SAN DIEGO — Eight thousand people queued up Thursday morning at a retail outlet here to get a look at the first digital HDTV sets as they went on sale. The chief engineers of most local TV stations in the San Diego area, and TV media from around the world, were among the crowd.

"By taking advantage of this location, situated closest to the Mexican border where Panasonic's factory is, we were able to become the first store to sell Panasonic's digital HDTV sets," said Tom Campbell, video director of the Dow Stereo/Video store.

Thursday's event, organized by Campbell, marked the launch of Panasonic's 56-inch, 16x9 wide-screen HDTV-compatible display/projection TV, which lists for $5,499 retail.

Campbell said that competitive reasons prohibited him from saying how many HDTV sets were sold yesterday, but he pointed to evidence of sales. "People who were here today witnessed a truck after a truck — all together nine trucks — rolling out of this store [to deliver sold HDTV sets]," he said. Others who were present said the store sold three of the sets in the first four minutes after it opened.

Panasonic's digital HDTV projection TV will not be able to receive and display digital HDTV signals coming over the air without the company's $1,700 decoder set-top, which is scheduled for launch later this year. The set is able to display both HDTV 1080i, SDTV 480p and 480i DTV formats. The projection TV set also features a line-doubler that upconverts conventional NTSC analog signals to 480p, thus enhancing a picture's quality to show detailed images without visible scan lines.

While no terrestrial digital TV was available for demonstration at the store, Unity Motion (St. Louis), a satellite firm dedicated to 24-hour broadcasting of HDTV programming (scheduled to start next month), provided its 1080i digital HDTV satellite feed to the store. Unity Motion's set-top decoder received and decoded the digital HDTV signals and Panasonic's projection TV displayed "The Mask of Zorro" in 1080i, Campbell said.

With help from Panasonic, Dow Stereo/Audio also installed an ad-hoc mini studio in the store that featured HDTV studio cameras, so consumers who visited the store could see themselves on the HDTV.

The day's highlight occurred when NBC's "Today" show — broadcast in conventional NTSC formats — was tuned in displayed on the store's digital HDTV. "People literally thought that they were watching the digital HDTV broadcast," Campbell said.

That may be exactly what Panasonic had in mind in its effort to become the first company to market a digital HDTV. "It's a very smart move," said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst at In-Stat Inc. (Scottsdale, Ariz.). "Panasonic is doing the whole market a favor by letting consumers know that they can already enjoy great picture now on this future-ready digital TV."

As yet, no industry standards exist for the interface between a digital set-top decoder and a digital TV. For now, Panasonic is connecting the two with an analog video component — the same kind of a connector used in professional video equipment.