research capacity there as well. My background in that context is largely centered around lasers and laser technology, because that had emerged soon after I had gotten out of school. I was very fortunate to be in the laboratory when the laser was first discovered, and to be able to work on some of the first laser devices and equipment. When I was living in LA and working at Hughes, I went over to ABC to visit a friend I had known in Seattle, where I had worked at a TV station--at the same time as I was employed at Boeing, I had worked nights and weekends at the TV station doing remotes and production engineering. However, when I was working for Hughes, it was a full-time job and I didn't have a connection to television. So I went over to ABC and met my friend who had moved out from Seattle and who was working for the network at the time--and I was looking around and started thinking, "you know, this might not be a bad place for me," because there were a lot of good technical ideas that had not yet been applied to TV. Ideas having to do with signal processing, video processing, using computers to manipulate video, etc….

[itvt]: When was this?

Green: This was around 1977.

[itvt]: What had gotten you interested in the idea of using computers to manipulate video?

Green: We had been doing it under the auspices of Department of Defense programs for a long time--at Hughes, we worked on a lot of defense contracts. We had been processing video, manipulating video, in the context of television-guided missiles. During the Gulf War, you probably saw the television pictures coming from missiles: there are TV cameras built into missiles, and they are part of the steering system. There was a lot of advanced technology used in the military that had potential applications in broadcast TV, but it was very expensive technology at the time, so there were a lot of reasons why it hadn't been applied in a TV context. The technology wasn't advanced enough to really handle production-quality video. The ability to put a whole TV picture frame into memory was not feasible, simply because of the cost of the hardware that you needed to do it. But that cost was dropping rapidly, and the processors were getting faster, and it looked like an exciting opportunity to combine 2 of my interests: research and TV. So I took a job at ABC as kind of an entry-level manager in the studio--they call it "engineer in charge." You get assigned to a particular program, and so I got assigned to "Family Feud."

[itvt]: So you knew Richard Dawson?

Green: Yes, I knew Richard Dawson very well. Family Feud was one of those shows that is produced in such a way that 5 episodes are shot in a single day. It was a real learning opportunity, and I really loved the job.

[itvt]: Were you able to incorporate any of your ideas about applying new technologies?

Green: Yes, I went to work for a fellow by the name of Jack Nightlicht. He was very interested in me, partly because of my background in aerospace, and because of my interest in TV technologies. He encouraged me along those lines. Another person I worked with there was Chris Cookson, who is now a senior VP at Warner Studios. He had come from RCA and had a strong technical interest and background, and so we worked together on a lot of ideas for ABC. We actually did apply a lot of new technology at ABC. We were some of the first to do special effects and signal processing.

[itvt]: What computers were you doing this on?

Green: They were specialized computers, they weren't just run-of-the-mill. In those days, you had just begun hearing about Microsoft. They were writing a little operating system called DOS. We put computers together to do video editing, to control machines. There were commercial companies doing this too, but we needed specialized equipment and, of course, we had engineers at ABC who could help us implement things. Most of the time I just spent being in charge of the technical production of programs, but we had some spare time that we could use to do other things. I eventually became head of the post-production department, which did all the post processing of shows. One of the things we did in the industry back then was to use movie projectors to telecast film: the projector would shine the movie into a television camera. I worked with ABC to use flying spot scanners which produce better pictures. "Roots" was one of the first programs done that way, and it was definitely a bit of a risk to change the normal production pattern to this new technology.

[itvt]: Could you explain what a "flying spot scanner" is?

Green: Well, as I just mentioned, film used to be telecast using a projector: the picture went into a TV camera, and that was the way it was turned into television. With the flying spot scanner, you mount the film and you pull it through linearly. There is a little tube in which the light goes back and forth, and there is a spot--a flying spot of light that goes back and forth in a linear pattern. Then, on the other side of the film, you record, you capture the variations in the light produced by the film. The film moves along linearly, and so the flying spot scans the image from top to bottom. By doing that, you can produce a much better picture than you can just with a camera. It's a superior technology. At the time, though, it was just emerging and it was risky because nobody knew how well it would work.

[itvt]: What did you do after ABC?

Green: Well, I got a job offer to go to CBS--actually to CBS Laboratories in Stamford, Connecticut--which I was very interested in. However, I didn't want to go from one network to another--that would have been bad form, because I knew a lot of production secrets and things. I felt uncomfortable going immediately from one network to another, so I went to work for a company in Connecticut called Times Fiber--which introduced me to cable, by the way. The company was developing fiber optics for the cable industry. It was part of a company called Times Cable, which was part of a conglomerate called Silco--short for the International Silver Company. So I went to work there for a year. It was an interesting engineering challenge, working on the early lasers that were used on fiber. I stayed there for a year, and then I went to work for CBS in Stamford, running the advanced TV lab there.

