Surround Broadcasting – how it all started

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First time that anyone thought about broadcasting HDTV (including surround sound) was in 1968 in Japan. Their primary national television group NHK developed an HDTV prototype in the year of 1970 which was called MUSE. That was nearly 40 years ago. They went on to demonstrate the systems to U.S and Europe in 1982. It took 8 years till General Instrument Corporation (now Motorola) in America submitted their first proposal for fully Digital HDTV system to FCC (Federal Communications Commission). They finally set current completely digital standard in 1995. In 1996 – CBS with the help of Panasonic broadcasted the first signal to the only HDTV set in Raleigh as a test. It was successful and they haven’t looked back since. 1998 started the HDTV revolution with first sets available commercially. In the same year US broadcasts their first HDTV signal at the launch of Discovery space shuttle on 29th of October. ABC broadcasted their first movie in HD including surround sound on the 1st of November. Slowly but surely HD programming with the use of surround was added to network programming to most of US’s national TV. The sale of HDTV sets as “home-theatres-in-a-box” has been the fastest-growing segment of home audio industry. It’s not only TV where surround sound and high-definition is taking over the consumer market.

As of evidence I’ve posted multiple articles that  have been written about different radios which can and have broadcasted in surround sound on this website. I’d say that since it took only 2 years between the first test of HDTV and first commercial broadcast – we could safely assume that surround sound radio stations will hit the commercial airwaves in the next couple of years.