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I STILL Want My HDTV

Posted by timothy on from the flat-thin-expensive dept.

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..."

21 of 413 comments (clear)

  1. HDTV already has a killer App by SiliconJesus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its called DVD. My friend and co-worker has a killer entertainment system with the centerpiece natrually being his HDTV. He uses it almost exclusively for DVD. He has all of the expensive decoders, but doesn't use em much. Lets face it when you're pulling the waves out of the air, static at 1080 is still static.

    --
    Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
  2. They have a point... by NOT-2-QUICK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article:

    "Fox probably thought, 'Since widescreen at 480 is good enough for the millions who watch DVDs, why spend a lot more to please the few purists?'"

    As much as I hate to admit it, from a purely business standpoint the network executives are probably being most prudent in not commencing with the conversion at this point.

    Like any industry, television networks are in business to make money and their executives have an obligation to move forward with the best strategies possible to realize this goal. Unfortunately, what may make good business doesn't always equate to what promotes progress.

    To use a simple metaphor, one need look only as far as the automobile industry. We have known for years that automobile emissions are bad for the environment. Additionally, we have much (if not all) of the technology available this very minute to switch to an alternative fuel source resulting in vehicles which would be much more 'environmentally freindly' - ethanol or electic power. Why don't we convert - because the automobile industry is just like the television industry, they are in it for the money. The obvious positive progress aside, such advances increase overhead and decrease corporate profit margins - aka 'bad business'...

    I think it suck as much as anyone - I own a wide-screen, HDTV compatible set!!! However, putting myself in their position, I can't argue with their decisions at this point in time...

    --
    Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:They have a point... by norton_I · · Score: 3, Interesting

      While ethanol produces greenhouse gasses, it is in direct proportion to the greenhouse gasses fixed by the growing of the corn.

      That said, ethanol is a terribly inefficient fuel. The last dept. of agriculture study on it showed that the NEV (net energy value) of corn ethanol is somewhere around 1.25. Basically, this means that every 1.25 joules of ethanol energy you want, you need to spend 1 joule of energy on farm vehicle fuel, transportation, fertilizer, etc, all the while using up the most fertile land in the country on energy production, since corn needs much more fertile land than most other crops.

      While I believe that we now have the technology and experience to build a relatively safe nuclear reactor (compared with any other kind of power plant), we have a limited amount of fissionable materials. I heard one calculation (I don't remember the source, so treat it skeptically) claim if the whole US converted to nuclear power, we would have about 20-30 years worth of power. Despite massive amounts of development money poured into them, nobody has demonstrated an ability to run breeder reactors cost effectivly, much less safely.

      The best gasoline replacement I know of is methanol. Methanol can be generated from basically any plant, rather than only sucrose rich plants like corn. Some fast growing trees have a NEV as high as 25, can grow on land poorly suited to growing food products, has a multiple year harvest cycle, reducing errosion, and is all around a Good Thing(tm). these guys we could replace 1/2 of all gasoline consumtion with methanol without significantly affecting food prices. While that doesn't solve the electricity issue, it goes a long way towards reducing pollution and greenhouse emissions from cars. Plus methanol can either be burned in a traditional internal combustion engine, or used to power fuel cells. Thus, it could be implemented now, with existing technology while easy a transition to fuel cells if the power density issues are solved.

      For electrical generation, I still want to hold out for solar, but it looks like it is going to be a while before the cost/kW is reasonable. I actually don't think it should be that hard to do so, it is just that most current research and demand for solar energy (ie, the space program) cares more about efficiency than cost. If the govt (or anyone with money) were to set a goal of solar cells with 1/2 the efficiency of current cells, but 1/10 the cost, I think we could acheive it in 10 years with moderate investment.

