Market economics sets are a useful, indeed inescapable, hurdle that new technologies must overcome—technological innovation by itself can’t assure commercial success. HDTV’s future has yet to identify or create a level of consumer demand that justifies the level of investment program producers and delivery systems will have to undertake. Investments currently are defensively driven, to prevent market-position losses should consumer demand appear. Globally, arguments for HDTV seem even less developed than in advanced economies. In the interim, government regulation and arm-twisting worldwide is acting as a powerful driver, though whether historically HDTV will benefit from such efforts (as computers once did) or lose (as nuclear power has) remains uncertain. The government’s role won’t disappear, despite talk of ‘deregulation’; academics should spend more time examining producer and delivery-system alliances, their effects on competition, and their ultimate provision of HDTV as an economical surrogate to analog for global consumers.