Using a special transmitter, CBS affiliate KLAS broadcast in high definition, a digital format developed specifically for U.S. television.
Broadcasters attending the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention here this week got to look at the super-sharp television. KLAS viewers continued to get their regular programming in the existing analog format.
The station's HDTV signal traveled unobstructed to the Las Vegas Convention Center, about half a mile away from the station. The signal was received on special equipment set up outside the center, routed to a makeshift theater inside and then to a projection television with a rectangular screen.
"It's an improvement, but vast is too strong an adjective," said Daryl Allen, an employee at the convention center. "I was impressed - as far as I can be by television."
But broadcast engineers gave it rave reviews.
"I've been in broadcasting for 28 years and it just blew my socks off," said KLAS' chief engineer Jack Wilkinson.
The technology itself is alluring. Using the language of computers, digital technology is a vast improvement over existing analog. It grew from plans in the 1980s to develop high-definition pictures with movie-like sharpness. But it has evolved to allow many other possibilities including the transmission of four to six shows at once, high-speed data services, and even wireless links to the Internet.
Westinghouse Electric Corp. Chairman Michael Jordan called this week's broadcast "an important technical step and an important symbolic step" toward making high definition a reality for TV viewers.
Jordan, NBC President Robert Wright and Fox TV owner Rupert Murdoch said broadcasters must go digital to be viable competitors in the 21st century. "We just cannot let free over-the-air television become a second class medium," Murdoch said.
Broadcasters watched a taped, 10-minute block of TV clips all shot in the HDTV format. The clips showed sporting events like skiing and ice skating, scenery like the Grand Canyon, a roller-coaster ride, and national monuments such as the White House and the Capitol.
"It's a step along the way to the digital TV age," said Dick Wiley, chairman of a committee that developed the HDTV system KLAS used.
That system is called Grand Alliance. Once approved by the Federal Communications Commission, possibly later this year, it will be the system that all U.S. TV stations will use to provide viewers the next generation of television. HDTV systems used in other countries have been shown at previous conventions, but the Grand Alliance has not.
"You can kind of see a gathering of momentum" behind HDTV, Wiley said. "HDTV is becoming a reality."
AT&T Corp., General Instrument, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the David Sarnoff Research Center, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Philips Consumer Electronics and Zenith developed the Grand Alliance system.