This last point truly distinguishes the renewed service promised with HDTV. It does if you believe subtleties play any part in enrichment, in enjoyment, understanding, and better decision making. Standard television filters out most of the informaton we associate with beauty. We are left with a less-attractive conclusion. We have been left looking at boulders rather than the shimmering light from diamonds.

How much more is this true for the frustrated artist who produces entertainment programming for standard television? I speak here again of the sublime visual subtleties that artists cannot use in the telling of their stories using stqndard television. The gross functions--car chases and crude violence or broad humor--that is all they have to work with. Sublime things are filtered away like cartoon drawings trying to immitate life. So sublime things are discarded from our mainstream values since no one can profit from producing and distributing them. Many never bother adjusting their old standard TV sets for this reason. What's the point of adjusting it if the program was made with that quality limitation in mind. Because of the all-important financial return from television, motion pictures have been produced with the visual limits of old standard television in mind. Our entire cultural vision has been filtered downward by old television standards. If its not "as seen on TV," its not seen. With HDTV the options for new story telling grow boundlessly with the new enriched visual/aural presentations in the home. HDTV opens new doors to human expression with its extended range of stimuli. It delivers the rose in all its delicate splindor just well as it does the excitement from a violent episode. Standard television does little more for the rose than suggest its shape. The range needed for full emotional communication is delivered with high-definition television. We are going to have better television, period. I think it is safe to say that that means a better life for those willing to acquire it.

What about the defining events of our times? Both acts of progress and destruction are better intepreted with this new medium. What we are, as a people, is presented unerringly by it. That which polishes and that which tarnishes our cultures is sure to be spotted at a greater distance than is possible with any other visual tool in our quiver. I see HDTV lending an accent to the good--a positive contributor to value bulding. I believe that our society will look upon HDTV as it might when discovering properly corrected lenses after fifty+ years of suffering from near-sightedness. Scoundrels take note...the days of your deception and illusions may be numbered as we embrace this new view.