HDTV and the Transition to Digital Broadcasting

2  A Compressed History of HDTV

After more than a decade of technological innovation, engineering competition, political maneuvering and finally corporate harmony in the Grand Alliance, the Advanced Television Systems Committee Digital TV standard for terrestrial broadcasts was adopted in December 1996 by the FCC. The members of the Grand Alliance were the last organizations left standing in the competition to develop HDTV. AT&T, Thomson, Philips, MIT, GI, Zenith and Sarnoff had survived the wars and banded together to design, build and demonstrate the prototype HDTV system.

The efforts in these R&D labs were a shining example of team building and organizational cooperation, something not seen since the Apollo project. But the significant difference ...