ne quickly learns in the consumer electronics business that customer confusion produces "no" in their minds. Any confusion about standards or the product benefits leave consumers deferring a buy. There are those who must have the latest regardless of cost of standards. This group is not one with whom you can build a major CE business. The average customer has to be your target...and the product has to perform flawlessly out of the box with no confusion about operating it or how the primary features are delivered and work. Even a stable standard, as is the case with VHS, takes numerous magazines to define features and price/value before a buying decision is made.
Is HDTV an impulse item? It is too expensive for that. The average consumer is sure to know a great deal about it before plunking down hard-earned yen, dollars, Deutsche marks, or French francs. The consumers will have to be clear in their minds that the standard is going to be supported and last for the life of the product they are investing in. The Macintosh computer did not reach the high market levels because there was a persistent fear that the system would not be supported by software and service vendors. All this is said in an effort to suggest the extreme importance of standards stability in building a major consumer base of loyal customers. In the process of creating a new "species" should a single doubt be introduced in the marketplace about the standard a large segment of skeptical customers will defer buying decisions indefinately and vanish from your market. They will wait until everything is proved to them beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt. Color experienced a painful ride in the US in its early days. Large screen television started off with a bad rap. The name "projector" was stricken from the lexicon. "Big screen" became the new descriptive word. These were preformance problems more than standards problems.
On February 22, 1994 a doubt was raised over the HDTV standard being used in Japan by Akimisa Egawa, director general of the Broadcasting Administration Bureau at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. He made a comment that became widely reported around the world. "Japan," he said, "would now step into the all-digital domain." MUSE would be sacrificed.
A shudder went through Japanese institutions and giant manufacturers. The Japanese Electronic Industries Association quickly called a press conference the following day and denied that anyone else was in agreement with Mr. Egawa. Mr. Egawa was reported to have quickly recanted his "proposal" and talks of his resignation went on the news service wires. Has a new doubt penetrated the minds of Japanese' consumers as a result of Mr. Egawa's observation? I don't believe that there has ever been anything other than doubt in the minds of the Japanese consumers regarding the choice of MUSE for Japan.
Shortly after the start of the Hi-Vision 8 hour per day experimental MUSE broadcast service I went to Japan to report on how the new roll out was going. After visiting Mr. Kumabe at the Hi-Vision Promotion Association facility I went to the Akihabari (electronic town) zone where I found both HDTV and widescreen NTSC sets for sale. In one up-scale "export" store I inquired to the sales manager how customers were reacting to HDTV. "Oh," he said, "there is a very big problem in Japan. Japan has old technology, while the United States has new digital technology."
I found similar comments from sales people all over Japan. Some were not knowledgeable on any aspect of HDTV. They could not answer the simplest question. No peace-of-mind would be found with them. The manufacturers and the government had become suspect. "OK, we know you spent a lot of money going this way, but you may have gone the wrong way and we need to know that objectively.
When I first read the MPT story my reaction was, fine. Japan has again joined the international community in pursuit of the HDTV Holy Grail--a harmonized international standard. But that is what we need now to put the consumer and professional buyers at ease so they can buy something. They are not ill informed and know that the struggle among "enlightened" engineers is to deliver a fully unstoppable standard that fits every nation on earth. It has to be a solution that the politicians cannot destroy. So, why get bogged down with a regional standard when the breakthrough is coming for an international one? We need to have those stable standards that everyone can trust. Standards that will be around for a long time so I can amortize my investments and not be driven to the brink every few days by still another lab tinkering. We need to be able to buy production equipment, and we need to have sets in the marketplace. But none of that is going to happen until we believe we have a working international end-to-end system with international agreements. The cost and the stakes are too high for regional attempts.
Three years ago I was asked to give a talk before Japanese visitors attending the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas. I knew my message had to have something not many would want to hear. "Japan," I said, "would be best served if its first efforts in HDTV failed." This message was not well received, and even less understood. But, according to my studies of ancient oriental wisdom "one must first be able to separate in order to unite." A failure would separate everyone immediately, and the recovery, or uniting (which always occurs), would be a far more powerful statement about what survived as the standard. If MUSE, then Mr. Egawa has served Japan well. If it is moving to digital, Mr. Egawa has served Japan well.
As it stands, Japan looks to be with an orphaned system for 20 years or more. The date of 2007 is often given for when all-digital will be introduced. I wonder what I would buy in the year 2003? In the mean time, China and Taiwan are moving ahead determined to be big players in the all-digital HDTV domain. What if China decides to break from their 50 Hz field rate and move on to 60 Hz? THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT TRADING PARTNER CHINA HAS IS THE US. They need to make what the US wants and they need to have the economies of scale only achiievable in a domestic market before coming to the US. And China said publicly the other day that they will "emulate" the leading all-digital system. That system is US created at this time. It could have been Japanese. But it is clear that China will not take MUSE. Korea, and all other regions in Asia are saying it's all-digital and we need to follow the leader. How about the interoperability with computers one gains with all-digital? Isn't this one of the enhanced payoffs? Will MUSE be a transport scheme of choice for computer and industrial work?
