FOR a technology that was supposed to revolutionise home entertainment, digital television has been something of a damp squib. Nowhere has it lived up to expectations. In Britain, progress has stalled since the collapse of the broadcaster ITV Digital last April. In the US, the biggest television market in the world, prospects for digital TV look even worse. The public isn鈥檛 interested, and it鈥檚 not hard to see why: digital sets are expensive, the quality of the broadcasts is questionable, there are plans to outlaw the copying of digital programmes, and cable companies 鈥� which serve 60 per cent of American homes 鈥� still don鈥檛 deliver high-definition digital signals.
Left to the free market, digital television in the US would die. The trouble is that it hasn鈥檛 been. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the big electronics companies have clubbed together and seem determined to force this technology on the public. In short, while the US pays lip service to the free market, its emerging digital television policy pushes corporate interests. The FCC is obliged to represent the public interest, yet the current proposals would force the public to spend tens of billions of dollars on products they don鈥檛 want.
The fear is that this streamroller approach, whereby powerful technology industries influence government in their own interests, is becoming an accepted way of doing things. Another frequently cited case in point is American efforts to block the labelling of genetically modified food. But the advocates of digital television are creating a situation that in terms of consumer choice is far worse than the GM one, which at least has not removed alternatives from the market.
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Digital television has had a troubled history. It is the latest incarnation of high-definition television, an idea launched two decades ago to make pictures sharper. Japan was quick to announce plans to broadcast signals from satellites that would double the number of lines on a screen. The US tried to respond, but by the early 1990s industrial interests had battled each other to a standstill.
Desperate to do something, supporters of 鈥渁dvanced television鈥� proposed switching to digital transmission. Digital technology had come a long way, and seemed to promise better quality. Engineers proposed a new scheme that would cram the extra information needed to transmit a high-definition digital signal into the same 6-megahertz bandwidth as a standard analogue colour television channel.
But the biggest changes were taking place behind the scenes. Broadcasters, dismayed at the prospect of having to spend huge sums on expensive new hardware, sent lobbyists to Congress to see what they could get in return. Congress gave them a free digital channel for every analogue channel they owned so they could phase in digital broadcasting while continuing to use the analogue channel for a limited time.
Meanwhile, the public took no notice. A few digital broadcasts began, but nobody had sets that could receive them. More lobbyists descended on Washington. The mobile phone industry wanted big chunks of the old analogue television spectrum and was willing to pay for them. Congress told the FCC to auction the spectrum.
More recently, Hollywood had its run-in with Napster, which allowed people to post music on the Net for others to copy. Terrified that digital music and video copying would drain its profits, the entertainment industry demanded that Congress and the FCC ban it. The result was the draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Lobbyists are now trying to extend the ban to all electronics capable of making digital copies. In short, the entertainment industry is trying to block any technological innovation that threatens its profits.
All this has done nothing to change market realities, since today鈥檚 digital television fails the essential test of offering the customer something worth the money. The latest 42-inch wide-screen flat plasma-panel screens cost around $7000, not counting a $250 wall mount and the digital tuner needed to receive broadcasts. Yet customers appear unconvinced of their quality. It turns out you cannot see the difference between a 500 and a 1000-line display if you are more than six times as far from the screen as its height. A 42-inch display is less than 60 centimetres high, which means you don鈥檛 notice the difference across a 4-metre room. When you consider the restrictions on copying and that cable companies still don鈥檛 deliver high-definition digital signals, it is little wonder digital sets are trickling out the door at best.
Incredibly, Congress and the FCC are still allowing electronics industry lobbyists to call the tune: they are seriously considering proposals to shut down analogue television completely in 2006, whether or not anyone has bought digital sets. The time has come to pull the plug on this fiasco and force the electronics corporations to compete for market acceptance. A good technology is one that fulfils a need, or that fits into people鈥檚 lives. The corporations may think people need digital television, but it is the public and not the corporations who should be allowed to make the choice.