HDTV standards for home devices aren’t digital

Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers have been active over the past few months in setting up high-definition television (HDTV) standards for home devices. Two proposals have come of this activity, one regarding standards for high-definition VCRs and the other for laserdiscs. Interestingly, both formats are basically analog, not digital.

HD VCR. Japanese manufacturers believe that high-definition VCRs will become a major consumer product category as HDTV programming replaces today’s international broadcast standards. A new format for HD VCRs was jointly proposed by Sony, Matsushita and Hitachi. A cassette with a half-inch metal tape, much the same size as today’s VHS, will enable three hours of recording and play-back, using the baseband (that is, non-compressed analog) signal.

Two different signal formats for recording HD video tapes are supported today by these vendors: baseband and MUSE (Multiple Sub-Nyquist Sampling Encoding). MUSE was originated by NHK, Japan’s national television network, to compress the analog signal for broadcast via satellite, and it is now regarded as the standard HD signal format in Japan. The new format for HD VCRs supports the baseband signal because the three vendors want to produce small HDTV camcorders, such as the current passport-sized NTSC HandyCam from Sony. The MUSE encoder is physically too large to fit into a device of this size, so these manufacturers have chosen not to support it.

The MUSE format is now being considered by the other vendors, including Toshiba, Sanyo Electric, Sharp, Mitsubishi and JVC. If it were adopted, it would immediately become the standard format for future HD VCRs.

High-definition laserdiscs. Japanese vendors also see that laserdiscs could be the delivery medium of choice for HD movies. Five major Japanese vendors — Pioneer, Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba and Mitsubishi –have agreed on a new format for HD laserdiscs. The format enables recording and playback of the MUSE-based signal for up to two hours, using both sides of a 30cm-sized laserdisc with a 670nm semiconductor-based laser.

These vendors had been trying separately to commercialize HD laserdiscs using conflicting formats. Realizing wisely that this was not the way to promote HDTV in the market, they agreed on a single signal format. The new format for HD laserdiscs supports MUSE while the VCR format does not because analog laserdiscs are not capable of holding the vast amounts of audio and video information for a movie on a single disk. While the MUSE compression technology affects image quality, the five companies agreed the trade-off was worth it.

Living in an analog world?!? Both of the formats proposed by the HDTV industry in Japan are analog, not digital. This would seem to go against the grain, as the rest of the world is looking to digital technology to realize the potentials of media integration, and HDTV is an integral part of this plan.

Japanese vendors stick to analog technology because all are in agreement that HD products should be produced now, with the best technology currently available, in order to build markets — and they feel that analog technology is currently still the best. They say they are fully prepared to shift to digital when they feel the markets and the technology have matured. Most are aiming for 1996, when Japanese HDTV broadcast technology is scheduled to shift from analog to digital signals.

Too much to ask. This is a major difference in attitude between the Japanese and their American counterparts. In the U.S., where no HD standard is yet in place, the major manufacturers and technology suppliers have taken a much longer view; future applications and integration of media technologies are the dominant goals. For them, economics decree that developing analog HD technologies is only a short-term fix. The big payoff is going to be digital.

The Japanese seem willing to throw old technology at a new market, with the assumption that they will be able to upgrade that market with new technology at a later date. One has to assume that the Japanese aren’t so blind as to believe that consumers will actually buy two new television sets in a five-year time span. The idea must be to “hook” consumers on high-definition television itself (better image quality, wide aspect ratio, etc.) by selling currently available technology, and to figure out an upgrade path to digital HD when it becomes feasible.

The problem with this view is that it requires broadcasters and producers to upgrade expensive equipment twice in five years — first to analog HD, then to digital. If the global economy continues to be less than booming, we fear this may be too much to ask.