The Retail Story Begins: First HDTV Public Demo at Audio King in Minneapolis, August 1998

by Bruce Jacobs, KTCA
Saturday, August 15, 1998

Part 1
Earlier this week, Audio King; an upscale retail chain of audio and television home entertainment gear in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area, ran a couple of full page ads in the Minneapolis Tribune touting "The First Showing of HDTV in Minneapolis". (Perhaps the "in Minneapolis" was included in small type because KTCA has previously shown HDTV in St. Paul?) The local CBS affiliate was given credit as a partner, although it's unclear why. (On-air promotion, perhaps?)

The ad promoted the amazing advance of HDTV, and showed the Panasonic $5,500 rear-screen HDTV-capable television that would be on display in hourly showings at their Edina Store between 11 and 5 on Saturday. On the next page was a full page ad for their two-day-sale on all televisions at all the stores.

Edina is an upscale older suburb southwest of Minneapolis. The Audio King store is right near Southdale; the "first shopping center in the US" and still a major retail center, if not on the scale of the "Mall of America".

The ad was honest athough a bit misleading, it said only in footnotes that a separate adapter, not yet available, will be required to actually receive HDTV broadcasts.

I went to Edina at 10:30 today, half thinking that there would be a big line like I experience when I facilitated a showing of HDTV in Fargo some years ago. There was no line, and the demo room did not fill it's 70 seats until after the first showing started at 11:00. The next show at noon was only half full. An Audio King guy later insisted that it was going to pick up, and that the invitation-only showing the previous night was packed.

The store was plastered inside with "HDTV, the Coming Revolution" signs, at the end of every aisle, and on the floor leading to the HDTV show room. This is a store where they bring you free pop of your choosing. They want you to stick around and get hooked on something.

The "HDTV" show room had a Panasonic PT-56WXF90 center stage, and stereo audio which they didn't ever play at a listenable level. The spec sheet describes this as a "56" Diagonal HDTV-Compatible** Television with 16:9 Aspect Ratio". "** With DTV Receiver Decoder (1080i only)"

The show started with an introduction by the Audio King manager that was well said, and then a talk by a Panasonic guy from California. They were both accurate and clear, which was very refreshing. They made a big deal about correcting misconceptions; that this is not forced obsolescence, and that this is not a ploy by manufacturers to make people buy new TV's. They talked about how old NTSC television is, and how it's time for a big improvement.

They talked too much about 1080i, 720p, 480i, 480p, in a way that I think would only bore or confuse the average Jane and Joe. They said that HDTV would be available in the Twin Cities in November of 1999. Nothing at all was said about multicasting; not by anybody. Before they showed HDTV, they showed features of the Panasonic TV that it can perform without the converter box. It has a line doubler and a "3D" (what does this mean?) comb filter which indeed results in great looking 480i NTSC or DVD pictures, especially when I later went out and reminded myself what 480i looks like on a large native 480i display. Line structure city.

This display has good horizontal coverage, limited vertical coverage, and good brightness, with three 7" CRTs. It only does 480p and 1080i. All 480i is line doubled to 480p before display, which is a good thing. They showed it's stretch mode for dealing with those few hours of 4:3 content still being broadcast. This leaves the center in 4:3, and stretches the sides to fill the picture. They did not keep this going long enough for me to see what a news set looks like with a wide shot, or what a pan past round images might be like. I can imagine, though. Not pretty. I also think I saw some obvious aliasing from the scan converter needed for the various rescanning modes.

Please go to Part 2