[itvt]: DTV was just emerging at this point, right?

Green: Yes, CBS Labs was doing some of the original work that was done in the US. We were putting pictures in frame storers there. Then I got involved in the international standardization of DTV. So I spent a lot of time in Geneva, helping standardize CCIR Recommendation 601, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard for DTV.

[itvt]: Back then, did people realize how important digital technology could be for TV?

Green: There was an emerging community throughout the world that saw the potential of DTV. In fact, I think the principal advantages of DTV were fairly obvious. There were lots of people who understood its importance, but there were technical difficulties. The solid-state technology, the chip technology that we had available at the time was really stressed to handle digital bit rates. It was very expensive to store a digital picture, and it was expensive to process it. What we worked on was the early stages of trying to figure out how to get an agreement worldwide, so that we would all encode pictures in the same way. Fortunately, we were able to achieve this. That allowed digital recording, because there was a format that everybody had agreed to that could then be transferred to videotape. I was very fortunate to work with a lot of laboratories: with the BBC's laboratory in the UK; with CCETT, which is a French laboratory; and with NHK in Japan, which was doing a lot of good DTV work in those days. So we all worked together to develop what became the world standard for DTV. Then we were able to do our part at CBS, by working on specific aspects of DTV. CBS Labs also had responsibility for CBS Records, so we had numerous conversations with the audio-recording people, telling them that they really should begin mastering with digital tape. I recall we bought the first digital recorder for CBS Records to try to get them started.

[itvt]: Did you think it would take as long as it has done for DTV to start being deployed to consumers?

Green: No. I started working on DTV in 1980. In 1981, I produced the first high-definition program, a football game. It was the Rams vs. the Redskins in the Anaheim stadium, back in December of '81. Then I did 2 short movies with Francis Coppola: one was called "Thick Shots" and the other was called "Double Suicide." Teri Garr and Paul Michael Glaser were in Thick Shots, and a guy named Gallagher starred in Double Suicide. The idea was to see if we could use high definition to produce movies.

[itvt]: How did it work?

Green: It worked: the technology was capable of doing that. The production technique was to shoot it as a movie. We had done the football game like it was a TV show. I had worked with ABC Sports, so I knew how to do it. I didn't know how to do movies too well: you had a different camera and you had to put it on a dolly and shoot under low light. There are all kinds of things different about it. Nevertheless, we wanted to find out if it would work, and it did. So we did these 2 short movies--and I mean short, as in 15-20 minutes. We used Zoetrope Studios to shoot both of them, and we shot them in a matter of a few days. Subsequently, we did the Rose Parade, and an episode of "The Fall Guy" with Lee Majors. Lee owned the show and he was a little resistant because he wasn't sure that it would help his show very much. Nevertheless, we were able to show we could shoot episodic TV.

[itvt]: Presumably the shows looked better? What other advantages were apparent at the time?

Green: The Fall Guy had a lot of stunts in it, and the beauty of shooting with digital video was that you would shoot a stunt scene, and then the stunt people would be immediately in the truck to see what the stunt looked like. Obviously, you can't do that on film. In fact, one of our problems was that, because you had this instant way to see what you got, it could actually slow down production, because people would take a look at a sequence and say, "You know, we can do it again." That is fine for a movie, because with movies, you shoot maybe 2 pages a day. On episodic TV, you have to shoot around 12 pages a day. Another thing that was clear to us was that HDTV is particularly good for presenting faces, compared to standard TV. It shows all the details in the iris, and so on.

[itvt]: So how did you end up in the cable business?

Green: Well, as I mentioned earlier, my first introduction was the year I worked at Times Fiber between working at ABC and CBS. Cable technology was just emerging--this was back in '79. But immediately after working at CBS, I went to PBS in Washington, largely because I was interested in use of HDTV for performance programming, like opera and ballet. So I was at PBS for a few years, and worked with people like Bernie Clark at KCTS in Seattle. In my view, he is probably the premier producer of high-definition programming. If you look at HDTV right now, probably the best productions are on PBS. PBS carries them on a separate satellite channel.

[itvt]: So how did you get to cable from PBS?

