Early in 1981 about a dozen Federal Communications Commission officials, including several commissioners and their assistants, filed into a darkened room in a building near Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, to witness the beginning of a revolution. We made up the invited audience for the very first American demonstration of the Japanese-developed Muse system of analog high-definition television (HDTV). The comparison between the rectangular HDTV monitor and the standard NTSC receiver beside it was riveting. While the equipment that made all this possible was dramatically draped in black, we were convinced we had seen the future. What none of us could imagine was just how far away that future would prove to be. Flash forward two decades into the new century. While limited HDTV service is available in most U.S. television markets, few people can see it. Receivers cost thousands of dollars and thus few have sold, while station owners are complaining about having to spend millions of dollars to convert to full HDTV capability with little chance of increasing revenues to cover the cost (GAO, 2002). Cable television systems are resisting carriage of HDTV signals as a waste of their channel capacity though satellite carriers do provide some digital channels. Broadcast and cable networks are adopting conflicting transmission standards, further muddying the development of the improved television system. Until quite recently, networks have resisted providing more HDTV programs until receivers are widely available. Hollywood and other content owners, on the other hand, fear unlimited consumer digital duplication and archiving and are dragging their feet in making HDTV programs available while arguing about copy-protection standards. The presumed 2006 change-over from NTSC analog to HDTV digital service is less likely every day (Edwards, 2002). With nobody apparently in charge, what has happened to a promising technology? A useful comparison can be drawn with the U.S. innovation of analog color television starting a half century ago. The introduction of color service was facilitated in at least three important ways: it was strongly backed by a major domestic manufacturer, RCA, with a huge investment to recoup; it developed under a firm set of industry-developed and FCC-blessed technical standards; and it offered consumers something new and exciting--color rather than flat black and white pictures. At first, receivers were heavy, bulky, and expensive, easily reaching $5,000 in today's currency. There was little programming, and stations complained about the costs of equipment purchase and conversion. Within about a dozen years most of this had been overcome---set prices were down as sales increased, most prime-time programs and commercials were telecast in color, and station equipment costs had dropped as well. By the late 1960s, TV Guide began to specify programs broadcast in black and white because color had become the norm. Still, by 1972 it had taken two decades for color to penetrate half of the nation's households (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 864). Even the later and quite different British introduction of color took decades. And the British home viewer had more reason to change, as the addition of color was bundled with a greatly improved picture that increased from 405 to 625 lines of definition, and the transition was easier in a country where many households rented receivers. Yet even under these more favorable circumstances, the transition still took a couple of decades (Sterling & Kittross, 2002, p. 497). Reviewing this background, what has gone wrong with the introduction of HDTV service? For one thing, policy planners presumed too much--that such a dramatic conversion could be mandated in such a short time. American and British delays in the introduction of color should have made that clear. But more significantly, the inception of HDTV has suffered from an almost total policy vacuum that only appeared to be reassessed during 2002. …