  3. Re:widescreen HD by fyonn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    might be to you, but it's not to us. we have widescreen which is doing pretty well, quite a few WS sets in the uk onw, it's almost getting hard ot buy a new 4:3) but not HDTV. ofcourse PAL is a higher res and has a better colour system than ntsc anyways so it's not quite so critical. dvd's can look pretty stunning

    as an aside, I watched aliens SE the other night with some friends on my 32" widescreen tv and I was appalled at the quality of encoding. it was awful, like watching a dodgy avi, well, not that bad :) you could see great swathes of the same colour, maybe I'm just getting more discerning but I watched the mummy at the weekend and it's a testament to how far dvd encoding as come. it was a stunningly good transfer.

    hey ho

    dave

  4. Re:Why not HD In setup boxes? by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem with a burner and HDTV is you'd need hardcore compression to squeeze any amount of HD video onto CD-R. HD 1080i resolution (1900x1080) has about 6x as many pixels as SD 480i (720x480) resolution. Plus, I'd want something a bit better than DiVX for compression if I'm going to make full use of my $2000 television. I paid for HD, I want to preserve the quality. Hell, uncompressed 24-bit 1080i is 176 MegaByte/sec. That's friggin huge considering that the latest IDE drives can't even do 50 MB/sec. Lossless compression hasn't gotten that good yet.

  5. If I might talk out of my ass for a moment.... by Kibo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd like to make a case for blaming Neilson ratings. They determine whether a tv is tuned to a particular channel, and not whether people are actually watching it right? Well that allows TV stations to over report their viewership. Since media conglomerates want to appear to have more people watching for longer times, in prime demographics, maybe useing that extra spectrum they were given for many standard channels rather than one HD channel would allow them to more efficiently inflate their viewership to increase their ad revenue, while provideding more time to schedule infomercial programming for us insomniacs.

    But if there were accurate reporting, ie people leaveing to get a pop when a commercial came on, sleeping through the news, in short if it tracked how much time people really spent watching TV, they might find trends which I'll preceed to predict with no basis in fact and only wild speculation as my guide. I would bet people with HD TV's recieving HD programing would spend more time watching TV than average, watch longer, and prefer HD programs to standard programs. Since they have the money to spend on purchases like HD TV's and are willing to spend it, it puts them in a better demographic. But most importantly, I'll try to justify this assertion with hand waving and magic powder, that they'd be more likely to watch commercials, as HD commercials would feature more eye candy and probably be more entertaining. And I'm not just talking about Victoria's Secret.

    If the viewing habbits were accurately compiled, and my prognostication came to pass there might be a very real, very powerful market pressure where to get the really lucrative advertisers you have to have a HD signal.

    But again, just how I think it might really be.

    --
    --Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
  6. Just waiting... by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just call DirecTV. I have a "dormant" account. Each year, they put NFL Sunday Ticket on my spring bill. Each year I call up CS and ask, "$140 is a pretty good chunch of change - are all the games going to be broadcast in High Definition?" Each year the rep has informed me that the games would not be in HD. Each year I tell them to cancel my Sunday Ticket and call me when they start broadcasting in High Def.

    I vote with my wallet.
    --

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  7. NO compelling need by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    As a number of people have noted, There is no compelling, need to upgrade to HDTV.

    The higher resolution is not comparable to the switch from black and white to color.

    Even so, the FCC has not chosen (I believe) standards that are backward compatible, as was color to black and white. Let's face it. Color TV probably would have taken a lot longer to get into the markert if it had had been backward incompatible.

    The end result for most consumers is that they resent being put on the treadmill of upgrading their techonology just because something is supposed to be better. Heck, how many companies were/are still using Cobol when Y2K rolled around. Or look at the hassle MS gets because it wants people to upgrade their computers every three years, even pulling software off the shelves in favor of the last version, trying to force people into shorter and shorter upgrade cycles.

