TABLE OF CONTENTS DTV and more importantly, HDTV are on the air. Stations across the U.S. are broadcasting regular HDTV programming and beginning to fashion new business strategies made possible by this new technology. While broadcasters are the most visible early adopters of DTV, many other industries are gearing up and indeed are already making commercials, television programs, and motion pictures using HDTV equipment. Put side-by-side, the breadth of the HDTV applications now finding commercial success is staggering from NASA to postproduction to medical imaging.
This is an exciting time for video professionals and for consumers. New digital television systems, the products of more than a decade of work by scientists and engineers around the world, are on the air. These systems work. They make beautiful pictures. They provides capabilities never before possible. Indeed, DTV system offers features thought to be little more than fantasy just a decade ago.
There are, of course, implementation problems. But, in the greater scheme of things, they are just details. Important details to be sure. But just details.
The launch of every new technology has been fraught with growing pains. Consider what television engineers of the 1950s faced when their management decided that it...
