1. Pre-HDTV History
In 1985, Motorola, major manufacturer of two-way radios, led a lobbying
effort to reclaim
unused television airwaves to expand the allocated spectrum used by
two-way
radios. This
lobbying effort became known as Land Mobile. The National Association of
Broadcasters
(NAB) was not going to let the FCC reallocate the airwaves without a
fight.
After all, those
airwaves belonged to the broadcasters, and they felt their existence
depended on them. But by
1986, the FCC appeared willing to turn over the airwaves [26, p. 8].
John Abel, president of NAB, led the effort to fend off the momentum of
Land
Mobile by trying
to convince the FCC that broadcasters needed their airwaves. However, as
far
as Motorola and
the FCC saw the issue, the bottom line was that broadcasters were not
using
the airwaves and
therefore there was no reason to allow them to keep the airwaves. After
much
thought, Abel
thought of the idea of pitching HDTV to the FCC. The broadcasters knew the
current, and only,
HDTV system was in Japan, and their system required more than one channel.
Though some
broadcasters were against the idea, because of the large investment
required
to redo their
infrastructure if HDTV was forced upon them, they also knew the Land
Mobile
issue was a more
immediate problem.
The NAB invited NHK, Japan's public broadcasting company, to do a
demonstration in . . . . .
The full PDF is here:
web.mit.edu/6.933/www/HDTV.pdf
John Abel went on to form the data broadcasting company Geocast.
--
"There's nothing on it worthwhile, we're not going to watch it in this
household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet".
-attributed to Philo T. Farnsworth by his children
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