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I STILL Want My HDTV
jhaberman writes: "Slate.com has an opinion piece talking about the horrific mess the HDTV rollout has been. It seems everyone's
been to blame from the hardware manufacturers, to the cable/satellite companies,
to the producers of the actual shows. I fell into the trap a year ago buying a
top of the line Sony Wega digital TV and I STILL don't have ANY HDTV! Here's why..."
I paid so much and winter olyimpics is all i get? Heck, i stay with my 10 year old Sony.
With almost no content to view in the HDTV format who wants to pay thousands of dollars to buy a set that can display it? Not me. I am happy with my current set. Just as with the film The Matrix providing a great vehicle to push DVD players HDTV needs to come up with its 'killer' show. Something so awe-inspiring that we, the viewing public, just can't live without. Good luck.
If Darwin was right, you'd be dead by now.
Rather than whining about not being given the option to vegetate in front of inane rubbish at improved resolution, why not rejoice in the fact that you have an incentive to go outside and interact with the world, it's considerably less pixelated than even HDTV.
Why would anyone want to go outside, meet people or do things ? Instead, you can watch others have fake adventures or get your opinions and desires programmed in rather than going to all the trouble of figuring them out for yourself. You can achieve a state of lower consciousness - it helps pass the time while you wait for death.
If you must watch TV, at least buy a mirror to put up above the screen. That way you can look up from time to time and compare the excitement on the screen with the futile existence of the vegtable on the couch.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Just like most people I'm not going to pay $2,000 for a set then another $600 for an idiotic "receiver", no matter how many shows you broadcast in HDTV. Set what prices you want, they're your TVs; but don't whine when we don't start throwing money at you. And don't try to swindle us by separating the decoder and the set, that's just idiocy.
That's like butchering the movie. The only right place to watch movies is the movie theatre.
Perhaps one of the big sci-fi shows could accompish this. A show like "Friends" isn't going to see much benefit from HD, whereas special-effects saturated shows like "Enterprise" or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" might. Alas, while the genre has grown substantially in recent years, I don't think it has the mass-market appeal to be a true killer-app.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Next time you're in your local electronics store and the sales sharks notice you glance at one of their HDTV's, make sure to ask them about all the additional hardware you would potentially need to actually view HDTV. See how honest of an answer they give you... Its been my experience lately that these guys have been so hard up to unload these TVs on people ("HDTV is the thing of the future... And that future is now!") they'll tell you pratically anything. I had one guy tell me that I could receive HDTV signals from *any* local cable provider. I wonder how many truly uninformed folks are out there with new TVs thinking they are watching HDTV.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
It's all big titted whores, vapid "real life" pseudo smut, and biased, big corp misinformation and govt.propaganda.
Fight the power, don't listen to this shithead
"timothy" grubbing for popular delusion, create your own!
The real reason we haven't switched to ethanol fuel is that studies have pointed out that the entire surface of the United States would have to be planted with corn all year 'round to provide enough ethanol to replace the gasoline we use. Ethanol is therefore not a viable replacement. And ethanol combustion still produces some greenhouse gas emissions, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Fuel cell batteries (i.e., spend nuclear-generated electricity on electrolysis to store energy in the form of hydrogen) are the only reasonable replacements for gasoline that we can see today. But the freakin' enviro-freaks get all up-in-arms over the use of nuclear power. I think they would be unsatisfied with anything short of returning to the stone age---as long as they all get their lattes, of course.
[ home ]
HDTV is still a solution in search of a problem, as far as I can see. When a set + decoder costs over $2k (and up, as opposed to conventional TV sets being well under $500 for a nice one), there's no compelling advantage that makes it worth the extra money. There's a lot better things the average person can do with that money.
The problem is that HDTV is nice for the enthusiast, but useless for most people. Improved quality of DVD playback is nice, but despite the success of the DVD format, typical viewers are not trying to replicate the theater experience at home. Heck, most of them wouldn't know how if they wanted to (and could afford it). I just can't see people who don't know how to set the clock on their VCR being able to find the sweet spot for a 5.1 speaker system.
Does HDTV have a shot? Of course it does. But the networks need to get serious about it (and soon), prices on the equipment need to plummet (no more than a 20% price difference between an HDTV monitor and the equivalent NTSC TV) to the point where folks are willing to shell out the cash, and the issues with cable companies need to be worked out pronto. And consumers need to demand high-quality video, otherwise all we'll wind up getting someday is 4 channels of the same crap on an HDTV frequency. Yippee.
I should be a perfect target customer for HDTV. I'm a technically-oriented person. I make a good living. I have not one, but two DVD players (one is in the bedroom), several computers, surround sound in the living room, and I only have a 27" set to go with it. I ought to be heading for upgrade city, but I'm not.
I've looked longingly at a 40" widescreen set that I see every time I go to Best Buy, but I just can't justify $2200 for a TV set, no matter how hard I try. Other than the DVD film I watch every couple of weeks, there's just no advantage to the big set. One of my friends has a huge widescreen projection HDTV set (he did well in the stock option roulette game), and I've watched movies on it - they look great. But TV looks just as crappy, only bigger. So what's the point? Guys who made a lot with stock options are far from an ideal market, especially nowadays.
