The industry alliance developing the next generation of television technology has selected a Zenith Electronics system over one by General Instrument for transmitting the signals of future high-definition television.
The selection of Zenith Electronics Corp.'s technology was the last big technical decision remaining for the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance, the industry group that came together last year to propose a standard for HDTV systems.Such systems are digital, meaning that they use signals transmitted in pulses corresponding to the ones and zeroes of computer code rather than the traditional technique of transmitting television signals in electromagnetic waves.
The result, expected to reach the market in a few years, is supposed to be brighter, clearer pictures and crisp sound on wide screens.
The selection sets the stage for HDTV to move forward. The alliance will present its transmission selection to a Federal Communications Commission technical advisory panel this Thursday.
If, as expected, the panel accepts the recommendation, Zenith's transmission system will then be field tested in Charlotte, N.C.
A complete HDTV system is scheduled to be tested late this year, with final field testing in early 1995. The first HDTV systems are expected to be on the market by 1997.
The alliance's announcement was seen as a key endorsement of Zenith's vestigial sideband, or VSB, technology, with a potential for helping Zenith's sales of the future technology that will be used for transmitting and receiving digital cable television signals.
Zenith, which has not had a profitable year since 1988, can point to the alliance's choice of its system when selling future digital television products like the decoder boxes that will function as small computers on the top of the television set.
"We are in a merging world of computers, telecommunications and TV sets, and this puts us in a position to strike out in the new world," said Wayne C. Luplow, vice president of consumer products engineering and HDTV technology for Zenith.
The alliance said it chose Zenith's system over the General Instrument technique because it scored better on several counts: geographic coverage area, minimal interference with existing analog television signals and the "robustness" of the digital signal.
But the group said the selected technology would be further refined and would include some technical components from General Instrument's transmission technology.
The group also noted that both systems demonstrated "substantial performance improvements" over previously tested systems.