Green: When I was at PBS, a group of executives from the cable industry approached me and said they wanted to set up a research laboratory. These were the people who were running the cable companies: people like Jim Robbins, who was CEO of Cox; John Malone, who was CEO of TCI; Amos Hostetter, who was running Continental at the time; and Brian Roberts, who is now CEO of Comcast--Brian was in his 20's back then. Anyway, I met with these people and I was really impressed. This was an outstanding group of leaders, and I really thought that this is an industry I want to be a part of. They all had advanced degrees, they were all extraordinarily intelligent, and they had a real interest in technology. Their attitude was, "Let's find the best technology and deploy it."

[itvt]: Why do you think they were so enthusiastic about new technology?

Green: In part because some of them, like John Malone and Brian Roberts, had degrees in technical subjects. At any rate, I could see that they all had real commitment to supporting development.

[itvt]: Did they interview you for the job?

Green: I was supposed to be interviewed by John and some of the others on the same day that I was testifying for PBS in the House of Representatives (I don't remember what for). I planned to testify in the morning, catch a plane to Boston, and then meet with John and these other executives. The hearing was delayed, so I couldn't make it to Boston, and I ended up talking to John on the phone for a long time--around an hour and a half. We talked about technology, high-definition, digital broadcasting, and so on.

[itvt]: Did he, by any chance, mention ITV or VOD? Was he anticipating those technologies back then?

Green: I think we just talked about every possible technology, I don't remember specifically which ones we touched on. I know he was thinking--as many of his fellow cable CEO's were--of the future. They weren't hiring me to solve problems with cable connectors. What they were interested in was long-term development of technology for the cable industry.

[itvt]: Did they have a vision of the future of cable back then?

Green: There was a sense that the cable plant was a wonderful asset. It passed over 95% of the homes in the country, and had the capability to deliver very high-bandwidth signals. They were just at the beginning of developing the technologies that would take advantage of this, and that was why they were forming the lab. They needed to have a centralized agency that would sort through the technology that was available, so that it could be introduced in a wise way.

[itvt]: Do you know why they chose you to head up the new lab?

Green: I think there were differences of opinion over who they should pick, but the consensus was around me. It helped that I had experience in project management, that I had a laboratory background, and that I also had practical experience in the entertainment business. Especially due to my experience at ABC, I understood a bit about the business climate: when you are in the production business, you're always bumping up against the economics of production.

[itvt]: So how many years have you been at CableLabs?

Green: This is my 14th year.

[itvt]: How do you think CableLabs has helped the cable industry?

Green: There are a series of functions we perform that help a lot. One of the big problems that the cable industry has is that it is Balkanized: different companies own different properties, so you have a series of different companies providing cable service throughout the country. If you are going to be in telecommunications, you have to have interoperability between the companies. Each company has to be able to pass data traffic or telephone traffic from one company to another. When the cable industry was purely in the video business, it didn't matter very much: it was just a passive network, on which you transferred a signal from a broadcast station to a customer's home. However, if you want to be involved in telecommunications, then you have to organize things so that you use the same technical standard for all the companies.

[itvt]: Didn't the cable industry put up a vigorous fight against being defined as a telecommunications industry?

Green: I am using the term "telecommunications" in a very broad sense. I think when the industry opposed being defined as a telecommunications industry, that was because they were opposed to falling under a specific regulatory regime, to being regulated by a framework that really doesn't apply. But returning to your original question about how we've helped the industry: the cable industry's data service, for example, has been a big success. It allows consumers to have high-speed access to the Internet--broadband would probably not have evolved nearly as fast had the telephone companies been the only source of high-speed access to the Internet. The competition that the cable industry brought to the telephone companies by providing a data service has been, in my view, a major advantage to American consumers. The cable industry stepped forward and made the investment to provide this kind of data service. CableLabs' first role was to develop a common framework for the introduction of fiber to cable systems throughout the country. Then we introduced digital, and we were probably the first to put together a specification for a digital device in the home.

[itvt]: What do you see as the major challenges facing the cable industry over the next couple of years?

Green: I think CableLabs' role is to develop a consensus about what the industry needs, and then to specify the technology--including both hardware and software--that will meet those needs. So there is a large amount of effort that goes to continuing that effort. In our modem project, we are moving to DOCSIS 2.0. DOCSIS 1.1 is the next generation which will roll out over the next 18 months, and DOCSIS 2.0 will come after that--we have to be ahead of the industry by a few years.

[itvt]: Presumably, IP technology will play an important role in the cable industry's future. Do you think it has an important role to play in the delivery of TV in the future?

