ITV Director Doug Lichvar with the converters that digitize the ITV signal.

This summer, USC's Interactive Instructional Television service (ITV), a pioneer in educational TV since 1972, pioneered in a new area. In July ITV changed over to digital broadcasting, trading in six old channels and taking possession of eight new ones with a much larger signal reach.

For now, the channels are broadcasting only traditional ITV instructional programming - advanced engineering courses visible only in the few locations equipped with digital receivers. But ITV Director of Operations Doug Lichvar says that video offerings both from ITV and the university as a whole will expand this fall as part of the rollout of "wireless cable."

ITV is working with a number of departments outside engineering to offer programming on the new channels. And Lichvar is holding open a whole channel for eventual use as a "USC channel."

Digital video is already familiar in laser discs and in multimedia applications. Most broadcast and cable television signals, are carried in the analog format used since the beginning of the television age. But broadcasting digital signals makes much more efficient use of airwaves. Each existing broadcast channel can, using digital broadcasting techniques, be doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled. Instead of carrying one channel of programming, it can carry two, three or more (the exact number depends on the quality of the video image and sound desired).

The university's step into the digital age is being accomplished in connection with Tele-TV, a joint venture by three large telephone companies, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, and Pacific Telesis.

According to a company goal statement, Tele-TV has ambitious plans to "license, package, acquire, invest in, and create programming" for the wireless system, which will compete both with cable and with satellite broadcasting distributors like Direct TV.

Pacific Bell Video Services will begin marketing the product as wireless cable this fall - a system which will blanket Orange and Los Angeles Counties with approximately 150 channels of entertainment and educational programming, broadcast digitally on channels acquired from USC and other educational and government licensees.

USC and its fellow education and government channel operators received back from the new operation more channels than they gave. Subscribers to the wireless cable system will be able to receive the USC channels, which are already being broadcast from PacBell transmitters on Mt. Wilson and Modjeska Peak in Orange County.

Five of the channels will go on being used to broadcast engineering courses for credit. Use of one of the new channels is being considered by other schools for non-credit and professional development offerings. Another will be used for for-credit courses by other schools - for example, the business school is considering offering its popular credential program for Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) certificates.

Lichvar has the other two channels reserved for general university use — announcements and broadcast of productions by the School of Theatre are among the possibilities, with the creation of a possible "USC channel" a possibility.

The ITV developments are proceeding parallel with another effort funded by the Annenberg Center to initiate a USC Program Service. A main element of that service is "Trojanvision," a programming effort out of the School of Cinema-Television in cooperation with the School of Journalism. Trojanvision will present news, entertainment and informational programming to be distributed via Continental Cable, which serves the university area.

After a test week in April, 1996, the launch of Trojanvision is tentatively scheduled for January 1997, with the completion of a new production facility at the Performing Arts annex. Don Tillman is the station manager.

This fall, ITV has 60 courses on its schedule. These include: "Spacecraft Propulsion," "Brain Theory and Artificial Intelligence," "Optical Information Processing," and "Mathematical Pattern Recognition."

The program has grown from 85 students registered for the first class offerings in Fall, 1972, to more than 2,000 - including both for-credit and non-credit students - in Spring, 1988. (The latter figure is total enrollment in all offerings, and thus likely counts the same student two or three times, if he or she were registered in more than one class.) Last Spring, enrollment in ITV classes totalled 807.

Students attend ITV classes on the grounds of participating corporations, and at independent classroom centers in Newbury Park, Irvine, Commerce, Torrance, and the Norris Medical Library on the Health Sciences Campus.

The digital changeover will give ITV a new capability. Since the system is, like cable, individually "addressable," ITV will be able to offer individuals the ability to attend their televised lectures at home, on their own tv's.

"It's very significant that we now will have access to viewers at home," Lichvar said. "we have the ability to schedule additional replays of the live classes in the evenings as well as add courses that appeal to home viewers during the day. Other academic units will be able to offer programming specific to a home audience. I see many possibilities. But for now, we're pleased that the changeover was accomplished with only a few very minor glitches. We are now up and running digitally."