Something To Consider: Lessons from Japan's MUSE HDTV Experiment for the U.S. Market

by Dale E. Cripps
Tuesday, May 4, 1999

I was in Japan shortly following their launch of the "experimental" HDTV services (then and now under the direction of Mario Kumabe of the Hi-Vision Promotion Association). I went to 40 different stores in Japan which carried HDTV receivers and they all told me the same thing--HDTV was being reinvented in the United States as a digital system and the newspapers in Japan had stated that Japan was wrong for going forward with their analog system since it would soon be obsolete. In an attempt to force the MUSE system, the manufacturers made sets without any external means for swapping out decoders or inputs for new decoders. You had a MUSE set period. I am told that sets produced later were made to accept other inputs.

I was told at that time by managers of several high-end stores in Tokyo that HDTV would not take off until this conflict over technical approaches was resolved. The public did not have confidence in Japanese companies to lead in world standards, and they would be making a mistake to buy HDTV until it was resolved. Newspapers in Japan carried this theme in many of their HDTV-related stories. Of course, some citizens did buy into MUSE and partial MUSE, as is the usual case with new technology in Japan. I think it is safe to say that had not the depression hit Japan, more would have done their "patriotic" duty of being the early adopters of Japanese products.

The early cost of the sets was certainly a major factor inhibiting growth, though that did moderate considerably in recent years with both true MUSE and Partial-MUSE. It has been said in other forums that the Japanese market for their HD sets enabled a lower cost-of-entry in the US for HDTV receivers (mainly due to amortization of tube and other component facilities) than had the MUSE experiment not been made. I don't have any hard figures on this and would appreciate any solid references. Japan began the HDTV "experiment" with sets costing $28,000 for a 34" receiver. Had that high-cost been attached to our launch, we would likely be reading the obituary notices for HDTV.

Japan has also learned that, regardless of price, HDTV is not for everyone. This is one lesson that the rest of the world, especially the United States, must learn if reality is to play any part in the final story. HDTV is for today (and the foreseeable future) a limited, but appreciative audience, and any business that does not recognize this as fact is going to spend an inordinate amount of capital trying to woo a market that does not ever exist for them.

One idea that desperately needs more recognition is that we have segmented with quality all future markets. One size does not fit all, at least yet. Trying to shoe-horn HDTV into the common mass consumer infrastructure first is like trying to convert the National Inquirer into a slick coffee table magazine. It can be done, but just because they are both printed on paper does not mean they serve an identical purpose (simulcast).

HDTV must be elevated to a new status through a new business approach that has as its mission to attract those who have time and money to appreciate the finer things of life. It has to have the wisdom to stop there, or, like a class in art appreciation, build a bigger market systematically step by step from raw clay. The programming for HDTV must conform to its technical appeal, or it is no less than printing the content of the National Inquirer in that slick coffee table magazine. What's the point? The Inquirer content is still only worth $.50, whereas the slick with appropriate NEW content can bring 20 times that amount.

Dale E. Cripps