ibution to broadcasting, consumer equip- During the past decade, much research and development work has ment and display processing. The aim is to give the viewer a more been devoted to the study of electronic television systems capable realistic viewing experience by doubling the vertical and horizontal of providing wide screen, flicker free pictures of a resolution com- resolution, suitable for viewing on a 40 inch display that can be seen parable with that of 35mm cinematograph film. Such high definition from the same distance as a conventional 625 line display but with TV systems (HDTV) are seen as being suitable for broadcast trans- an aspect ratio of 16:9. mission, wideband cable distribution, electronic cinematography, The EU-95 project is proposing a production standard of 1250 for the production of master tapes for videocassettes and videodiscs, lines, 50 frames/s in a sequential format, with 1920 pixels per line. and for various applications in electronic graphics and printing. Such a standard would permit high quality conversion to other Efforts are being made to: standards, including both 625/50 and 525/60. A secondary produc- tion standard, for use within 50Hz areas, would use 1250 lines, 50 Establish worldwide production standards for 50Hz or 60Hz fields, 2:1 interlace. areas, or preferably for both. HD-MAC transmission proposals are intended for broadcast DBS Develop bandwidth compression techniques for broadcast, transmission within a standard 12GHz channel. Since the band- cable, contribution and distribution links and studio routeing width of its HDTV material is about four times that available, the systems capable of carrying HDTV signals with minimum loss signals need to be compressed by about four times. It is a project of quality. requirement that the compressed HD-MAC signals should give an Develop display systems that could do justice to HDTV pic- acceptable 4:3 aspect ratio picture when received on a DBS receiver tures at prices within consumer budgets. with a standard MAC decoder. This r