The 40-year history of high definition television technology is traced from initial studies in Japan, through its development in Europe, and then to the United States, where the first all-digital systems were implemented. Details are provided about advances in HDTV technology in Australia and Japan, Europe's introduction of HDTV, Brazil's innovative use of MPEG-4 and China's terrestrial standard. The impact of HDTV on broadcast facility conversion and the influx of computer systems and information technology are described, as well as the contributions of the first entrepreneurial HD videographers and engineers. This thoroughly researched volume highlights several of the landmark high-definition broadcasts from 1988 onward, includes input gathered from more than 50 international participants, and concludes with the rollout of consumer HDTV services throughout the world.

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1 (A), Ohio University (School of Telecommunication), course: New Technologies of Telecommunication, 29 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Usually one would think that an emerging new technology either fails or succeeds, since the consumers know what they want or need, and since the industry knows what is possible and what is not. But sometimes technologies keep coming back. Critics claim them dead but a few years later, they are more alive than ever. High Definition Television (HDTV) is one of those technologies. This briefing paper aims to inform executives of the benefits and drawbacks of HDTV. It explains how this technology basically works, what problems it is designed to solve, who the major players are and what kinds of social, economic and regulatory issues have to be considered.

From its antecedents in the 1950s, successive forms of European integration were intended to be leaderless. They have succeeded only too well in demonstrating that much can be achieved without sustained leadership. The attachment to national sovereignty of most of the European elites and mass populations has meant that confederalism has been implicitly accepted for the foreseeable future. This book attempts to clarify three clusters of issues. First, as European integration has advanced, who has provided the impetus? Particular insiders have episodically exerted decisive innovative influence, despite the need to conciliate the jealous champions of national sovereignty. Three case studies are offered: economic and monetary policy, environmental policy and technology policy. The second part examines why the European Union is currently leaderless. The weakened Commission and the increasingly assertive European Council and Council of Ministers have contended for control of agenda-setting but it is in the sphere of foreign and security policy that the EU's logic of leaderlessness has been most conspicuous. Finally, reduced capacity of the Franco-German tandem to offer acceptable leadership and British incapacity to join or replace them in providing overall leadership is also discussed.