The ATSC (http://www.atsc.org/) 25th Anniversary Celebration & Annual Meeting
May 8, 2008 - Arlington, VA

"Dragging our feet for a quarter century!"

Why it seems like only yesterday we debated the relative merits of COFDM versus 8-VSB.

ATSC is Advanced Television Systems Committee which is destined to replace NTSC as the method of terrestrial television transmissions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan. Making us an island in a world of DVB standards.

But it has certainly been worth the wait. Happy Birthday ATSC!

Yes, happy birthday ATSC.

You had a slow start and some teething problems with your 8VSB modulation but it appears to be mostly out grown.

You lost some friends along the way, such as Taiwan who dumped you for DVB-T.

Argentina is debating if it wants to keep you arround.

But Honduras has now offically adopted you.

All the best to ATSC in your indevours in South America.

Amazing that it has been 25 years!

I know most people I tell about ATSC... think that it is something "NEW"

Congratulations on the first 25... looking forward to the next 25 years!

I think it was about 21 yrs ago, I had the pleasure of installing Canada's first Digital High Definition production system. Even though it was digital equipment, we wired the whole thing Component (R,G,B) because there was no HDSDI yet, never mind equipment to process it.

In the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, we installed Sony's 1st 3 digital HD Cameras and the 1st 3 Digital VTR's. High speed 1" videotape! The units actually had serial #'s 1, 2 & 3.

The idea was to record a stage production in Ottawa and play it back, time delayed, to a theatre audience in Winnipeg. HD Via satellite was a whole new concept at the time. This was Telesat Canada's million dollar experiment.

That experiment didn't go over well, but was part of canada's contribution to developing the ASTC standards. The equipment later went into an HD production truck for Dome Productions, but was outdated before it really went into service.