14.1 Introduction

The development of television officially started in 1884, when the German Paul Gottlieb Nipkow patented his mechanical television system. Since then, electronic, color, high-definition, and digital television systems have been developed in various parts of the world. Several governments, including those of the European member states and the European Commission, the United States, and Japan, have also been developing policies and regulations in this field. As described in Chapters 4 6, each of these countries policies have their own objectives and characteristics.

The previous chapters focused mainly on the European DVB framework. In addition to the technological and standardization aspects of the DVB project, the EU policy is analyzed as part of this framework. This chapter s objective is to describe some aspects of (possible) future developments in DTV. With reference to Chapter 13 s analysis, two future scenarios for society, based on possible roles of governments and market parties, are described. Additionally, the fact that the migration toward the establishment of DTV and CA is not a straightforward process is discussed. Finally, the convergence process, which was identified in Chapter 3, is discussed from a technological and market perspective and from a policy and regulatory future perspective.

14.2 Two future scenarios for society

This section describes a pessimistic and an optimistic scenario on how interactive DTV services, which are provided via a CA system, are established on a mid-term time scale ^[1]. This bipolar approach allows us to clarify the boundaries within which the technological developments could take place.