HDTV image compression: MPEG vs. autosophy

By the end of the year the United States is scheduled to set a new High Definition Television (HDTV) standard for the next generation television. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the final phases of testing the transmission protocols and image compression. The new standard is to be based on the MPEG-2 standard which is supported by a consortium of large corporations. However a question remains, whether the new standard will be a success or a dud like the Japanese MUSE standard was a few years ago. As it turns out, the new standard is based on very old and already superseded technologies. Even if the new TV is eventually made to work, it will produce images with barely tolerable distortions, while being very complex, expensive and hard to maintain. An emerging “Lossless” image compression scheme, based an autosophy networks and a new “Information Theory”, may provide a better solution. Communications bandwidth will no longer depend on image size, resolution or frame rates, but rather only on the content of the images. Software simulation experiments have produced very promising results by combining high “Lossless” image compression with superior operating characteristics