    And not every tv station is going to be able to spend money to upgrade to digital right away. The outcry when people are _forced_ to buy new tvs, and these are all high priced items, will kill tv in america. Most folks will say, "I can't afford a thousand dollar tv". They may go down to walmart for something for a couple hundred bucks. But a couple of gs for a bood tube? To hell with it. I know TV is not that important to me. I'll live without, and probably will be better of for it. Just imagine not being able to see allof those political campaign ads because of incompatibility of technologies.

    paradise.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  8. Olympics by CaseyB · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I watched figure skating (which doesn't interest me as a sport) on a 60-something inch HDTV at a Sony Store this weekend. It was the first time I saw a reason for wanting to own one of them. There was a real sense of being there, it really made the sport more interesting, giving it some of that "human" quality you get from watching a game or concert live instead of on regular TV.

    I don't think it was $10,000 impressive though. :)

  9. Re:Science FIction by The+Unknown+Anorak · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Unfortunately Sci-fi is the genre least likely to embrace HDTV. TV props are made to a lower standard than film props - they can be, because you'll never see them in as much detail on low-res TVs. HDTV requires a similar level of investment to film in terms of props, costumes, sets, etc etc. Plus the rendering time for CGI shots is higher, models cost more to produce, etc etc.

    Sport will be the killer app for HDTV - imagine golf where you can actually see the ball!

    --
    If a tree falls in the forest, and it falls on a mime, does anyone care?
  10. I first heard of HDTV.... by tiltowait · · Score: 3, Interesting

    .... from a guy talking to a class about 15 years ago. His general theme was that although the technology had been around for a long time, certain political barriers were delaying it's release. But, he added, in just a few short years, it will replace conventional television.

    Here's some HDTV Highlights (Feb. 1981-March 1998).

  11. Re:I STILL don't see the point of HDTV (yet) by uradu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > When a set + decoder costs over $2k (and up, as opposed to conventional TV sets being well under
    > $500 for a nice one)

    Define nice. For under $500 you get a bulbous 32" set at best. If you want one of the newer flat (or even at least nearly flat) sets in the 32" to 36" category, it will cost you more than $1000. OTOH, once you get to 36" with an analog set, the low resolution of NTSC becomes REALLY apparent, especially with letterboxed DVDs.

    So basically, once you're spending $1200 on an analog set, you might at well spend $1500-$2000 on an HDTV RPTV (check out the Panasonic PT47WX49, you can find it as low as $1500 online, currently $1799 at BB). In my opinion, at that price point an HDTV-ready set is worth it even just for the improved quality and wide aspect ratio of DVDs. In fact, at the moment I would say that the real appeal of HDTV sets lies in playback of DVDs rather than true HD programming, which is still pretty scarce (and expensive to record).

  12. I have HD by AgentGray · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No matter what the hardships, it is being rolled out. I live in a community of 50,000 people and we already have HD simulcast on our NBC affiliate.

    I work for a company that owns over ten television stations and we're simulcasting on half of them and others will be by next year.

    Has anyone seen the Olympics on HD? It's incredible! The reflections on the ice, the shiney gold helmets. The detail in the fabric on the outfits! I could go on. Plus, the sound is great. You can actually hear the movements in the snow or ice.

    We've taken the Olympic HD broadcast and pretty much aired it 24 hours over out HD channel.

    Sadly, the film on HD shows up what appears to me to be the same (ER or West Wing). However, anything on video looks great.

    You do have to be wary, Fox said that they broadcast the Superbowl in HD. This was the not case. They just letterboxed it and upsamlped the stream. It made for some great pixelation at the end when they threw out the confetti.

    It'll get there, and the TV set prices will be cheaper, eventually. Until then, I and the other 10+ people in our community will enjoy it.

    --
    "Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
  13. Re:I STILL don't see the point of HDTV (yet) by jht · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree with you as far as what you get for your $500 not being particularly nice - but a 32" tube isn't bad for TV viewing, even if the set is kinda big. And it's what the average joe can afford.

    If you're in the market for a higher-end set, it does make sense to consider HDTV instead, but the market for $1200+ analog sets is a lot smaller to begin with than the market for $500 sets - and the HDTV market is in turn a subset of the smaller premium market.