Maybe in a couple more years this'll be worth revisiting, but HDTV is dead in the water for now, and justifiably so. There just isn't any real benefit that makes it worth your disposable income - unless you have a ridiculous amount of income to dispose of.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Nobody has mentioned that the HDTV rollout has been stymied deliberately -- by the media corporations who are reluctant to broadcast their best material throughout the airwaves. If THE MATRIX were broadcast in glorious HDTV, imagine the carnage! You could capture the non-compressed HDTV signal to a hard drive, and you'd actually have a video version of THE MATRIX that was superior to any version you could buy. Plus, you wouldn't have to worry about any DVD copy protection/region encoding.
In short, the media companies are terrified that this will put them out of business.
When I briefly owned an HDTV decoder, the manual's fine print read something like this: The HDTV broadcast standard is still emerging, and this decoder may not be able to decode all or any future HDTV broadcasts. (Especially since BIG MEDIA is still planning to implement copy protection to protect their crappy Hollywood assets.)
I sure wonder how pissed off Joe Early Adopter is going to be when he finds out his $700 set top decoder won't decode any HDTV signal worth watching!
Of course, since true copy protection of digital signals is probably impossible, I would probably bet that Big Media will do everything possible to delay and stymie the HDTV "rollout". Just like DAT.
--
tomRakewell
What the real problem is is that I have yet to see in the stores an HDTV which is either 19" or 25" or 27". Of course when all of the TV's are large screened the prices are going to be much higher.
Not everyone has the space for a large screen TV or is willing to bear the cost of one. A smaller tv would bring down the price and perhaps incentivize including a built in HDTV tuner. I believe once these smaller tv's are built then we will see more widespread adoption. Until that point only videophiles will be the ones to purchase them.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Porn today sucks. It's boring. Like any other vicarious form of entertainment, it requires suspension of disbelief for it to be enjoyed. But with the lousy acting, directing, stories - and pretty much everything else - there's plenty of disbelief. Hell, with all the fake tits, formulaic scenes, and uninspired moaning they can't even make the sex believable. To say nothing of the offensive levels of sexism (contrary to popular belief porn is not inherently sexist), or numerous other factors. All it is is people screwing on camera for money.
All the more reason for the real networks and producers to get involved. Porn IS the killer app. Demand for porn is nearly universal among men, and if they bothered to work on the stories they could make it appealing to women too. One need look no further than the demand for Yaoi Doujinshi among women to see that this is true. There's money to be made, and Hollywood has more than enough of it. They certainly pay the actors enough. At an Indecent Proposal sum of one million dollars per episode each, I don't see why every episode of Friends DOESN'T have a different permutation of the cast members gettin' it on, culminating with an orgy in the series finale.
Can you imagine how much better porn could be with real acting, a hefty production budget, and a schedule based on weeks rather than days? I can. It's time to stop burying softcore smut on the premium channels, and bring porn to prime time.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I love my HDTV... If only I could get programming... However, I love running my DVD (progressive scan) and Gamecube at 480p... There is a nice difference. I bought my set knowing that it would be mostly for 480p.
However, what you're all missing is the power that DTV has IF the broadcasters use 480i.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but at a 480i DTV transmission, each broadcaster will be able to broadcast 5 or 6 channels. Recording the shows at 1080i shouldn't be a big deal, and they can broadcast them at 480i.
This means that with an OTA Attennae (once DTV has its act together, reasonable anntennaes should become available), you could pick up 40 channels or so...
Now, I love my HDTV 6.1 Stereo system, etc. However, I want OTA to be as good as analog cable, just with a better signal.
That means that the cable company needs to offer me something to keep my business.
Right now they compress signals as much as possible to include more pay-per-view, but its really the same pay-per-view just starting every 30 minutes.
Sorry, but that won't keep my $80/month flowing. HBO and Starz are great, but there is no reason they can't rent descramblers directly and send their feeds on a broadcaster's OTA signal.
The cable companies started to get their act together when the Satellite companies started to really make a push. When OTA competes with them, then Satellite and Cable will have to really offer something.
I look foward to the day when I can get 40 channels for free or drop $50-$100/mo. to get HDTV signals, etc. I mean, there is no reason for shows not to be recording in HDTV, that way they can be sold on HDVD later on and the broadcasters can sell the rights to carry their HDTV signals if the cable companies want to exist.
Alex
I don't think the industry will ever persuade me to get HDTV. They'd need to:
equivalent). No point having a high quality image when it's
interrupted every ten minutes.
high quality image if you're going to paste an ugly logo over it. My TV
already tells me what channel I'm watching.
of the few shows I watch regularly, so it's getting to the stage where all
I have the TV for is watching DVDs and Twilight Zone reruns.
going to get me to give up DVDs.
ears every time I want to change channels.
news and bread-and-circus channels (ESPN, FOX Sports, etc.).
Obviously the above ain't gonna happen, so there's no point my worrying
about HDTV. However, I'd like to get a widescreen set capable of scan-doubled 480p for my
DVD player...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak