LAS VEGAS — After receiving billions of dollars' worth of free airwaves from the government last year to offer digital TV, broadcasters are gathering here this week in record numbers to launch the technology, whose movie theater-like video and crystal-clear sound represent the biggest TV advance since color.
At the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention, industry stalwarts like NBC Television President Neil Braun and ABC Inc. President Bob Iger will mingle with the high-tech captains of the Digital Age: Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs and Ron Whittier, a senior vice president at giant computer chip maker Intel Corp.
But with TV station owners still undecided over basic elements of the technology and manufacturers not scheduled to deliver digital TV sets until the fall, some say a celebration in Las Vegas may be premature. And meanwhile, critics complain that broadcasters and stations aren't moving fast enough to provide the highest-quality pictures and make good on related promises they made in return for the free bandwidth they received from Congress.
"It's going to take a while for digital TV to gain widespread acceptance, no question about it, but I think most broadcasters are genuinely excited. It's close enough now where it's in their . . . business plans," said Richard Wiley, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a longtime proponent of the technology.
A survey conducted earlier this year by the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Assn., a Washington, D.C., trade group, found that consumers also are excited about digital TV. The association said that viewers who had seen the technology were dazzled by its crystal-clear, high-resolution image quality and preferred it even to lower-resolution TV sets enhanced with other fancy services made possible by digital TV like freeze-frame and links to the Internet.
Ironically, the consumer excitement over digital TV is considered a factor in the decline of sales for traditional TV sets. Yet digital TV may not initially prove to be a salvation for retailers. There is likely to be widespread sticker shock as consumers find the first digital TV sets on shelves at prices ranging from $5,000 to as much as $10,000.
Digital TV also needs to work out bugs, such as whatever caused a Dallas TV station's signal last month to interfere with 12 heart monitors in a nearby hospital.
