HDTV Origins

Long before high-definition television was in living rooms, it was a contested idea — debated in technical committees, lobbied over in Washington, and chronicled in a small industry newsletter that would eventually become this magazine.

This archive preserves 1049 primary source documents from 1987 through 2004: the standards battles between broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers, the FCC proceedings that shaped the U.S. transition, the early technical breakthroughs, and the on-the-ground accounts of an industry trying to bring a new medium to life.

These are not retrospectives. They were written as events unfolded.