History of High Definition Television
Are you curious about the history of high definition television? Well, you may be surprised to learn that this type of viewing has its roots in the movie industry.
Some savvy movie theater owners got together one day in order to study the relationship between the average viewer and the movie experience. What they found was that those viewers in the first few rows were so immersed in the movie that they hardly paid attention to anything else around them. This observation gave these theater owners a novel idea – what if everyone could enjoy a movie theater experience in their own home?
Shortly after this study began to circulate, Sony and NHK came up with a high definition TV during the Seventies. This television, called NHK Hi-Vision, was introduced to various movie producers during the Eighties. Those producers were quite impressed with this prototype, since it could give home viewers the same quality as a 35mm film. As soon as word got around to other companies, each company had their own idea as to how this new television format would work. Eventually, the FCC decided that all companies should band together in order to provide this type of service, those companies (called the Advanced Television Systems Committee) agreed.
Interestingly, the very first station to probe further into this new type of television was PBS. The very first broadcast of this type was in the form of a documentary centered upon glass artist Dale Chuhuly’s work. By November of 1998, seven more stations were using this technology. This pretty much sums up the history of high definition television. It’s amazing to think that all of this new technology began with a simple observation, isn’t it?
Today, nearly every station out there broadcasts in HDTV. In fact, it is hard to find one that doesn’t. Since these stations learned that viewers prefer to watch their shows up close and personal, hardly a viewer out there would have it any other way. Would you like to go back to that earlier form of TV? Chances are, you’d probably regret even thinking about the way that those old TVs used to look!
Now that you know all about the history of high definition television, you can impress your friends and family with this newfound trivia. Or, you can simply sit back, watch TV, and marvel at the way that the world works.