Taking good notes in HDTV history
HDTV history in the strictest sense of the word may have started way back in 1949 in France where the government launched 819 lines television which was the first high definition public tv network. It even remained in operation up to the year 1983. The government of Russia, USSR back then, imposed a "transformer", its first high resolution tv system with the ability to generate a picture composed of 1,125 resolution lines. Its goal was to make high quality tv conferences for the military brass.
HDTV history in Japan started in 1969 when NHK Nippon Hoso Kyokai developed its first commercial bound high definition tv system. It was only used publicly for commercial purposes in the late 1990s since they encountered a big financial hurdle to provide the structure for the system.
Another HDTV history moment occurred in 1983 when the International Telecommunication Union ITU-R set up a working committee to standardize a format for HDTV. Among the areas of concern for the committee where conversion and picture rates where discussions were focused on. It was accepted that time that the common aspect ratio would be 16:9. HDTV history marked the start of the competition between 1080i, the actively interlaced lines of resolution and the 1080p, the progressively scanned lines.
Another milestone marked by HDTV history is availability of new digital broadcast standard, a new digital broadcast infrastructure and new sources of digital content. The age-old problem of bandwidth scarcity is being addressed by this new technology. Traditionally, a broadcaster can show only one program per channel with an analog signal (NTSC). This process has been proven to be inefficient and costly. Since TV, radio, cellphones, citizen radio bands, air traffic control, satellites, military and many others use up the bandwidth in a given local area, methods are being developed to maximize this limited resource. DTV is one such solution.
With high definition tv, the broadcaster can transmit from 1 to 4 programs simultaneously in the same required bandwidth for a single tv transmission. It should be qualified too that depending on the format of the programs broadcasted which may reduce the number of programs to be broadcasted.
HDTV history has yet to be written as a resounding success as regular household viewers are yet to be convinced and persuaded to buy new HD TVs or purchase HD TV tuners for their old analog tv sets. The analog format is still very satisfactory for public consumption. The pricing of large HD TV sets have not gotten to the level where middle income groups can afford to buy them.