    But your point is spot-on. HDTV is ideal for the heavy DVD user, and many of the early sets have circuitry to improve the sharpness of NTSC video as well, so there is a benefit for those premium users. The problem is that it's a small market, and will probably remain so for quite some time to come.

    Why did DVD take off so quickly? Because player prices dropped to around the same prices as VCRs. That fueled the explosion. I think it'll be the same thing with HDTV.

    --
    -- Josh Turiel
    "2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
  14. cable companies are trying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I recently bought a widescreen HDTV, and in search for programming found that my cable company, Time Warner, is running an HDTV trial. I signed up, and noe I am among ~400 people in all of New York City testing this service out. I receive a handful of HDTV channels now and the content/picture quality is quite compelling. The major problem for cable companies is that good cable set-top-boxes do not exist. The one they use now is total crap (SA Explorer 2000HD), and there are no other HD boxes out there for them to deploy. Once better STB equipment is on the market, cable comapnies will begin to deploy HDTV and the >50% of US households with cable will have an easy upgrade to get programming.

  15. Here we go! by dimer0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First, I'm one of the early adopters, I bought a Pioneer Elite HD set about 2 years ago, mainly for watching DVDs at first (which is OUTSTANDING, btw). The TV cost approx $7000. (In retrospect, I think I should have waited a year.. Heh)

    I'm lucky enough to be in a market where the local cable system is transmitting a few channels in HD. I had to go online and grab a decoder (~ $300), and I was all set.

    WOW. Amazing. I pick up CBS HD, and their Saturday afternoon College Football games made it ALL worth the while. You could read the frickin warning label text on the backs of the helmets! I now find myself to be a regular fan of the CBS primetime lineup, previously would have never watched a single show on there. (Hear this, advertisers? Networks?)

    I live in Omaha. People probably don't think Omaha is a big tech area. (I don't!). But I've written our major networks in town, one is already transmitting OTA digital, another comes online in 2 weeks, and the other two will be done by Summer. Why justify HDTV? .. It's here folks. The programming is here.

    I've since bought a direct-view toshiba widescreen hdtv for upstairs. I haven't gotten it to start picking up OTA transmissions yet (waiting till it gets a bit warmer to start figuring out antenna placements), but DVD content is amazing - and, guess what? The XBOX has a few widescreen 480p games, with 1080i games to follow shortly! Have you seen DOA3 on an HDTV? It would blow your mind away.

    Things are going okay.. The prices ARE plummeting (my widescreen tube hdtv was only $1850! - and it's a flat screen as well). The content is growing. All the people that are sitting on the sidelines will start seeing more and more letterboxed NTSC television feeds (did anyone notice the black bars in the NCAA game CBS had a few weekends ago???).. While you had that, I had a PERFECT 16:9 game to watch.. Ahh..

  16. Re:Crap (You aren't looking hard enough) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been lucky enough to live in a city (Boston) where I can receive a lot of HD programming with just a simple set of rabbit ears (It turns out the simpler the antenna the better for receiving an HD signal, you can also get HD net (great channel) over satellite) But I have to say that my roommates and I (2 electrical engineers with masters degrees and 1 CS guy) have had to do a lot of research on just how to run and tweak the HDTV and our reception. When an HD program is properly produced and transmitted it totally blows you away. The local PBS channel was doing testing awhile back and had a program about Italy on and to be honest it was like looking out an open window at Italy, completely amazing. Conversely if you watch HD programming on CBS the shows look much better and there is definitely that HD 3d effect but the network has chosen to use filters or a process to make the image look like a film, i.e. a softer less defined image. Where HD really has shined consistently is with true HD sports broadcasts. (The last super bowl was billed as an HD broadcast but really wasn¦t) With the wider aspect ratio you can see so much more of the field in an incredibly higher detail. In hockey games when a slap shot bounces off a post you can see the shot come in and bounce off the post where with a traditional broadcast you usually only hear the ding off the post. That being said NBC has made a choice to simulcast their digital TV signal with their HDTV signal for the Olympics which means sometimes the signal isn¦t as good as it could be, some pixelization on high speed shots with objects moving inside of the point of focus. Really a very small thing, but I¦m told if NBC didn¦t waste bandwidth on the extra signal it would not occur. (BTW - God bless Mark Cuban for getting NBC to allow him to broadcast the Olympics even if they are a day behind) DVD will never look as good as true HD programming even with a progressive player, don¦t get me wrong DVD look great but for example ABC has been running James Bond films and Indiana Jones movies in HD and comparing the bond films to the DVD version (no Indiana Jones DVDs yet f¼) The HD broadcast of even very old films is completely amazing. There are still the limiting factors of the original film but the image of the HD broadcast is much better than the DVD version. Finally playing Halo for the Xbox at 480p in co-op mode on a 50 16:9 screen rocks! It will be interesting to see how games look when Xbox game makers start shipping games that run at higher res. (Xbox is the only game console with true HD support)

