The Television: High Definition Defined...

In 1986 the USA joined Japan in pushing for the NHK system to be used as a world standard, although there was some call from TV companies in America for a 1050 line system due to the simplicity of conversion from and to NTSC. European countries, with the added complexity of having to convert from 50 fields to 60 fields were not interested.

Europe then set out on developing its own HDTV standard system. A group of companies and broadcasters from Europe, known as Eureka EU95 started work on this project in 1987. This was defined as a 1250 line, 50 fields system to allow backwards compatibility with PAL and SECAM and was revealed in 1988. Despite their being many differences between the two systems, the developers finally decided to agree on some aspects and thus, both the systems now use similar aspects ratios, color systems and same equations to workout luminance and chrominance components.

In the early 1990’s, while HDTV was still in its infancy it had to change in order to accommodate the digital technology, which was becoming a factor in the design of television systems.

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