Standards are the fabric of civilization, nothing of consequence exists without following the guidelines set by custom or edict. The average citizen usually does not possess the documents that dictate his lifestyle, but they are delineated in written form, in enormous quantities,  presided over by bureaucrats engaged in busily studying and adding more standards to the pile.

Since the quality of life, and the prosperity of the individual country's inhabitants are heavily dependent upon the attention and intelligence lavished upon standards, its officials devote much time and funds to keep the standards current. However, the progress in science, seems now to have run far ahead of the human abilities to appreciate the significant improvements in sight and sound originations. Additionally, the price to be paid by the public for the enhanced standards is ignored by the scientists, who usually reply to my questions on the cost/benefit ratio with the off-hand answer, that it is not their problem. Or, the other brush-off of the cost issue is, that time and clever manufacturers will solve the price problem.

What is inferred by the title 'STANDARDS SHOULD BE HUMANIZED' is that there should be two standards formalized; one that equals the capacity of the average human being to utilize the level of information in the proposed delivery system, and secondly a standard, ever being upgraded, geared to the state of the art. I suggest that the actual system in use, at the discretion of the operator, be set at the financial goals essential to a profitable system, not necessarily at the highest technical level.

Since my interest lies in the field of electronics, and particularly in Cable TV and Broadcast TV, my comments will be confined to those areas.

Broadcast TV:

The resolution of the Human eye is about the same as the quality of an NTSC picture on a 20 inch TV at the usual viewing distance of 8 feet. The proposed High Definition TV systems with a four times increase in resolution (H+V), can have no beneficial effect for the average viewer, but the onslaught to the pocketbook will prevent HDTV from entering the home.
In my forty years as a manufacturer of antennas and home amplifiers, no complaints have ever come our way regarding the basic defects inherent in NTSC. Crosscolor, interlace artifacts, hum, resolution were never mentioned. Excessive noise, echoes, and intrusion by adjacent or concurrent signals were the only complaints that reached our applications engineering desk.

VHS tape with a performance, one-third reduced from NTSC, exists happily in 70% of the American homes, and I have not personally encountered one complaint about the picture quality therefrom.

The scientists, in creating digital compression in order to achieve the bandwidth needed for HDTV may have unwittingly gifted the home viewer with a technology far more important than a picture quality only suited for superman. Digital compression is apparently capable of transmitting four or more NTSC signals on a standard 6 mhz channel! Suddenly the broadcaster on terrestrial or satellite transmitters, can offer four programs at practically the same cost as for one. Only the home receiver has to be modified, but here it is just a matter of chip complexity, and my chip expert is confident that the price will be right.

Among the numerous committees on which I served was BTSC, charged with adding stereo sound to NTSC. In the early days of FM stereo, my company built what was then passed for high quality sound in the stereo format. I quickly became disillusioned with the inability of the entire enterprise from the technology, to the equipment (including speakers) and the listeners, as well as the performers, to duplicate the live performances. With this experience, I must have been a fifth wheel on the BTSC committee as I deplored the inherently poor quality of an analog FM modulation scheme tied to cost-conscious TV stations, performed by 3 inch speakers side by side under the picture tube for the pleasure (?) of tone deaf listeners. By this date, surely millions of stereo sound equipped TV sets have been manufactured at a substantial cost increase to an unappreciative audience.

Just recently, I was privileged to be invited to a very high tech, theater quality, sound demonstration of a proposed surround sound system for HDTV.  Sorry to report that, to this set of ears, it was just a lot of noise from all directions, and hard to connect with a flat screen video picture.

To repeat, HDTV should be standardized and continuously improved, but the real target is not the home viewer, but the professional market, theater and industrial.

Thus, my appeal to the regulators, allow the lower quality standard, NTSC, to coexist with any new HDTV system. Avoid any edict that forces the consumer to switch to a high cost technology with minimal improvement in viewer gratification.

Cable TV:

Basking in the high bandwidth capabilities of cable, there may be no urgency to add four times as many programs, by means of digital compression, as is likely to occur in the broadcasting world. However, if such receivers are approved for broadcast and the price is right, cable will follow the crowd. A very positive benefit to cable is the ability of digital to uphold the picture quality under the many adverse transmission artifacts characteristics common to cable systems.

Cable has been handicapped from birth as a child of the broadcasters. If the regulators ever remove the heavy hand from cable's future it could follow its own path to the heart of the home viewer.

First and foremost, the TV could be a monitor (leased?) and answerable only to the cable technology. Many other services could be included, other than TV entertainment, such as banking, shopping, education, and numberless interactive transactions. Tied to the telephone network, wired and wireless, one could have the option never to leave home and enjoy all of the benefits of civilization without facing the hazards of an unfriendly outside environment!

Cable TV is a prime example of the growth one can expect from a new technology very loosely controlled by the government regulators. It is my belief that standards should be as flexible as possible so that the human needs of the population are fulfilled at the price and quality level they desire, instead of the relentless progress of technology beyond the capabilities of human flesh to enjoy or need.