On the other side, there is a huge 1investment in MUSE. We can be very sympathetic to that. MUSE is certain to continue with incremental improvements for some time to come. It is uniquely Japanese--too uniquely. It is being sold in the domestic market and there are 20,000 buyers who would have to have a new decoder eventually installed to keep their boxes valuable. It is a given fact that the MUSE image is no less in quality from the satellite than would be a digital image. There is no real gain there. So, it is understandable why MUSE could persist. There would, after all, be a scrapping of MUSE integrated circuits, and there would be new investment required in new circuits. But as Dr. Tom Stanely of the FCC put it, it is better to make your change now before you are too deep.
Europe has abandon its HD-MAC system in favor of all-digital They did so not because it wasn't a fine enough system at last. Nor was it because it didn't cost them a fortune to drop it. It did cost them plenty. But the view has been that if you leave the international community as a significant contributor at this point in time, you are out of the loop for the next round of electronics. All near and mid-term future electronics are very likely to be driven by high speed digital devices serving first HDTV. HDTV has already spawned some if those devices and has been a huge incentives into display technology research as well. But, if the industry is going to be left with a handful of dissimilar standards the consumer will not be united enough as a purchasing power to pull those other items through the chain with their purchases of HDTV equipment. Nor will there be any willingness to risk the all-imprtant commercial broadcasting if the consumer is in doubt about any part of the reception.
The payoff for re-entering the international dialog on all-digital HDTV is that Japan can then have a say in areas where they have recently lost influence. Once Japan was no longer in the all-digital arena pulling with the rest of the pack, their relevance was lost. Talk about all the VCRs and laserdiscs you like coming from Japan in MUSE, if you didn't have something new to contribute to the digital dialog at conference and meetings around the world you are not quoted in the press. If you are not qoted in the press you are not thought a leader. You become a second class citizen, at least as far as the international dialog for HDTV is concerned. It makes no difference what was done at NHK in 1969, or 1989. What is important, and what makes the news (as illustrated by a mere utterance on the subject from Mr. Egawa), which produces the perception, which produces in turn the willing customers is: what did you do at NHK or any place else last quarter that gives us a better solution for the digital things we are working on today? What did you bring to the table last week? Last month? Last quarter? We know you brought us HDTV in the first place, and we will hang a medal around your neck for that. But, if you contribute now only to international confusion, we might rather see that a noose.
Who has experience in starting a new television service to replace an old one?
The answer is easy. No one has that experience. Starting a new upgraded commercial television service for Japan (or any other part of the world) is a frightful, monumental, and unknown undertaking. No one has faced such a problem in this day and age. There is no experienced teacher to say, "This is the way it has to be done." We can look back on history for clues, but times are not the same. If it is to be done, it will be done only from the strength of the product's attractiveness to its potential buyers, a lack of confusion about it, and a corresponding belief in it by its pioneers. Those receiving paychecks for a day's work, but not dedicated to the cause, will contribute little to the power needed for launching the next generation of television. With all good things the HDTV movement has attracted people of unusual qualities and abilities. But these people cannot act because the road is not cleared of dangerous pot holes, like instable standards. These people tend to be mavericks who have seen a tool of personal revelation and need it for their own inner compulsions rather than seeing it only in commercial terms. These are the same kind of people who started the store front theaters following the invention of the motion picture. They are the same kind of people who became the movie studio bosses and the same kind of people who started the great commercial radio and television networks of the world. They are not of the same kind as are found in the buttoned-down and highly calculated management environments of mature broadcast industries--especially state operated ones.
Ego is a major driving force that launches new things. Individual ego is discouraged in many business models and nations. Great egos, whether we like them or not as neighbors, drive progress more so than the actions of timid and uncertain souls. While great egos may live in a technical babel themselves, they strive to simplify it for others, perhaps an attempt to control their own inner complexities. Great egos think of themselves as the important light to be followed and don't easily understand why there has to be four or five standards just to satisfy the economic well being of "lowly suppliers" of boxes. They think of themselves more from the spiritual side of life than the material. The paradox is that it is this type of personality who makes the most money of all. These people are the wild card, and winning the poker pot is assured before the hand is dealt. These egos tolerate little except a good, working, robust standardized system which everyone can fully rely upon. They don't want to get started in something and then be stopped by some new standards war. They want a vehicle which can take them as far out as they can imagine, to the last mile on earth. They poorly tolerate artificial technical barriers to reaching infinite accord with all of their "beloved" public. This is an utterly passionate group, and it will take this fiery passion to launch HDTV into the minds of the global public--the place where the launch begins.
It is regrettable that the MPT added confusion to an already confused situation. But taking our clue from that ancient wisdom we should say, "Something has been divided and that in the forthcoming union we shall have produced all the more confidence in the standard that is to be chosen, or the one to be retained. Getting caught in the middle wallowing in indecision is our only danger zone." A global standard for HDTV is the only good investment left in HDTV.
Dale Cripps
