What is the HD status in other parts of the world? Japan started theirs more than 10 (?) years ago. Europe was ahead of us too. I know they started with an anologue system and are now also going digital. I read somewhere that the Europeans are saying that our system is already obsolete. Are they waiting for a "perfect" system or they will just copy ours with some tweaking? Anybody has any details?

From my understanding, the USA was the first to adopt a 480i standard for TV, and as a result, got locked into the oldest format. Other countries with newer systems have better formats since they haven't beeen around for as long.

I think the only other countries with HDTV running are Japan, Canada, and Australia (and maybe S. Korea). Canada and Australia use the U.S. system. There was a large DTV effort in the UK, but it didn’t include HD. DTV stations went on the air and consumer equipment went on sale. Nobody bought it. The effort collapsed and the stations are now gone. They now think that by not including HD, consumers didn’t have enough reason to switch. Now, with the rest of Europe, they are waiting to see how successful HD is in the US. Six months ago I read about a Dutch group that was trying to put one HD channel on a satellite in 2004, but I have heard nothing about them recently.

NHK in Japan initiated development of HDTV in 1962 first as a technical barrier to new players entering into the Japanse broadcasting market due to deregulation which removed the monopoly status of NHK. That focus shifted as Joe Flaherty from CBS sought to create an electronic competitor to film in order to escape the increased cost of production film was imposing upon the networks. Film unions were born in the hay day of Hollywood and did not have the lean and mean nature of the TV unions, but producers wanted to have film's archival value and had to accept the demands of the film unions to do so. To get cost down for an electronic "equal" to film there had to be a big market for the HDTV cameras and post production equipment. To do that there had to be a bigger consumer market potential than Japan could support alone and with a careful eye they followed the work of Joe Flaherty, who had gainsx considerable fame for introducing electronic news gathering to the world.

CBS attempted to install an HDTV system from two transponders on a DBS permit in the late 780s and early 80s but that failed due to the high cost of transponders and the fear of the affiliates that CBS was going over their heads. It was NHK who brought tons of HDTV transmission decoding equipment (MUSE) to Washington DC and proved that their new HDTV production standard could be transmitted from a tower, in this case the old PBS tower in Washington. That sparked the Notice at the FCC which froze spectrum allocations and caused the FCC Advisory Committee to be born and then seek volunteer proposals for transmission from private industry. The fact that the US might consider a transmission system drove Europe to a counter measure that was never fully sincere. They feared that if Japan got a foot hold in the US with the commercialization of HDTV that they could win the hearts and minds of European consumers and doi the same in Europe. The European manufacturers were not yet capable of making a competitive stand with HDTV as there had been no long term engineering done as it had been in Japan with NHK and all of the manfucturers who contract with NHK. European manufacturers said they needed development money and went to the EC (EU then) and formed Eureka 95 with about 100 participating companies and $200 million in subsidies from the EU. They built prototype production equipment in the 1250/50 HDTV format and created a transmission standard (HD-MAC) as a sub text to their then new satellite initiatives just then sweeping Europe. The satellite operators did not like the cost of the bandwidth for HDTV and sought to undermine the interest in HDTV in Europe by having the press characterize it as wasteful spending of EU tax money to make toys for the rich. That effectively ended that round of efforts in Europe, but when digital transmission was initiated by GI in San Diego they sought to organize a digital standard uner the European Broadcasting Union that would have many options in formats and be delivered by an alternative modulation scheme to that being accepted in the USA. They have employed this new digital system in the UK and elsewhere and in general have set the goal for a complete conversion of all of their analog services to digital in 10 to 20 years, but in the process they dropped their focus upon HDTV thinking that it was too much cost for too little gain over a wide screen version of their existing 625 line services. The selling of wide screen 625 resolution receivers and monitors has been quite successful and now Europe looks with fresh concern at the US now that a success for HDTV is surprisingly taking place. European all thought our HDTV initiative was certain to fail and so not any kind of a threat from a business standpoint or even from a global public relations standpoint. Now that it looks like the US will be triumphantly successful with HDTV they must reconsider what they will do to stay in a leadership role ono the world stage and not be left to look as second raters. They have a huge problem and it has no easy fix though their digital standard does have an HDTV format within it. But with a newly installed base of non-HDTV 16:9 sets the introducion so soon for a replacement to HDTV is not well met by the public.

Korea has taken very aggressive steps to make HDTV popularin order to lead the way in Asia and to reduce the introductory prices of their HDTV products in the USA. They presently have a larger per centage of their viewing audiences owning and viewing HDTV than does the USA.

Japan has launched satellite receiver services in HDTV and terrestrial broadcasting is about to be installed. It has been slow going in Japan as consumer prices in the beginning were very high and widescreen standard resolution sets took off as a kind of substitute for those high prices.

That is some of the background. In general the US is leading the global charge and it is now more and more believed that if the US is entirely successful with HDTV the rest of the world cannot be too far behind. Costs will continue to plummet so that the start up of HDTV in other nations will not have as many price barriers as was the case when this nation - the USA -- started.


Dale

Thank you Dale. That is certainly an interesting piece of history.
I got some bits and pieces from the internet regarding the Japanese and
European HDTV developments. It seems both have spent billions of dollars in
this effort and now have to restart more or less from scratch. What surprises
me though is the Korean development. On the other hand may be I shouldn't have.
The Koreans have the world highest penetration rate in terms of broad band internet connection
and their cell phone usage is ranked pretty high too. That country certainly loves technology.
For a change, we pick up a Japnese idea and beat them in their own game and boy, doesn't it feel
great.

Are the other HDTV systems more or less the same as ours or again they will be incompatible
with each other, just like the analogue days? The first European HDTV channel - Europe1080
will debut in Jan 2004. 1080? Sounds like our 1080i.