It is a perilous leap, no question. But as long as both the opening performance of the new is superior to the old and the headroom for the new is deemed worthy of the risk, then the only smart thing to do is to go for the new and drop the old.
I am no apologist for Congress, CEA, the manufacturers, or broadcasters, but I have been around long enough to know that this issue is very complex and not very well understood. The entire reason you have HDTV today is because Eddie Fritts, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters sold Congress on the idea that free television is essential to our democracy. Free broadcasting provides entirely free signals to anyone who can receive them, be that in their home or in some group home, or whatever the scene is. The point is that an informed electorate is essential to democracy and Eddie convinced the FCC and Congress in 1987 that free TV was threatened until it could compete in the HDTV arena that was just starting to show itself. HDTV was much better fit to cable and DBS (when it would come), and, if wildly popular, could walk away with the power that free TV has to buy original programming and to run a free news service which has accountability (public airwaves-public service) to the govenrment, which the cable news does not.
Last time on these pages I said HDTV was a love affair between a box of lights and wires and we humans. Replacing NTSC television with a completely incompatible HDTV standard is like changing the side of the road upon which we drive for the sake of the view. This nation is doing that at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. Not before a leisurely evening of enjoyment with HDTV in their own home do people know why this transition is fully under way, and why it is needed.
For more than twenty years Dale E. Cripps has consulted leaders in USA, Japan, Taiwan, and Europe about the HDTV revolution now sweeping the world.
Radio spectrum is the chief asset of the American broadcast system. As long as available it has been granted free to qualified applicants in the interest of public service. Without radio spectrum the broadcast business would disappear. The more spectrum broadcasters can have, the better it is... for them. That view must be kept in mind when divining the meaning behind statements touching upon radio spectrum.
Digital television (DTV) technology has the capability to provide clear, sharp, cinema-like pictures as well as CD-quality sound. It can also be used to compress video signals, allowing providers to offer multiple video programming streams in the same 6 MHz slot now occupied by one analog channel.
