HDTV information resource - HD TV plasma television

The movie industry is largely to thank for the introduction of HDTV (High Definition TV) into the world of home entertainment.

After the establishment of the widescreen film format, it was soon discovered that audience members in the first few rows of the theater experienced a level of participation and immersion in the movie-going experience previously unmatched. It was not long after that the idea of bringing this experience to television viewing and into the home was addressed.

Sony and NHK developed a high definition TV system in the late 70's that was introduced to producers in the film industry in the early 80's. Dubbed NHK Hi-Vision, this system was capable of producing a picture that had the same clarity and level of detail as 35mm film.

In 1987, US broadcasters petitioned the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to reserve spectrum for HDTV broadcasting. Based on interest, the FCC formed an industry wide advisory committee to investigate options and select an HDTV standard. During this process, four competing groups (one of which was NBC) each proposed their own digital HDTV approaches. Unable to reach a decision, in 1993 the FCC encouraged the competing groups to join forces and, as such, the "Grand Alliance" system was developed. This alliance resulted in the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) standard, which was approved in December of 1996.

One of the first to jump onto the DTV bandwagon was PBS who debuted its HDTV service in 1988. Their first HDTV broadcast was a documentary on the glass artist Dale Chihuly and his glassblowing tour. The documentary was produced by Seattle station KCTS which had been pioneering the use of HDTV for years with a popular series of aerial travelogues.

Seven public TV stations were on air by November 1998 and three more debuted in 1999. Many others stations have jumped into HDTV broadcasting since then. All public TV stations were required to have digital transmitters operational by May of 2003. May 2006 is the deadline being enforced by the FCC requiring that all broadcasters switch to DTV signals. However, this only pertains to over the air transmissions and does not address DTV through cable or satellite. Because of the large amount of bandwidth that HDTV requires, individual cable companies are left to choose whether or not they will move from sending regular analog signals to true digital signals. This also allows for broadcasters to get away with sending signals that are of lower resolution than HDTV (Fox TV, for example, broadcasts in 480p in many areas).