DBS SEEKS RIGHT TO DELIVER DTV TO MORE UNSERVED AREAS

LAS VEGAS -- Satellite operators will press for revisions in the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA) that would allow them to provide DTV signals where none were available from local stations, despite the Grade B contour, DBS executives said at the CES here late last week. The Grade B contour for analog signals often doesn’t indicate where DTV is available, DirecTV Chmn. Eddy Hartenstein said, but DBS can’t provide DTV inside the contour even if DTV signals aren’t available.

“There are large, legitimate areas” where DTV signals aren’t available, Hartenstein said: “There ought to be a way for us to deliver it to them.” EchoStar Chmn. Charles Ergen said the provision should be revised as part of the SHVIA renewal this year: “This ought to be an easy law to get passed, if the broadcasters weren’t the most powerful lobby in Washington. If the broadcasters won’t get you a signal, we should be allowed to. They should either put up or shut up.”

Meanwhile, movie studios are trying to at least partly plug the analog hole in DTV security by asking DBS operators and others to down-convert the resolution of HDTV signals to near analog quality, several speakers said. HDNet Chmn. Mark Cuban said at least one studio had tried to require his company to down-convert as a way of preventing piracy: “We refused to do business with them.”

DirecTV also has had to resist studio pressures to down- convert HDTV signals, Hartenstein said. Glenn Britt, head of Time Warner Cable, said down-resolution was intended to prevent unauthorized duplication of programming: “I think you'll see all the major studios getting behind it.”

The FCC has prohibited requiring down-resolution of broadcast TV signals, said Rick Chessen, head of the Commission’s DTV Task Force, but he said the agency hadn’t made a decision on DBS or cable. Down-conversion was included in the FCC’s plug-&-play rulemaking, he said, and comments are due in about a month.

There was “no connection” between News Corp.’s purchase of DirecTV and EchoStar’s new emphasis on HDTV, Ergen said. However, he said the deal and the expansion of HDTV could give new life to his bid for competing DBS operators to share channels, rather than for each to use satellite capacity to carry Discovery Channel, for example: “This [channel sharing] would strengthen both our companies in competition with cable.”