The Federal Communications Commission created the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance in 1993 to develop the U.S. digital television and HDTV specification. The seven companies participating in the development consortium included Sarnoff Corporation (now part of SRI), which brought to the effort its earlier work in advanced digital HDTV. This technology was the predecessor to the ATSC digital TV standard, which became the U.S. HDTV standard in 1996.
In 1997, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presented an engineering Emmy® award to the Grand Alliance companies for developing and standardizing the transmission and technology for digital TV—one of the nine Emmy awards we have received.
