It seems nearly impossible that HDTV has been around long enough to warrant a history book, but that's precisely the case, and author Philip J. Cianci has answered the call with his 360-page "High Definition Television: The Creation, Development and Implementation of HDTV Technology."
In his new book, Cianci tracks the 40-year history of HDTV, exploring its development and rollout. In addition to examining initial efforts coming out of Japan, development in Europe and the Unites States, the creation of an all-digital HD system and successive advances around the world, Cianci explores the impact HDTV has had on broadcast facilities and their conversion to new IT-based workflows.
This is the first of a two-part interview with Cianci, who worked with HDTV systems at Philips Research USA, ESPN and systems integrator Communications Engineering Inc., and was the editor of Broadcast Engineering's "Transition to Digital" e-newsletter from 2005 through 2007.
In this podcast, the author discusses the critical role of MPEG-2 compression in the early development of a digital HDTV system and how 8-VSB was selected for terrestrial transmission of digital HD in the United States.
