High-definition television (HDTV) first arrived on the national stage in the late 1980s, but even today only a minority of consumers in the United States and a much smaller minority in other industrialized nations have HDTV systems. However, high-definition (HD) production for video and film is increasing rapidly, as is the installed base of high-definition-capable displays. Consumers are demanding higher-quality content that takes advantage of these better displays. In addition to the content delivered over the airwaves, a significant amount of content will be delivered to the displays through computers. This demand will help to further drive the increasing availability of HD content.

To help you better understand HD content requirements, this article describes basic HD formats and concepts, including audio and video in HD, common HD recording formats, and storage and backup systems for HD. These fundamentals are essential to understanding topics, such as interlaced profiles and interframe encoding, which will be discussed in future articles in this series.