Not Gimpy Anymore wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Bob the Tomato wrote:
On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:30:02 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:


(snippity snip)


HDTV was invented in the halls of Congress, not the FCC. Congress
said, 'do this...' and the FCC followed suit.

So you're saying that the French invented HDTV because the US
Congress ordered the FCC to do it? I guess the Soviet Union did
the
same (are you old enough to remember the Soviet Union?). And the
Japanese of course always slavishly obey the FCC.

Oh, you were talking about the US? Then how is it that the FCC
rules
implementing HDTV predate the first legislation concerning it by a
year? And what exactly did legislation extending the deadline for
its implementation have to do with "inventing" it?


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)


Noob here....

OMG, talk about running astray from the OP -

Anyway, just an observation that there is a big difference between
proof of concept, invention, and product distribution.
Historically there was a LOT of study world wide on the idea of
improving definition of transmitted images, But the studies did not
result in much invention - inventions came along as a means to try
and get the concepts packaged into a form that could (and would)
be distributed to a wide populace for commercial purposes. In that
vein, Zenith, RCA, MIT, & a host of other companies did a lot of
inventing - but there was a problem too large to allow the market
forces to resolve - one of "standardization". THAT's where the
FCC, and ultimately congress, got involved to "make it happen".

Let's try this again. An 800 line system was distributed to the
French populace (I don't know how wide but anybody with the Francs
could buy one) in the 1950s. The Soviet Union had an 1100 line system
in use by their military in the 1960s. In August 1990 the Japanese
had their first HD broadcast and were broadcasting 8 hours a day of HD
content in 1991,with sets available to anyone who had the Yen. Seems
to me that there was a lot more going on than "studies".

FCC basically brought to the US public what was already available to
the French and Japanese publics. Of course it ended up different in
detail from either system.

Now, is anyone still interested in where their tools are made?????

Not me, all I care about is whether they work.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)