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I will pledge never to give them another dime.

Enjoy your piece of shit Samesung equipment.

I'm going on some very rough estimates, but they are informed estimates nonetheless (also, the data is heavily biased towards trends in the US). Please bear with me here...

Approximately 19% of Americans play video games on a gaming console (source here). Approximately 10% of the population is left handed. Rounding the U.S. population to 300 million, we have roughly 57 million Americans playing videogames on something other than a PC (this is important because PCs are primarily mouse and keyboard driven thus I can safely rule this population segment out). If we apply the 10% left-handedness rate to that number, we get 5.7 million left-handed people who play videogames on a game console (a DS is, in this case, a game console). Approximately 105 million current-gen game consoles have been sold in the U.S. as of December 2009 (source - here). Not counting previous generation consoles, that gives us an almost 2:1 game console to console gamer ratio (1.84:1 to be a little more precise). Also, 43% of the consoles sold were Nintendo DS's. Now, here I have a choice: I can either do some fancy statistical analysis (which I don't want to do) or I can assume that 43% of left-handed console owners have a DS. Doing that, I get approximately 2.45 million left-handed Nintendo DS owners.

That's a decent sized number; let's break it down further.

Taking into account the information provided by CmdrTaco, we are specifically talking about the DSi and a game called Base 10. 300,000 DSi's were sold as of December 2009. That gives us 0.7% of all Nintendo DS's sold are capable of playing this game. That whittles our 2.45 million left-handed DS owners down to 172,000 left-handed DSi owners. I couldn't find any sales numbers for Base 10; I'm not even going to attempt a guess there. That's an okay market size in and of itself, but it would be foolish to assume that 100% of that target market would buy that game. I'm pretty sure not even New Super Mario Bros. has that kind of attachment rate.

In summary, the answer is 42.

This "research" took me all of about thirty minutes so be kind.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act nullified all housing contracts that ban antennas or satellite dishs. So you can erect either of those on your roof. More info can be found here: http://www.highdefforum.com/local-hdtv-info-reception/2922-discussion-hdtv-ota-reception.html
.

>>>if the electric company suddenly tripled their rates, what would you do besides complain and pay it?

I'd turn off the heat in every room except my main living room and supplement it with portable heaters in the bath or bedroom that can be turned on/off as needed. - As a customer I have the power to control my spending and reduce costs. As a taxpayer that power is in the hands of the 535 men in D.C., and effectively makes me a serf to their whims.

actually this thread

http://www.highdefforum.com/verizon-fios/49608-motorola-hd-dvrs-hdmi-green-screen-problem.html

is much better

Welcome, once again, to another episode of cable operators complaining about internet delivery and content bundles. All together now - (sorry, I'm very snarky today) - cry me a river.

The real issue is that all of the current non-OTA TV delivery systems have bitten off much more than they can chew.

So far as I know, NO ONE in the USA is offering HD content as advertised:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Lite
http://www.highdefforum.com/directv-forum/29158-hd-lite-directv-picture-quality.html
http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/51978-facts-about-hd-lite-e.html
http://forums.joeuser.com/309174
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2009/04/22/daily.4/
(I recognize that some of the above links seem to target satellite TV, but if you read through two things become apparent: users are equally slamming cable, and neither satellite nor cable has their arms around a solution.)

Like it or not, the #1 driver for a cable subscription is TV - and they already cannot deliver on that.

I'm not a big sports fan (but so what if I am or not?), but I can reliably report this: during a hockey and a basketball game, I DVR'd OTA and my so-called high-def service of same channels. Hockey results: OTA clear, puck actually disappeared with paid service. Round-ball results: OTA clear, paid service unable to distinguish if foot over line or ref was blind during slo-mo playback.

And here's some technical anecdotes:
1. Your channel package choice or size of bundle won't impact anything, it's backbone limited.
2. When I upgraded to "HD" satellite, my house's RG-58 didn't cut it due to bandwidth limits on the RG-58. The '58 was ok for the short wall-to-TV pigtails, not otherwise.
3. They can fiber this and cable that and MPEG-4 the other, but no one is supporting the infrastructure to get the job done.

