The movement gathered strength in the 1980s driven mostly by a fear that Japan would gain commercial domination of everything in the next century in communications technology, thus leading the world.

We all know the US commercial broadcasters viewed it a differently. While feigning distress over this foreign "prowess" (never distressed by the advertising it produced), broadcasters adopted HDTV as a windfall defense for protecting under-used UHF broadcast spectrum in their control against frequency-hungry land mobile. "Being prepared" to meat any challenge is also everything to broadcasters. A moderate cost plan to get prepared for HDTV was integrated into their spectrum preservation plan. They could escape serious injury, they understood, if no competitive threat arose by shelving their modest HDTV efforts, much as they had with DBS.

Europe had a different motive. By contrast to Japan's strength in HDTV technical advantage, European recognized they had to overcome the foreign industrial threat. With a successful HDTV campaign the Japanese could sweep away the domestic consumer electronic businesses-a major jobs and way of life issue with the EC. With both state run broadcasters and the commercial satellite services on the horizon, the likelihood of getting an HDTV service up and running in Europe was greater than it was in America. The EC, European national governments, and individual companies put together huge R&D programs that became, finally, a political embarrassment when the marketplace failed to materialize. The work, however, provided a solid fundamental foundation for HDTV (displays, et al). Europe suffered most from having invested in an analog HDTV transmission system, as did Japan.

Under the guidance of the FCC (as a result of the broadcasters' petition in 1987) the US responded to the "threat" by producing a magnificent advanced television system-the all digital Grand Alliance (GA) terrestrial broadcast system. By the time the GA system was being tested the press and markets in Europe had already grown sullen on HDTV. Europe devoted their remaining advanced television energies to digitizing and augmenting the 625 line systems. The global digital revolution produced standards for both 625 as well as HDTV (which will transcode to the America HDTV standard). Japan is sadly isolated with their analog satellite signal delivery system, which became anchored in after an 8-10 hour per day experimental service began in 1993. They hope to catch up to the digital wave, but not until the year 2007 when new satellites are in service.

Those familiar with the digital systems have little reservation as to their technical viability for broadcasting. Many US networks, NBC, ABC/Disney, and more recently CBS/Westinghouse, have made very positive statements as to their intent to move up to HDTV transmission using the GA standard (if now approved by the FCC). Fox differs most saying that digital is fine (especially for multiplexing), but HDTV is irrelevant.