Who Wants to Wait for HDTV?

With its jumbo screen, crisp digital sound and a video picture as sharp as a 35-mm slide, high-definition television has been heralded as a couch potato's dream come true. But HDTV has run into some interference. Squabbling over technological standards and sniping between Japanese, European and U.S. manufacturers have slowed its development to a crawl. Industry experts now estimate that full-fledged HDTV may not arrive in U.S. homes until the turn of the century.

Yet video's evolution has been anything but stagnant in living rooms across the country. Consumers, their appetites whetted for high-quality TV images, have started to take progress into their own hands. To the delight of retailers and manufacturers, viewers are hooking together their video and stereo components, linking them with one or two new pieces of advanced controlling equipment and creating what has been dubbed home theaters. In a U.S. consumer-electronics market whose sales are increasing at a sluggish 4% a year (1989 total: $32 billion), sales of home-theater components are climbing at a pace of 25% or more. Among the hottest gear: big-screen stereo TV sets, laser-scanned videodisc players and audio/ video amplifiers that can drench the home audience in theater-like surround sound.

The boom in home-theater devices has heightened the electronics industry's sense of urgency about developing not only HDTV but also an array of interim products that will encourage consumers to keep upgrading their equipment. Last week two European electronics giants, Thomson and Philips, the largest makers of color TV sets for the U.S. market, said they plan to combine their long- term HDTV development efforts. In a more immediate step, the Europeans will join forces with NBC and the David Sarnoff Research Center to concentrate on what they call EDTV (extended-definition television), a wide-screen, digital- stereo version of today's standard. The manufacturers hope to have EDTV sets ready for delivery by 1993. Said J. Peter Bingham, vice president of technology for Philips Consumer Electronics: "We want U.S. consumers to have access to advanced TV services as quickly as possible."

Why the sudden consumer craze for improved TV? After all, Sony, Pioneer and others have been trying to market pricey "media rooms" and "home entertainment centers" for nearly a decade -- with notable lack of success. Electronics-industry experts point to several changes in viewing habits that are sparking sales of home-theater products. Thanks to the videocassette revolution, consumers have acquired a steady appetite for watching videotaped movies in the comfort of their dens and bedrooms. In little more than a decade, the percentage of U.S. homes with VCRs has zoomed from zero to 70. According to an industry survey, U.S. viewers rented 72 million movie tapes during just one week last October.

At the same time, many of these videophiles have bought compact-disc players, giving them an appreciation for the crispness of digital sound. For consumers who love their VCR and CD players, the logical next step is the laser videodisc player, which combines digital sound with high-resolution motion pictures. An estimated 300,000 U.S. households have laser videodisc players, for which manufacturers have produced more than 3,700 movie titles.