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"I can't understand why the government is pushing HDTV.When color took over from B&W ,It was competition and demand that killed the market for black and white sets AND the transmission was compatible."
Well, I'm afraid you got that backassward! A little history...
When color tv came on the scene, The FCC determined from among several competing proposals what the transmission system would be in the United States and the rest of the world went along with it. The system selected was essentially the system developed by RCA, with some minor changes suggested by other companies. This resulted in a single standard that everyone had to use. NBC, owned by RCA at that time began color broadcasts almost immediately, while CBS, who had proposed a different system, refused for years to broadcast in color. NBC lost a huge amount of money because with CBS holding out, NBC could not charge advertisers a premium for airing commercials in color.
When it came to HDTV the FCC refused to take any position and allowed the television industry to decide what the system design would be. This resulted in a ten year delay in any standards being set, and in the end the "free market" set no standards at all. the essentially said let everyone do what they want to. As a result we have a system that allows both progressive scan, and interlaced scan. Uses both square pixels, like a computer monitor, and round pixels like our present TV system, allows broadcasts in HDTV, standard definition TV, and a hybrid of the two called Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV), and both 1 and 4:3 aspect ratios.
Why all the confusion? Because the broadcasters don't want to broadcast HDTV, the can instead broadcast several standard definition channels in the bigger channel widths needed for one HDTV channel, and make more money. THe cable industry also does not wish to carry HDTV because they would not be able to fit hundreds of HDTV channels in the bandwidth they have available as they do with standard size channels. Less channels = less cable revenue.
The computer industry insisted upon progressive scan and square pixels so that HDTV receivers could be used to show computer generated images in native resolutions.
The movie industry insisted on 1 aspect ratio so that movies could be shown in a format close to the original film ratio.
As a result of all this free market lunacy, the TV manufacturers had to design and manufacture receivers that could automatically accommodate and switch as needed among all these different standards such as 480p, 720p, and 1080i. This made the sets more expensive to produce and sell. In the end, HDTV which would have been mass produced and marketed back in 1995, is still not here.
Oh yes, the reason for the new TV frequency spectrum (the new channels) is because television had to be moved to an unused region in the spectrum that had enough room to accommodate the greater channel widths required for HDTV broadcasts, otherwise there would have only been enough room for about ten channels in the old frequency band used by current TV broadcasting.
So all of our problems with HDTV were caused not by what government did, but by what it failed to do. Failed because it lacked the guts to make decisions. The FCC has been completely passive.
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