In this excellent overview of the strides being made toward an open environment for digital video, the authors describe the issues of moving beyond analog into digital video, with its pitfalls and promises, in language that requires minimal knowledge of the subject. It is a joy to find this courtesy in Communications of the ACM, a publication whose papers are often dedicated to the technologically proficient.

The purpose of the paper is to describe the problems that must be overcome before digital video can be transmitted efficiently and without the loss of resolution that often occurs with analog video. The paper begins with a description of analog video, its limitations, and the multiple standards currently in use. It then transports the reader to the future, where abundant, online programming resources and high-resolution displays bring the world to one’s screen.

The authors discuss and describe the exchange and distribution of digital video content. The issues are digital representation, universal head/descriptor, transcoding between different standards, progressively scanned systems, application data exchange, information ownership and royalties, and harmonization of standards efforts. Next, they explore network and communications issues such as telecommunications infrastructure, scalability, network topologies, flat versus tiered rate, multimedia traffic models, spectrum allocation, broadband channel allocation, and broadband network reliability.

To guide the novice through this paper, the authors thoughtfully include two tables that decode acronyms: the first deals with analog and digital video formats and the second with network protocols. Liebhold and Hoffert do an excellent job of writing for a wide audience. The paper merits reading by the novice for information and by the specialist for state-of-the-art issues.