High-definition TV set to make a comeback

Date: 25/07/1996

By Bruce Barnard

FIVE years ago, high-definition television with its cinema quality pictures was the hottest item on the European Commission's industrial agenda, hyped as the perfect launch pad for Europe's fight back in the high tech war with the United States and Japan.

But the UK aborted the take-off by vetoeing an 850-million-ecu subsidy to help Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, state-owned Thomson of France and TV broadcasters to adapt to the new technology. The UK, facing down a furious row with its traditional ally, the Netherlands, was also responsible for the burial of a European HDTV standard, Mac.

Yet at the time, HDTV made sense to European, Japanese and American consumer electronics groups desperately seeking a new magic product to replace the 20-year-old money-spinner, the video cassette.

But after a 5-billion-ecu research outlay, HDTV was totally eclipsed by newer technologies, notably digital TV, which sparked a race between satellite and cable operators as 500-channel TV became a reality.

HDTV has an inbuilt marketing disadvantage. Viewers can tune into digital TV by attaching a decoder to their conventional set. But to watch HDTV they must spend between 1,000 and 13,000 ecu on a wide-screen set with a 16:9 screen ratio. Conventional TVs with a 4:3 format can receive HDTV programmes served up as an elongated picture squeezed between black stripes on the top and the bottom of the screen.

And yet HDTV is close to take-off, according to a Commission report due out this week, thanks to a classical Brussels compromise following the British veto in 1992 which led to the establishment of an action programme with an EU-funded budget of 228 million ecu for 1993-1997. Almost unnoticed, the action plan has brought HDTV back from the dead. By the end of 1995, 39 TV stations in 13 member states had put out 50,000 programme hours in the 16:9 format. The UK's Channel 4 will start HDTV programming in August, leaving only Luxembourg out in the cold.

The industry is also poised to break out of a vicious circle in which consumers will not buy wide-screen sets because there are not enough HDTV programmes and broadcasters will not make the shows because there are too few sets. Sales of wide-screen sets have surged, catapulting the number in the EU above 500,000 - an increase of 64&percent; on last year.

The three pioneering countries which launched HDTV in 1993 - Belgium, France and Germany - will reach critical mass in 1997, when the new format becomes commercially viable.

Industry analysts are less bullish about HDTV's prospects at a time when media moguls are battling for digital supremacy.

The US claims to be ahead of Europe and Japan in the race to launch all-digital HDTV, with the federal communications commission in Washington expected to give final approval by the end of the year for a standard developed by a 'grand alliance' of TV-makers, component suppliers and telecoms companies.