I think that hidef in Europe has been foiled by three things:
The launch of Sky in the late 80s using PAL
The rapid development of digital against analogue tx standards
Political posturing
When the British satellite broadcasting licences were awarded in the mid 1980s it was on the understanding that they would use the MAC transmission system as opposed to PAL. IIRC although this was 625 lines, it avoided some of the PAL problems - eg herring bones on cheques (newsreaders jacket syndrome) and generally improved upon PAL. It also had a direct migration route to D2-MAC, which was a high definition analogue system.
But Sky decided to use the Astra satellite based in Luxembourg to circumvent UK licensing, and also went with the existing platform – ie PAL. This had the advantage that it “worked”, ie it was a tried and tested technology with none of the expense and teething problems of MAC.
Sky’s management shrewdly recognised that most people couldn’t care less about picture quality (to see MACs improvements you needed a scart socket) but would jump at the chance of more alleged choice. Hence Sky got there first and the rest is history.
With this mindset – ie never mind the quality, feel the width, there was no incentive to provide an upgrade to hi-def. Furthermore, by the late 80s, early 90s, why bother at all with an analogue system, when the future of broadcasting tx standards was going to be digital.
So why not develop a digital hi-def system? Displaying true EU management qualities (remember these are the people who brought you the dreaded scart) nothing happened. Meanwhile the States were developing their system. Would it be possible to build a “bridge” to enable European PAL transmissions, in the digital domain, to be broadcast as part of the US hidef system, and therefore leave a pathway to eventual European adoption of a variant of the US system? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that the politicians would decree a European system for European Viewers. Thanks guys! No doubt Philips would be at the forefront of this… (are they still in a sense of denial over the defeat of the their beloved musicam MPEG 2 sound format by Dolby Digital?)
Meanwhile digital systems whether delivered by cable, satellite or DTT have multiplied in Europe, all using standard picture technology. Real time encoding into MPEG can look pretty good as long as the bit rate is high, but as any viewer knows, this isn’t the case. Football on the UK DTT system is a joke!
Essentially though, most people (and this is the important market as far as the manufacturers are concerned) don’t care about quality. We can get anamorphic broadcasts now which on the BBC usually look pretty good, and I suspect that’s the best we’ll get via tx. If you want better, you’ll have to either move to the US or buy DVDs.
Sad really, but that’s the result of Sky “going for it” in the late 80s – ie a ruthlessly commercial broadcaster looking to make money with no thought given to anything above “bare minimum, it’ll do” quality. And whilst DTT in the UK is structured in a way that the service continually tries to ape Sky then we’ll get no improvement then, as it’s a basic physical stumbling block that you cannot squeeze a gallon into a pint pot, let alone a quart…