The history and future of HD TV

HDTV has been around for a long time, since the 1940s. It was first adopted on analogue TV broadcasting and in some countries reached 576p picture quality, it is regarded as SD TV on the analogue TV platform. Since the mid 1990s, HDTV broadcasting has been re-introduced on the digital broadcasting platform. Today on the digital platform, HDTV is able to display up to 5 times the picture quality of SD TV. To some there is confusion with the HD acronym used for the term "Hard Disk" whereas the acronym HDTV is for High Definition Television. It is used to describe the quality of the picture that can be displayed every second.

Since HD TV images are displayed in frames per second, it is digitally compressed using video compression, and is broadcast using computer code. It is common to find that HDTVs are able to display images in about one or two million pixels per frame. Also HDTVs tend to support one of two methods of image scanning, either interlace scanning or progressive scanning.

The collapse of HD Analogue broadcasting

When HD broadcasting was limited because it had a technical and economic cost because it needed more bandwidths that were greater than standard TVs; in comparison, HD broadcasting on the digital platform is able to broadcast up to 16 channels on a single analogue signal. There were some attempts to reduce the bandwidth required by analogue HDTV but it was only used on via satellite.

When the digital platform was introduced, most nations are around the world began to become more open to HDTV because it cost less than analogue HDTV and was easier to implement.

Though most nations are still making the full digital switch-over to HDTV broadcasting on the digital platform, many consumers around the world have already began purchasing HDTVs as there is HD content available through many other platforms. There are a number of satellite and cable providers that provide a roster of HD programming and some are even broadcasting in 3D, a format some experts have predicted will surpass HD broadcasting. However because most nations are still making the switch over and most will not even adopt Full HD broadcasting format, 3D may not pick up speed as predicted. There are a number of factors that will affect the overall success of HDTV broadcasting and HDTVs as a whole.

As a technology and broadcasting platform, HDTV is breaking new boundaries and is considered the most successful TV platform ever because of its global adoption. As more consumers and nations adopt it, it will most likely become more widespread