Entering the World of HDTV Since the transition to color TV in
the 1950s and '60s, nothing has had as much impact on the TV
world as HDTV (high-definition TV) and digital TV. That's right,
TV is going digital, following in the footsteps of, well,
everything. We're in the early days of this transition — a lot
of TV programming is still all-analog, for example. And this
stage of the game can be confusing, with an alphabet soup of
acronyms, changing technologies, and emerging standards. Oh,
say, can you ATSC? More than 50 years ago, a group called the
NTSC (National Television System Committee) put together a group
of technical specifications and standards that define television
as we know it today. Sure, there have been some changes in those
50 years (such as the addition of color), but today's analog TVs
are built on this NTSC system. In the 1980s, the ATSC (Advanced
Television System Committee) was formed to move TV forward. Many
years later (1996), the ATSC's recommendations for a digital-
television system w