Prepared in response to a request for information from the chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, Committee on Energy and Commerce, this report provides information on 14 high-definition television (HDTV) applications spanning national defense, medical research, space exploration, and electronic publishing. The opinions of industry officials concerning the effects that establishing HDTV production standards would have on such applications are reported, and HDTV is defined as the next generation in video technology, with a picture that is both wider and twice as sharp as those currently appearing on television sets in the United States. The improvement in picture clarity is caused by increasing the number of scanning lines from the current American standard of 525 lines to 1,125 lines, which is the current Japanese standard. The purpose of this report is to provide preliminary information to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Committee on Government Operations, the Secretary of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. (DB)