Green: Possibly. Among the projects we are working on is Packet Cable, which is the conversion of the network to the packet network. It will allow the delivery of various services--including video--over an Internet Protocol network. Downstream, there is the possibility to use the packet network to deliver all kinds of services: phone, various kinds of interactive services, and certainly video.

[itvt]: Where does ITV fit into your plans? Does it have an important place in them?

Green: Sure. Another of our programs, OpenCable, has been specifying an advanced set-top box. The program has specified a set-top box capable of handling the software that you need in order to offer attractive interactive services.

[itvt]: What developments would you like to see take place in the set-top box industry?

Green: As you know, the cable industry has traditionally been supported by 2 suppliers, Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola--and now there is a 3rd, Pace. What we would like to see are set-top boxes in which the security is separable. Then any manufacturer could build a box, which could then be equipped to work with a particular MSO's security system. So you could have a mass-market box, or, for that matter, television set, and then you'd plug in the security module, a little card that tailors the equipment to the specific system. If security were separable, consumers would have access to a wide range of equipment that would be made available in retail.

[itvt]: What's your impression of Sony's new Passage technology?

Green: Well, some of what I know about it is under non-disclosure. However, what is public knowledge is that it allows a way for cable operators to add a second conditional access system to their existing plan. Which means they can take advantage of manufacturers building competitive set-top boxes or TV sets. We are obviously looking at the technology side of this to determine where it is going, and we are looking at it in a lot of detail. I think it is too early to tell. It is a new avenue that the cable industry may or may not choose to follow.

[itvt]: Is it sometimes difficult for the industry to reach consensus on its R&D priorities, and on what standards should be in place? Are you dealing with any controversies?

Green: I think that with any technical development there are different views on how things should be done, and then, of course, there are multiple paths to get to specific conclusions. So the discussion is often around which is the best path, and this creates dialogue and, in some cases, that dialogue gets very spirited. We are currently working together with the ATSC [the Advanced Television Systems Committee, an international, non-profit organization devoted to developing voluntary standards for digital TV] to come up with a specification that will provide middleware for interactive cable and broadcast. The ATSC has been developing its own middleware specification [known as the Digital TV Application Software Environment or DASE], and we have been working on one called OCAP [the OpenCable Application Platform]. What we are trying to do is take those 2 specifications and put them together. There is maybe 90% overlap between OCAP and the ATSC specification, and I believe we will be able to reach agreement on most of the elements within the 2 specifications. It would be nice to get to 100%: it makes it much easier for the manufacturer when they don't have 2 specifications to deal with. The 2 specifications were developed by 2 different technical teams that had different ideas about how it ought to be done. So you make a comprise on both sides. I wouldn't characterize any of this as a controversy, but it is an example of how you have to work to bring different ideas together.

[itvt]: Is the OCAP specification proving successful? Late last year, many people were saying that Time Warner was going to announce its implementation of OCAP at the BroadbandPlus show--yet it didn't. Do you know why?

Green: I don't really know about individual company plans, so I can't comment on that. However, there is already a lot of hardware available that can run OCAP. This is due in no small part to the fact that it is based on MHP, a standard which came out of the European environment, and which is now being proposed as a worldwide standard at the ITU. MHP has a very broad base: it already enjoys a lot of support from manufacturers in Europe, and a lot of applications are being developed for it

[itvt]: Do you get the impression from the cable companies you talk to that ITV is something they consider important?

Green: ITV hasn't been a high priority in the US. It has more traction in Europe, mostly via satellite. In the US, the market has been slow to develop, and I think the cable industry here is still looking to see what aspects of ITV its customers would support. I think a key difference between Europe and the US is that the important services, the important applications that have developed in Europe, tend to center around gambling, which is illegal in the US. So the applications that will work in Europe are not necessarily translatable to the US.

[itvt]: For the past few years, the cable industry has faced a lot of competition from satellite. And now it seems likely that News Corp., perhaps in tandem with Liberty, will attempt to purchase DirecTV. What kind of effect do you think such a purchase would have on the cable industry?

Green: I think a company like News Corp. could be very significant competitor. It brings access to content and, in general, is a very competent operation. I think that satellite competition to cable is going to continue to increase, regardless of who owns the satellite service. But Rupert Murdoch is definitely a tough competitor. He has a lot of access to programming--particularly sports programming--and will likely bring a menu that is very attractive to people.

[itvt]: What kind of services will the US cable operators have to provide in order to compete? Do you think they will embrace ITV?

