HDTV ready to play ball: Technology gets first mass viewing at season opener

Opening day of the 1998 baseball season was the backdrop for the first non-experimental high-definition TV broadcast. The March 31 game, between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox, was broadcast to the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area and Washington.

Teamwork made the historic broadcast happen. The game was filmed on six digital cameras provided by Irving, Texas-based HD Vision. A receiver at The Ballpark in Arlington created a digital signal using Texas Instruments' digital light processing technology. The signal then traveled over MCI's advanced fiber optic network and was broadcast in Texas over a UHF channel assigned to KXAS-TV/Channel 5, the local NBC affiliate, providing a sharp picture of the game.

Legislators in Washington also saw the broadcast. After traveling from Texas over MCI's network, a digital transmitter from Comark Digital Services delivered the game to WHD-TV, a high-definition test station in Washington.

"We have always thought that it will be sports events that will fuel the demand for HDTV," said Doug Adams, president and general manager of NBC 5, during a private viewing of the first two innings of the game.

In April 1997, the federal government issued licenses to more than 1500 broadcasters to transmit digital signals over the airwaves. Two dozen affiliates of the major TV networks have vowed to offer their first digital transmissions by November of this year. The FCC has mandated that the 40 network affiliates in the 10 largest metropolitan areas of the U.S. must offer some digital programming by May 1999.

HDTV sets are expected to reach the market by the end of this year and cost between $5000 and $10,000, a price that critics have said will slow mass-market adoption of the new technology.

Lee Spieckerman, president of LIN Productions, which produced the broadcast and provided a commentator, disagreed.

"There are two reasons HDTV will be popular: Customers don't like to feel short-changed when it comes to electronics, and it's just too darn hard to improve the picture on analog televisions," he said. "If we raise the expectations of the customer, the technology will be accepted. And the cost is likely to go down a lot faster than people think. The cost of computers did."

HDTV televisions were placed throughout the Ballpark in Arlington, and game attendees seemed impressed by the quality of the broadcast, often leaving their baseline seats to watch the game on HDTV.

The words of Texas Governor George W. Bush, though, may have echoed the sentiment of the general public.

"It's beautiful; the picture is better than anything I ever could have imagined," said Bush, interviewed from his seat during the game. "But I won't buy one right away. I'll have to wait for the cost to come down to where a fellow on a government salary can afford it."