Canada will be hdtv ready within a year after u.s. networks get up full-steam with their digital broadcasts, says Canada’s top digital tv expert. The problem is no one can tell for sure when that will be.

Canadian Digital Television president Michael McEwen says that, contrary to recent media reports, he believes Canada will be ready to go with dtv at the end of 2001 and operational in 2002.

That is, provided the u.s. market matures in 2002, as is mandated by Federal Communications Commission regulations. But there is still no guarantee of that happening, McEwen says.

‘I don’t really think the Americans are really operational now and neither do they,’ he says.

There is also a question of whether dtv wide-screen products, including hd television, will be readily available and affordable.

‘If we saw all [those] signs, we could plan to go in 2002 and could be operational, maybe not in all the cities across the country, but certainly in the three or four larger centres, and build out fairly quickly after that,’ McEwen says.

McEwen’s agency, cdtv, is an industry-driven organization focused on helping implement Canada’s transition from analog to digital.

McEwen has been quoted in the past as saying Canadian broadcasters would wait until 2004, two years after their u.s. counterparts, in the rollout of dtv.

But McEwen tells Playback the rollout will likely come much sooner.

He says Canada’s approach will be essentially to wait until the u.s. has worked out all the kinks in digital tv and then come on board. Once most u.s. programming is being broadcast digitally, he predicts the market will bring Canada up to speed quickly.

‘The good thing about this strategy is it doesn’t cost us any money to watch and learn from their successes, but to also learn from their mistakes,’ he says.

‘Also, we’re not on the high-end cost curve for production equipment and transmission equipment and the consumer is not on the high end of the set cost either.’

He says there is no need for the crtc to regulate the rollout because the market should take care of that. ‘I think what the crtc needs to consider are not so much time lines as just what is the regulatory framework…like every broadcaster that has an analog licence should get a digital licence and whether there might be some incentives for broadcasters to take up those licences,’ he says.

‘I think that they should start looking at it next year.’