Public Acceptance Will Determine Fate Of Hdtv

If you’re confused about all the digital and high-definition TV talk that’s been coming your way recently, you are not alone.

Broadcasters and industry observers have been scratching their heads, too - not about where TV technology is headed, but rather, about how the new technology can be implemented in the 18-month to 10-year time frame the government has set.

If broadcasters and the people who follow the industry closely are puzzled, you can imagine how consumers must feel about the wider and more expensive rectangular HDTV sets that will be necessary down the road to make the digital concept work.

For the country’s top 10 television markets, digital broadcasting is just around the corner. Broadcasters in these markets have been given until December 1998, to have at least three digital stations on the air. Others have until the year 2008.

Little wonder the major broadcasters are frantically scrambling right now to gear up for a concept that, at best, is experimental - and, at worst, is complicated and unproved over a period of time.

Digital TV is to the ‘90s as fiber-optics was to radio in the ‘80s. Fiber-optic cables transformed radio with clear-as-a-bell transmission, an improvement from the telephone or so-called land lines of a decade ago. The advent of digital TV is expected to bring about clearer and sharper video images, the likes of which broadcast engineers say the country has not seen.

At least, that’s the objective of the Federal Communications Commission, which is making a controversial multi-billion-dollar broadcasting spectrum available so that the nation’s television stations can say good-bye to a cumbersome analog system that has worn out its welcome.

Some feel broadcasters are getting off lightly by not having to pay for the digital spectrum, which, by some estimates, could net the U.S. Treasury up to $70 billion if the government had decided to auction broadcasting channels.

But broadcasters say that even with the separate digital channel being made available by the government, their costs for digital programming down the road could run well into seven figures. And that’s just to get digital geared up to go on the air.

Some liken the new digital concept to the transition from black and white television in the early ‘60s to color as we know it today.

I wouldn’t go that far, as someone who admittedly ranked color TV back then right up there among the greatest of technological accomplishments this century - sliced bread notwithstanding. But even occasional cynics like me have to acknowledge the introduction of almost surrealistic TV pictures in the form of digital images is overwhelming, making it difficult to ignore the concept’s hope and promise.

I just hope this country doesn’t end up having another technological debacle like the one we had a decade ago, when the broadcasting industry introduced AM stereo, followed by digital audio cassettes. In case you missed all the excitement, these two phenomena subsequently went on to broadcasting heaven.

If you don’t have either one by now, you are part of an overwhelming majority of Americans who begged off of what turned out to be a terrible idea - and an ill-conceived industry move.

Let’s hope digital TV does not end up the same way.

The boondoggle involving AM stereo and digital audio cassettes still has planners in a funk. Industry movers and shakers wonder what went wrong - and why. But then, as now, technology was in the midst of a sprint, while users had wisely opted to jog.

The problem, as I see it, is not in digital TV’s promising future, but in broadcasting’s ability to stuff, in effect, an 800-pound elephant into a 500-pound-capacity box. All while trying to filter a phalanx of mind-boggling video images through a computer via a redesigned rectangular television set about 8-tenths of a second after the initial image has been sent.

These HDTV sets and their projected costs of up to several thousand dollars apiece - could prove equally problematic along the way. The public’s acceptance of digital television will contribute heavily to the make-or-break point at the industry’s cutting edge.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fred Davis Washington State University