If you want a more complete (although dry) overview of how we got from NHK's MUSE to the USA's NTSC-8VSB / MPEG-2 system, the book Defining Vision: How Broadcas

If you want a more complete (although dry) overview of how we got from NHK's MUSE to the USA's NTSC-8VSB / MPEG-2 system, the book Defining Vision: How Broadcasters Lured the Government into Inciting a Revolution in Television is a good resource: https://www.amazon.com/Defining-Vision-Broadcasters-Government-Revolution/dp/0156005972/ https://www.amazon.com/Defining-Vision-Broadcasters-Governme... The TLDR is that the USA took so damn long to make up their minds about a standard (while cleverly keeping the spectrum tied up and away from others that wanted it) that digital coding and compression was able to develop and mature into a system that worked. MUSE was an analog standard that would never fit into a single channel in the US system.