As more and more digital television systems are destined for consumers' homes an increasing number will be sold with the designation, "HDTV." In a comparatively short time virtually all television sales will technically meet the "official" CEA HDTV definition. As we progress up the growth curve, however, there are certain threats to the viability and fidelity of the HDTV system that, while not devastating, can, if not monitored, result in a diminution of the meaning and essence of HDTV. As I see these threats, most as not technologically driven, but instead are a manifestation of the economic dynamics of the consumer electronics business environment. Usually such dynamics are self regulating, i.e. if the manufacturers cut costs by cutting quality, reliability and/or performance, the buyers will negatively react and unit sales will subsequently suffer. However, the incremental value of HDTV image quality is so ephemeral and the customer electronics industry so competitive that customers may be caught in a downward spiraling quality vortex that is not easily perceived. To be more succinct, HDTV could lose its meaning and few would know - or care. In this and a subsequent article I will describe six salient threats and how these may combine and interact to cause the aforementioned scenario. I will address the top three in this writing (Volume 1) and the second three in Volume 2. There are undoubtedly more than six "Horses of the Apocalypse," but these are the six now heard thundering down the road. Compromised Production Values Clearly, production elements such as lighting, set design, makeup, camera parameters etc, are much more critical for high quality HDTV than SDTV. Optimizing these factors for pristine HDTV is not easy or cheap, and can easily be sacrificed on the alter of "cost control*." Production value compromise is a "creeping" infection, and it is already growing rampantly in so called "HDTV" production houses. Bandwidth Conservation Bandwidth is very valuable; therefore, everybody wants to squeeze as much as they can out of what they have. For a given video compression system (MPEG2, AVC, etc.), a decrease in bit-rate (ergo, bandwidth) comes first with an increase in motion artifacts, then with loss of resolution. There are a number of networks and broadcasters who are already cheering over how many bits they can throw away and continue to claim HDTV. Spectrum Super Packing The ever increasingly strong "big-boys-in-the-pool-room" - the "Telco's" (Version, ATT, etc.) - are salivating over the potential availability of "free" adjacent UHF TV channels in metro areas. They want to use this spectrum for unlicensed, low-power broadband service distribution. Sounds like a great idea. And it plays particularly well with those politicians who see the social benefits of extending broadband service to every nook and cranny of the country. Interestingly, their visual acuity increases, and ability to listen decreases, in proportion to the dollars thrown in their direction by the Telco lobbyists. What is conveniently lost in this equation is the fact that the US television transmission/reception system is not designed to gracefully accommodate adjacent channel energy. This is especially true with DTV. Analog over-the-air (OTA) broadcast reception can remain viable with some degree of interfering signal. However, with DTV, a critical ratio of desired vs. undesired received energy can easily be reached that causes a complete loss of sound and picture. Therefore, those viewers who would depend on indoor antennas or otherwise have weak signals could easily be denied HDTV OTA reception on some channels. Oops! Ed *"Cost Control" is the first symptom of an insidious, often fatal organizational disease caused by too many managers with an MBA based on the Harvard Business School curriculum.