And a real big issue - once you've made the grade to premium cable or premium satellite, and you've replaced your TV - name your reasons, they're all valid: a) I want a new one, b) new TV standards and my set is getting old anyway, c) time to branch out and support my computer and Hulu, HTPC, et al, in the living room - you'll replace that TV with an HDTV and you'll go with the HD package from your for-pay provider (cable or satellite). The HDTV is an investment-grade purchase, just like your PC (any flavor), and the HD programming is too small an incremental price increase to pass up.

Here's the invective we can now look forward to: if you're complaining about your TV quality, you'll be told the bandwidth suckers using torrents are to blame. If you're complaining about your internet service, you'll be told that the primary service is directed at TV quality. Either way, do not expect that the future holds a world where you're really going to get what you think you're paying for.

Mark my words.

(PS - No apologies to those not interested in HDTV, or TV - you're not the big market to these companies, and that's all I'm ragging on - I'm not dis'ing anyone's lifestyle or entertainment choices. HTH.)

Like this guy: http://www.highdefforum.com/768120-post19.html

I don't know how someone can say "IE is not any more vulnerable" with a straight face. And it only scored 12/100 on compatibility tests? RUN from IE.

| Analog TVs see no benefits in video quality from a digital connection.

Not true at all.

Actually, the OP was basically correct, by any practical definition.

I have a decent quality 50 inch Plasma (a Pioneer PDP-505XDE) and use it with both analog and digital inputs for HD content, there is no decernable difference in quality between using an RGP/VGA analog or DVI digital input.

This is also true of using a VGA connector over a DVI connector to connect to a display using a destkop or laptop computer, you don't get "less pixels" or "blurrier pixels" or "less accurate color reproduction" - unless something else is wrong (like the equipment your connecting to/from/with is not working correctly).

And that's also going to be true over the entire life time of the Xbox360 too huh?

All XBox 360 games support HD. You can use the the X-Box 360 in 720p or 1080i mode, but typically - after comparing the two - people prefer 720p because it's visually preferable when gaming (remember, 1080i is not always better than 720p - on the contrary it's worse for most types of games). Add to this, that it's also far better to do a bit of FSAA than just to bump the resolution a bit - e.g. a 4xFSAA game at 720p is going to look far better than even a 1080p game with no FSAA.

So yeah, for the most part it will remain true, just like the 'higher resolution' modes on on consoles in, oh at least the last 10 years (thinking back to the N64), it will be almost universily ignored except in a few (gimmicky) instances - particularly in this case as it's libable to make games look worse than they could have done otherwise.

I have PS2 games that are in 1080i over component, and you are telling me that no XBox360 game will ever support 1080p? That would be a sad fact for the 360 if true.

No you don't, you might have the one single 1080i game released for the PS2, and it's entirely a gimmic, as it doesn't really handle it very well, and of course the edges are still blocky as hell at that resolution because it has no antialiasing.

By every meaningful metric, the PS2 managed to be significantly crappier graphically than the origional X-Box - and even ports of Dreamcast titles were inferior (with things such as 2D sprites replacing what had been 3D poloygons on the DC), so I wouldn't worry about the future of the X-Box if games typically "only" supports 720p and not 1080i...

Personally, I suspect the ratio of 1080i games on the X-Box will be about the same as the ratio of 1080p games on the PS3 - i.e. nothing compared to overwhelming majority of 'lowest-common-denominator-catering' 720p titles (on both platforms).

Microsoft actually enforcing the use of at least 2xFSAA (and ideally 4xFSAA) on 720p (and not allowing games like MSR or CoD2 to be released with out it) would be far more meaningful than having them get developers making more use of 1080i, which is a total red herring.

From the comments:

---
  Anonymous said...

        ANONYMOUS... WOW... what can I say?

        Anyone researching this? LOOK AT THIS LINK that 'anonymous' gave...
        http://www.bbbnewyork.org/businessreports/Default. aspx?id=1026

        Add it to an example like THIS from July...
        http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=8783& page=1&pp=10

        It would appear that this is nothing new, and that one single company is burning through names and complaints like hotcakes, but still manages to stay in business.
        1:25 PM
---

Long story short, "Lopez" isn't the owner and this company has no board of directors.

While you'll certainly get better sound using wires...

wire the speakers with MonsterCable

...MonsterCable is a rip-off. Not only are they horribly overpriced compared to equivalent/better cables, but they blindly sue anyone using the term 'Monster' in their name.