Japan's Hdtv: What's Wrong With This Picture?

It's hard to miss the pessimism these days among Japanese TV makers when the talk turns to high-definition television. That's right, pessimism. True, the first HDTV sets for consumers appeared in Japan late last year, with wide screens and movie-quality images. But the prices are astronomical--$15,000 or more. And HDTV broadcasts are limited to one hour a day, mostly of Sumo wrestling and baseball. What's more, rental videos are nonexistent, since manufacturers have yet to agree on standards for consumer equipment such as high-definition VCRs. Thus, only a few Japanese households have HDTV sets.

Worse than all that, the Japanese system, designed mainly for satellite broadcasts, may become obsolete before it takes off. American engineers are developing more advanced HDTV that will transmit images digitally, the same way computers handle data. If this approach works, it could leapfrog Japan's older analog transmission system. Japanese TV Goliaths are thus scrambling to catch up. "We, too, are looking into an all-digital system," says Masao Sugimoto, director general of the Science & Technical Research Laboratories at Japan Broadcasting Corp. (known as NHK from its Japanese name), which created the Japanese standard.