¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

JAPAN’S boldest experiment in high-definition television is due to begin
in June, after a last minute delay of two months to give producers time
to make programmes in the new format.

People in Japan will then be able to watch high-definition TV every
day – provided they make their way to one of the 80 or so department stores,
public buildings and railway stations equipped with a prototype receiver.
NHK, the state broadcasting authority, plans to relay up to one hour a day
of Hi-Vision programmes. These will be mainly live sports events such as
sumo wrestling or the hugely popular High School Baseball Tournament.

It is the Japanese public’s second experience with the new medium. During
last year’s Seoul Olympics, NHK demonstrated Hi-Vision publicly in a similar
way. Opinions about the success of the transmissions varied. A representative
of NHK’s Hi-Vision Special Task Force described public reaction as ‘extremely
positive’. Less partial observers, however, pointed out that the screens
attracted few crowds. One reason might be that Japan’s public places are
overloaded with television screens, from giant displays on the walls of
department stores to video screens embedded in lamp posts.

The Olympic programmes also left something to be desired. The only scenes
relayed live on Hi-Vision, via the BS2 satellite, were the opening and closing
ceremonies of the games. When the 1125-line screens displayed the sporting
events, they were showing old news; the material was taped in Seoul, flown
to Tokyo for overnight editing and broadcast the following day.

During the Olympics, NHK installed 205 HDTV sets at 81 public locations,
from department stores to railway stations. These 37-inch receivers, with
pictures 800 millimetres wide by 477 millimetres deep, were hand-made prototypes
from six manufacturers. Japan’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
footed the bill, paying around 10 million yen (Pounds sterling 40 000) for
each one. The government sees the money as a primer for a market that the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry predicts will be worth 3.4
million million yen (Pounds sterling 15 000 million) a year in Japan alone
by the turn of the century.

So far, however, there are no HDTV sets in the shops of Japan. The consumer
electronics companies say there is no point until regular broadcasts begin.
‘It is a bit like the chicken and the egg,’ said a representative of Sony,
the company that pioneered Hi-Vision technology. The reaction of manufacturers
disappoints NHK. Undaunted, it says the daily broadcasts will run from June
until a new satellite, called BS3, goes into orbit in mid-1990. Then the
Hi-Vision experiment will begin in earnest.

Apart from the need to win over consumers, the content of the broadcasts
has become a political issue. NHK plans to ask the Japanese Diet (parliament)
permission to charge television viewers an extra 910 yen (about Pounds sterling
4) a month to watch high-definition programmes; the Diet will be reluctant
to agree until it knows more about the programmes that NHK will transmit.
It is unlikely to approve a repeating diet of sports events.