Introduction: The Digital Evolution of Television

Television has been evolving since the first black and white TV transmissions. Spurred by relentless technological developments and ultimately embraced by manufacturers, content producers and the business community, television today includes an ever broadening array of content offerings.

A little over 10 years ago, when I mounted my first Digital TV¹ conference at CITI,² we had difficulty specifying exactly what digital television was. What after all was digital television in 1996? There was no digital TV broadcast or digital content to speak of. The FCC³ was holding their public hearings before making their SDTV⁴ and HDTV⁵ rulings and almost no one had broadband. In the United States broadcast television was- and until February 2009- remained primarily analog. Today vast majority of US consumers receive television programming via cable and satellite set top boxes; so most television viewers can already receive digital SD and HD programming.