  17. Thank politicians, FCC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    B&W --> color rollout went extemely smoothly, because at that time the FCC had a spine and imposed itself on the process. Now of course we have the "free market" running the show, so expect the law of the jungle. Libertarians, get a clue...

  18. Wow, I wrote that... by Argyle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Heh, that was a while ago. Did you save it somewhere? Or is it deep in the /. archive?

    I actually wrote it for my fraternity mailing list. The reference to Sun-day is an inside joke.

    It pays to be a broadcast engineer in discussions like this.

    --
    nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
  19. I have HDTV, and it is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm in the SF Bay Area, and here we are lucky to have many stations broadcasting in digital, with quite a few of those doing HDTV.

    I can get, over the air for free, digital TV from FOX, ABC, CBS, WB, UPN, PBS (NBC moved far to the south, and I can't get it any more).
    Picture quality is always better than cable TV.
    Sound quality ranges from normal TV quality to great Dolby Digital 5.1. And all this from a $17 Radio Shack antenna.

    On a small screen, perhaps the HDTV picture isn't compelling, but on a large screen it certainly is. (I have a 50" RPTV, and a 90" home theater projector).

    HDTV over the air is noticably better than the best DVD. This makes it compelling to watch movies on TV, where as in the past I'd forgo the TV broadcast and buy the DVD.

    The Superbowl, while much better in Digital broadcast than on cable, was noticably not HDTV.
    If you've seen the difference, you'd know it wasn't close.

    Digital TV already is mandated, and as some compelling advantages over NTSC: Clear stable pictures without snow and ghosts, better and more consistent color, better sound, over the air program guides, etc.

    HDTV takes that to the next level: Amazingly sharp clear pictures that really give you the "Movie theater" feel.

    That said, there is a lot of controversy over HDTV. One HDTV broadcast takes up most or all of the broadcast channel, while a SDTV broadcast can be multiplexed and you can send three or four channels in the broadcast channel space.

    I think HDTV will not have a "killer app" until HD-DVD hits the market (perhaps in a couple years, blue laser DVDs are just getting standardized). But then, if the TV broadcasters want us to continue to watch, they will need the HDTV to compete.

    Anyway, from a consumer of HDTV: It works, and it works great! If you don't have it, you don't know what you are missing.

  20. You know... by alex_ant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I went home this past winter break. We have a kind of half-finished basement, which is carpeted and heated but only one wall is drywall. It's kind of a "den" type room, or it could be seen as a spare bedroom. Anyway, there is a 13" TV in this room. A monophonic Magnavox, with the speaker pointed left out of the side of the enclosure, made around 1989. An absolute piece of shit by any standard.

    My girlfriend and I stayed up late one night to watch one of those strange HBO late-night movies cuddled up in front of this little 13" TV, and it was probably the most enjoyable movie-viewing experience I've had in years. I've seen Hollywood epics on huge-screened surround sound systems, I've seen numerous films inside state-of-the-art theatres, but I must say, this little 13" television had them all beat.

    I guess I don't expect most Slashdotters to understand that, but...

    Alex