While Japanese broadcasters and manufacturers have been world pioneers in the development of high-definition television and digital production technologies, they have been slow to design a national system for digital television (DTV) transmission. Present plans call for the launching of a new satellite that will facilitate DTV transmissions by the year 2000. This article examines the technological, political, and economic issues that have delayed the advent of digital broadcasting in Japan, especially compared to DTV broadcasting initiatives in Europe and the US. The article concludes that Japanese economic and political investment in the analog Hi-Vision HDTV format led to the promulgation of national industrial policies that inhibited the diffusion of alternative television technologies.
PAGES
209 – 216
DOI
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Issues
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Agnes Horvath, Magic and the Will to Science: A Political Anthropology of Liminal Technicality
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Gibson Burrell, Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Friends, Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at our Universities
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Bas de Boer, How Scientific Instruments Speak: Postphenomenology and Technological Mediations in Neuroscientific Practice
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Bjørn Lomborg, False Alarm
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How does innovation arise in the bicycle sector? The users’ role and their betrayal in the case of the ‘gravel bike’