Green: The interactive services in the UK are mostly delivered by satellite, and I think it is possible that, if Rupert were to buy Direct TV, he would introduce those kinds of things here. If he does, cable would certainly compete. It would not be a big leap to do that, but I think that the cable operators have typically waited to see a market develop, and so far the current satellite providers have not provided many interactive services. However, if you stand back and think about this a little bit, in the end, as interactive services get more complex and more compelling, cable will always have a huge advantage. This is because cable has 2-way capability, while satellite inherently is only one way. The return path is very difficult for satellite, so, in the end cable, will be dominant in offering interactive services.

[itvt]: I think it would be fair to say that a lot of people today look at the consolidation and conglomeration that has taken place over the years in the cable industry, and see the cable MSO's as having a huge amount of control over what kind of content viewers get to see, and thus as having an enormous power and influence over the media landscape and American popular culture. Do you think that the cable operators have too much power over content?

Green: Well, the way I look at it is that, before the cable operators came along, there were only 3 highways through which TV content could get into people's homes: the 3 broadcast networks. All content came through those 3, and, if you couldn't get a deal with a network, you couldn't get your content into a viewer's home. So, basically, it limited the possibilities. But when cable came along, it broadened the possibilities, so that people could have access to a much, much wider range of content. So, look what the cable industry has done: it has opened up the spigot so that there are now literally 400 channels. It's allowing more and more content into people's homes. And there is still room for growth: when cable companies are converted to digital, there will possibly be 1,000 channels available. So, the cable operators are making more and more space available for programming.

[itvt]: So you don't think that the cable industry is partly to blame for the lack of ITV deployment in the US?

Green: Well, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a provider of interactive services that has been turned down simply because cable operators didn't want to carry their services. Right now, there are not many cable plants that can support interactive services, so it is not a matter of wanting to or not. It's just that the software--with a few exceptions--has not been deployed yet. So the bottom line is that it is a matter of a development cycle. I can understand the impatience of people who have new ideas: they want to be able to get their products and services out there. But the major issue right now is that there isn't the capability in place to do it.

[itvt]: How can the ITV development community best help the cable operators move the process forward? Should it just wait for the plants to be upgraded, or is there some way that it can work with CableLabs and the cable industry to accelerate things?

Green: Well I think a really outstanding example of how an industry can work with CableLabs and the cable industry is DOCSIS. The cable modem was developed through a real partnership between 2 industries. The cable industry made the decision that cable broadband would be an interesting service that it would like to offer to its customers. The IT industry--by "IT industry," I mean the hardware manufacturers--responded very strongly, saying "Yes, we can build this; we can make it work." And a lot of the R&D came out of the IT industry. Today, we have 250 cable modem models that are certified for multiple headends, and there are 15 or 16 million cable modems deployed worldwide. Cable is now the dominant method of broadband access in the US. So the whole DOCSIS experience might provide a good template for how the ITV and the cable industries could work together.

[itvt]: So how is CableLabs currently working with the ITV industry to move things forward?

Green: Well, among other things, we hold conferences and talk to content developers about the kinds of technology they need in order to deliver their products. At the last Western Show, we attempted to have content providers come in and show their interactive products. CableLabs tries to encourage developers of interactive services to work with us, and one of our primary objectives is to build into the cable plant the sort of capabilities you need in order to deliver these kinds of products. We need to make sure that the kinds of interactive content people want can actually be technologically implemented. OCAP, for example, will open up a whole set of tools for ITV content providers.

[itvt]: What kinds of tools?

Green: For example, much better graphics capabilities than any existing ITV delivery system. The systems in Europe are very simple: they can't provide a lot of graphic quality, or many of the other capabilities that content providers want. Content providers want things like animation and good color. All the operators that are involved in OCAP agree that the OCAP/DASE platform in an advanced set-top box would provide a new level of capability to content developers.

[itvt]: In general terms, what would you say cable has contributed to the world?

Green: I think it is pretty clear that the cable industry has had an enormous influence on the media space in the US. Cable technology is also an important export. I think that multichannel cable has improved the quality of the content available to consumers. In the future, cable plants will offer even more features that will have an effect on the culture.

[itvt]: What accomplishments are you most proud of? What would you still like to accomplish?

Green: I'm happy to try to make incremental improvements on a day-to-day basis. As for things I'm proud of: many people contributed to it, but I think the cable modem has been an important contribution. It came out of a process of gradually solving technical issues and business issues on a day-to-day basis. High Definition is another thing that I am glad to have contributed to. It took a long time, but I am proud to have been a part of that development. It was very satisfying to see both those things come to fruition.

***



Copyright 1998 - 2004 [itvt] | Swedlow. All rights reserved