Word: hdtv
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...WILL HDTV BE MUST...
...catches: they carry a jumbo $11,000 price tag, and they aren't wired to display movies in the upcoming high-definition TV standard. The first HDTV sets, due out this fall, will look more like refrigerators than wall hangings, and there still isn't any HDTV for them to show...
...idea behind the giveaway was that the new channels would be used to provide high-definition television (HDTV), which features razor-sharp pictures and CD-quality sound, as well as a host of other digital services. Broadcasters argued that without getting the channels for free, they could never afford to develop HDTV. And, they emphasized, it was only a loan: by 2006, the rollout of digital TV would be complete, and they would give back their old analog channel space. Fair enough, perhaps, if seeing Dan Rather's pores clearly is worth $70 billion to the nation...
...turns out that the promise of HDTV may have been just a ruse. Each month, in surreptitious ways, the handout to the broadcasters becomes more egregious, which is unsurprising, given their lobbying clout with Congress--$7 million worth in the past two years. A clause buried in this summer's balanced-budget act, pushed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Trent Lott, allows stations to keep both their old and new channel space beyond 2006 as long as 15% of households in their markets are still using analog sets. And ABC president Preston Padden has disclosed that his network...
...backtrack on HDTV came as little surprise to many industry watchers. "The great myth here is that this was all about HDTV," says Hundt. "HDTV has been a fraud by the broadcasters all these years." Indeed, broadcasters claim that in the frequency consumed by a single HDTV transmission, they can "multicast" several channels of lower-grade digital pictures, which, to the average couch potato, are indistinguishable from the real thing. "The technology is getting so good that we can contemplate multiple channels without any difference in picture quality that the consumer is going to see," Padden told TIME. The other...