Welcome to GoLive CyberStudio 3

You have undoubtedly heard that HDTV is having a difficult time getting started. Take heart in the knowledge that every new product of worldwide significance passes through the same difficulty. The printing press was ridiculed as unworthy of the time being spent upon it by its inventor. After all, it was asked by the scribes, who could read in an illiterate world all the books just one press could print? Examine the beginnings of the telephone, radio, and television itself, to see the hardships experienced by those introducing them. In this regard HDTV is quite ordinary--consistent with the past--and all the usual obstructions will surely be overcome. So we must not be overly troubled with the obstructions to introducing anything as great as a brand new era, nor can we afford to be the least bit complacent about anything. As much as history testifies that good things do succeed, there are sad accounts filling libraries which show they can also fail. Complacency and indifference are at the root of most failures of good things.

There are some specifics which must be overcome in order to encourage the rest-of-the-world to advance with HDTV technologies and markets. The religious fervor, so valuable in evangelizing things, went out the HDTV movement the day two world production standards befell its fate. Two incompatible HDTV systems are not the mindset suitable to a new global era. It is a wasteful thing that painfully threatens this great development for humanity. Globally minded investors are not attracted to non-global, technically restricted enterprises. Regionally restricted television in a global era is a discord and can through us back...undermine the eager acceptance of HDTV. If I were king I would say to my engineers, "Fix it please, before the banquet begins."

To insure that HDTV opens up new visual industries we need to "see" a positive vision that says unashamedly that high-resolution systems are good for our cultural advancement. Each person will have to discover the reasons why for themselves. When leaders are aroused by a noble calling that impacts the whole of society, they find new energy, resources, and the resolve to master the situation, and advance like a well equipped army.

It has always looked like the manufacturers would need to fund the beginning and cause the first signals to seed interest in each of the markets. Sony, MEA, and Panasonic have already provided some funding to CBS, ABC, and NBC. One need not think, however, that these manufacturers are the sole economic beneficiaries of HDTV. Manufacturing companies will all change hands, managers, and locations before HDTV's day is done. The contemporary industrialist, governments, broadcasters, and shopkeepers will reap scant returns as compared to the wealth HDTV delivers to the populations of the world. That is absolutely true as far into the future as we dare look. If we don't lose sight of this, we will all act intuitively when we need to. In that we must trust.