jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (06/12/89)
In article <7920@saturn.ucsc.edu> koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Steven Grimm) writes: >However, I think HDTV is a waste of time if we can't decide on a world >standard. It makes sense for everyone to settle on a standard at some >point, so if it takes HDTV to do that, I guess it's worthwhile. Better >$500mil on HDTV than on Smurf action figures. :) Maybe so, but there are many political reasons that this won't happen. In particular, there seems to be a move on to create a US HDTV industry and hold the Japanese off as long as possible, which means the standards process will be used to this end (to keep out any foreign HDTV "standards" that are developed first). Also, there is the issue of backward compatibility with existing US TV sets; the FCC has already announced that any HDTV system finally adopted must work with old sets (in the way color broadcasts work with B&W sets). -- -- Joe Buck jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck