Perhaps the earliest notion of High Definition Television known to mankind dates back to the year 1934, when RCA first introduced the term in its annual report to describe the future of television broadcasting and how it would affect consumer's lives. David Sarnoff, president of RCA in 1926, stated the following with respect to the role television would have on peole's lives and culture in general:

"The whole country will join in every national procession. The backwoodsman will be able to follow the play of expression on the face of a leading artist. Mothers will attend child welfare classes in their own homes. Workers may go to night school in the same way. A scientist can demonstrate his latest discoveries to those in his profession."

It is known that The Pentagon first began using high definition technology during the 1950’s in military spy planes and spy satellites. Unfotunately, throughout the 1960's, the United States lost the television manufacturing industry to Asian countries like Japan, so the interest in HDTV drops. The Japanese continued working on such technology and they introduced the first HDTV in 1970. Although it was still an analog transmision, their new system called MUSE, required more bandwith than then current NTSC.

Japan’s HDTV under the MUSE system offered:

 

    Up to 1125 lines of resolution versus 600 lines of regular television.

    Each frame is scanned at 1/60th of a second versus 1/30th of a second

    Wider and larger viewing screen that gives a 30 degree angle versus a 10 degree angle with the regular system.

    Viewing distance is less so viewers do not notice scanning lines and will not experience eye fatigue.

    Multiple sound channels

After the Japanese development of HDTV, the US government realizes the importance of not missing this new market. High Definition Television created such a sentiment of delight, that some politicians even argued how HDTV could solve the balance of trade deficit and the national debt problem. Hence, in 1988, around 23 advanced television system proposals had been submitted to the FCC Advisory Committee. All but one of the systems used analog technology. Clearly, the one using digital technology won. Although the proposed system was fairly competent with the Japanese standard, in 1993, the FCC decides to form an alliance to create a new global digital standard for HDTV in order to fix some of the technological shortcomings of the proposed system. The formed alliance was known as The Grand Alliance.
  If the Grand Alliance could come up with a new system, the government would give away the new spectrum required for HDTV in exchange for the current one. Hence, the new ATS (Advanced Television System) was created and it was decided by the US government that that would be the system to adopt nationwide to transmit High Definition Television.

“True HDTV has five times the visual detail, ten times the color information and more than twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of NTSC television. Moreover, the picture is substantially brighter, the aspect ratio is more than a third larger and the sound quality is equivalent to that of compact discs.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that auctions of licenses to use the radio spectrum conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1994 through 1998 will yield $27.0 billion in receipts to the Federal Treasury.