Digital TV never invented

Could this work? How does the broadcasting industry and the programming one is likely to see as a result change?

(One hopes less rubbish...)
 
What do you mean, exactly?

Because, besides analogue broadcast, there is digital broadcast, analogue cable, digital cable, analogue satellite, and digital satellite.

Take away the digital part and you still have regular cable and satellite with Japan possessing the world's one and only commercial HDTV channel.

So, basically, the late 1980s.
 
What do you mean, exactly?

Because, besides analogue broadcast, there is digital broadcast, analogue cable, digital cable, analogue satellite, and digital satellite.

Take away the digital part and you still have regular cable and satellite with Japan possessing the world's one and only commercial HDTV channel.

So, basically, the late 1980s.

I include satellite and cable, yes. (I do not get really mean and rule out teletext...not that you cared....)

I don't believe we actually got digital TV until the mid-late '90s in Britain, so I assume the TV situation around then might be a model. Between the beginning of satellite in the late '80s and then we got nationwide cable TV and Channel 5, plus a few more Sky services.

You talk about Japan having the one and only HDTV station in the pre-analogue days- I have a feeling that there would be some attempt at trying to extend HDTV internationally even without digital, as there is going to have to be something to fill the innovation vaccuum. If nothing else, HD home video formats are eventually going to develop, whether we would see any TV services, tho' is doubtful, there would probably be not enough bandwidth to support more than around 1 or 2 services.

I bet we might still have reality TV, though. Though whether TV might quite have the same dregs we have now...

Maybe we might have a Channel 6 on terrestrial?
 
Maybe we might have a Channel 6 on terrestrial?

You can't run that many national terrestrial channels with a sufficiently strong and uninterrupted signal for each - same with radio stations. That was the big problem: it was limited to about half a dozen.

IIRC, one of the terrestrial frequencies was also kept in the control of the govt. on standby, in case they ever wanted to use it for something or nothing.
 
You can't run that many national terrestrial channels with a sufficiently strong and uninterrupted signal for each - same with radio stations. That was the big problem: it was limited to about half a dozen.

French seemed to manage OK- mind you, they use the SECAM format, which might have used less bandwidth...
 
French seemed to manage OK- mind you, they use the SECAM format, which might have used less bandwidth...

Umm, the colour used for TV does not really matter in the case of non-NTSC countries. In the case of NTSC, it almost exclusively uses System M (i.e. 525 lines, and a smaller bandwidth than most systems). PAL and SECAM, OTOH, are pretty diverse and can accomodate any TV standard. Example: Brazil, which uses System M, but (unlike its neighbouring countries) uses PAL for its colour standard. What matters most is what broadcast standards are used. Most European countries, for example, use System B for VHF and System G (or System H) for UHF. This created an interesting situation in, for example, Germany during the Cold War, where both West and East Germany used this typical setup yet used different colour standards - PAL in the case of West Germany, and SECAM in the case of East Germany. Thus, an East German could watch West German TV, but it would come out in B&W. Same thing for those West Germans who dared to watch East German TV. In fact, it could be argued that it was this situation vis-à-vis TV that helped with reunification.

Now, to get back on topic - if you want one way to get non-digital HDTV working, try the French 819-line system. For its time, it was pretty innovative.
 
Umm, the colour used for TV does not really matter in the case of non-NTSC countries. In the case of NTSC, it almost exclusively uses System M (i.e. 525 lines, and a smaller bandwidth than most systems). PAL and SECAM, OTOH, are pretty diverse and can accomodate any TV standard. Example: Brazil, which uses System M, but (unlike its neighbouring countries) uses PAL for its colour standard. What matters most is what broadcast standards are used. Most European countries, for example, use System B for VHF and System G (or System H) for UHF. This created an interesting situation in, for example, Germany during the Cold War, where both West and East Germany used this typical setup yet used different colour standards - PAL in the case of West Germany, and SECAM in the case of East Germany. Thus, an East German could watch West German TV, but it would come out in B&W. Same thing for those West Germans who dared to watch East German TV. In fact, it could be argued that it was this situation vis-à-vis TV that helped with reunification.

Now, to get back on topic - if you want one way to get non-digital HDTV working, try the French 819-line system. For its time, it was pretty innovative.

1. I knew some details of that first paragraph.
2. Why West Germans "daring" to watch East German TV? Some sort of anti-communist legislation, or just that it was pretty dire? (I'd guess the latter- especially given the Westerner Denis Domaschke's comment on Estt German news- "der selber Quatsch" -the "same old crap" as the subs put it.)
3. Do different colour standards affect the bandwidth? (I bet not)
4. Last paragraph-please elaborate!
 
1. I knew some details of that first paragraph.
2. Why West Germans "daring" to watch East German TV? Some sort of anti-communist legislation, or just that it was pretty dire? (I'd guess the latter- especially given the Westerner Denis Domaschke's comment on Estt German news- "der selber Quatsch" -the "same old crap" as the subs put it.)
3. Do different colour standards affect the bandwidth? (I bet not)
4. Last paragraph-please elaborate!

1. That's always good to know. :D
2. I say that because almost always it was East Germans watching West German TV - never the other way around, since (for the most part) the quality of East German TV programming was poor.
3. Not really - it's usually the other way around, regardless of the colour standard. Smaller bandwidths usually equate to lower picture quality. Compare, say, the US's NTSC-M standard with Brazil's PAL-M standard. PAL, generally, produces better colour than NTSC (there is a reason why NTSC is sometimes called "Never Twice the Same Colour"). This is even though it uses the same 525-line television standard that most of the Americas uses. However, compared with PAL systems elsewhere, PAL-M is alongside NTSC-M in that, picture-wise, the quality is inferior. This is due to the fact that in System M, the bandwidth is smaller than most 625-line systems (compare System M's 4.5 MHz bandwidth with the 6-8 MHz bandwidths used elsewhere). It is not due to the colour standard. Thus, PAL-M will probably not show on, say, European PAL television sets unless it was converted from NTSC.
4. Simple. For the longest time possible post-WW2, France's TV system used an 819-line TV standard (System E), which was pretty advanced for its day - HDTV before HDTV. The only fault with it was that it used too much bandwidth for the picture - some Belgian TV stations fixed that by creating an 819-line TV standard that would fit in a 6 MHz bandwidth (System C; for comparison, System E used a 14 MHz bandwidth). Though SECAM was tested on System E, the death knell for System E was some form of agreement among European TV broadcasters that in future, colour television would use a 625-line TV standard. If you can find a way to make System E or its Belgian cousin survive (and use colour, regardless if its PAL or SECAM), that would be cool. :D

EDIT: System M should say a 6 MHz bandwidth, whilst most systems use either a 7 MHz bandwidth (System B) or an 8 MHz bandwidth (Systems D, G, H, I, K, and L). In addition, if Wiki is right, where I said System C for Beligum, it's actually System F, which in Belgium was discontinued in 1969, compared to 1984 in France. System C was actually a VHF 625-line system used as a compromise between the French System L and the European System B, introduced around the same time the System F network was shut down, and was discontinued in 1977.
 
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