The Japanese scene [digital HDTV]

Japan is the only country, so far, to be actually broadcasting high-definition television services. MUSE (multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding) is the basis for systems applying bandwidth compression to the transmission of both analog and digital signals. It encodes a signal of 1125 lines and 60 fields per second, a high-definition television (HDTV) signal into an 8-Hz bandwidth. Experimental MUSE broadcasts started in 1990 and have continued ever since. Meanwhile, work has been in progress in areas other than MUSE. Enhanced-definition television, a terrestrial system, is entering its second generation. Integrated digital broadcasting looks to spin many services into a single digital thread for transmission over a single channel. Digital sound broadcasting and hierarchical television transmission will also come in for consideration. The MUSE system depends on digital technology for signal processing, but the HDTV signal that is broadcast is analog, the outcome of frequency modulation