So much has been written and said about HDTV that one might think the world will stop if we must suffer on without it. While it may not be that important, it most certainly is a marvelous thing to behold and to have in your business and home. More than anything else on the horizon it has the power to define an era where a new and higher standard of living begins in the home. The Chinese have an old saying in their ancient book of changes, Its power of attraction must be great enough to overcome the cost of a conversion to it or this development can fast become an unmitigated disaster. To do that it must remain as HDTV and not be tempted to become something else. If entertainment is too frivolous a reason to re-pave the television infrastructure consider the other changes rushing towards us at ever-increasing speeds. Why, it seems that a new era is always on the doorstep. That is an unsettling fact for many. Rapid, undigested change produces dangerous reactionary conditions. Fear of an approaching unknown is venomous to the system. With HDTV receivers in every business and home becoming your safe "windshield" upon fast-approaching change the fears are mitigated. Familiarity and belonging to the era can further our culture quicker and with more stability than in a time of darkness and closed, shadowy communications. In the safe comfort of your home approaching change for the good becomes appealing enough to accept with litttle delay. But why is it so different with HDTV over standard television? I must leave you to answer that question. No person can say with unchallengable authority that HDTV will do that, or anything else better than what existing TV systems do. Each must gain from a personal experience their own insight into the greater potential, the smarter value, the historical meaning of HDTV. Without that experience you are not really part of the movement to the future. Sorry to say that without a renewed vision heralded through HDTV you are not moving into the next era, but rather extending the last one. I will remind those in danger of losing their foresight that five times more visual information is delivered by HDTV each and every second over conventional television. That increase, when added up over a lifetime, can bring more than the imagination can presently conceive. What will the cumulative effect of that vast increase in information be over 20 years? Over a 100 years? And accumulated in the minds of 150 million people? Of 500 million people? Of 5 billion people? At a minimum our polulations will gain a new sense of the world if a new measure of it is presented to them. Having travled the around the world for 30 years I know that there is much more uplifting beauty than there are ravages and scars. But without HDTV any focus upon beauty is blurred to the point of inconsequence and so the more gross measures are targeted as the interesting content. That course culture reaches us daily without balance from beauty. Old standard TV is fine for relating the horrors of an Armageddon, but suffers beyond correction in presenting a culture dedicated to the sublime things born of an inner grace. So, with the old we are underserved as a culture. How can we judge, then, what economic and social impact this advance in home communications will have upon society over the next 20 to 100 years? Advertisers will be asking this question soon. My personal belief is that they will find a very powerful tool for both creating and making a commercial impactful. I won't go so far as to call this a banaza maker, though it certainly could be. The social visonaries among us are seeing it more as an instrument for expressing the higher nature of man. It undoubtedly works for both.
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