Thereby *again* demonstrating that middle class is average, genius.
No, most people are below middle class. It's just a name, given because it's in the middle of two other classes, not because it represents any average or median.
and users of old analog TVs will face the prospect of spending $400 on a converter or $800 on a much better TV.
More like $100 and falling. Many TVs sold today are digital, but not HD.
Do you know what the word "middle" means? I'm going to be kind on the assumption that English isn't your primary language. Middle class == working class.
No, middle means in the middle, above the lower class and below the upper class. Working class = lower class, i.e people who do the work so the middle class PHBs can buy their HDTVs.
Right now, most people do not have HDTV. In 10 years, everyone will, in part because in America analog over-the-air TV will cease to exist due to government regulations.
You do realise that digital TV is a completely different thing to HDTV? That you can get HDTV over analogue signals, and SDTV over digital signals? You are very lacking in knowledge.
I think you should learn more about America before you make blanket generalities, because you seem not to be familiar with the country.
I think you should learn more about your own country, I mean outside of your little yuppie universe.
Knock off the ad hominems - even small rooms have walls, and for a small family "everyone" means "2-3 people" who can all fit on a couch in front of the TV. I live in a small townhouse with a living room that's probably 3-4m x 5-6m, and yet I still have a big screen in the middle of a wall, with speakers on either side, centered around a couch.
You know, most people have two or three chairs, so people can see each other and talk to each other. No-one just has one couch facing a TV. Well maybe in America.
Anyone who has bought a $100 receiver in the last 15 years.
Most people just use the speakers built into the TV. Unless you're confused about what 'surround' means.
I think "middle class" is defined so that most people are in fact "middle class."
No it isn't. Most people are working class. Most people don't have surround sound or HDTV, and probably never will do.
In one swoop, they've condemned people to upgrading if you want to play games on the dominant PC gaming platform.
And in one swoop, Nintendo have condemned people to upgrading to the wee if they want to play games on a dominant console.
You've also not realised that most major developers will not use DirectX 10 if it only works on Vista, as they'd be cutting off most of their customer base. They'll only switch once most people have Vista, in which case it's the right time to cut off the stragglers.
Emprical evidence suggets otherwise, as they're flying out of Best Buy rather quickly.
How many people go to Best Buy? I don't know much about these American shops, is it like Walmart?
For people with jobs, $1000 means a lot less than to college students.
For people with jobs, there are other costs, such as rent, car payments, gas, insurance, loan repayments, food, clothes, and a million other things.
Um, don't put your TV in the corner like sane people? What are you, living in the 1960s?
Come out of your 1980s yuppie world and realise that most people live in small houses with small rooms. The TV is in the corner so everyone in the room can see it. Put it along the side and only the person directly opposition can see it, everyone else sees it at a 45 degree angle.
Putting the TV in the corner would kill the surround sound effect anyway
How many people have surround sound?
Middle class people - even lower middle class people - with jobs and the will can afford a 40" TV.
Most people are not middle class. HDTV, much like surround sound, will remain a niche yuppie product for many years to come.
Put me in-front of two 14" TVs, on standard, and one HD, and I'll tell you which is which. In fact, I can tell you now that they'll both be standard-def, because THEY DON'T MAKE 14" HDTVs.
Well there you go you've proven my point, at low screen sizes there is no benefit to HDTV. For the masses living in small apartments with a portable TV in their bedroom, HDTV is just not going to happen.
Okay then, point me to some 40"+ flat, cheap (standard def), TVs.
I'm not interested in 40" TVs, I don't even have room for one. When they invent a cheap 14" HDTV I might give a fuck about this latest fad.
Completely, totally, factually, wrong. 720 is 2.667X the resolution of standard TV
It's 2x the number of total pixels, so an average of 1.4x in either direction. An improvement but not by much, especially on smaller screens.
The low-end 27" HDTVs are perfectly capable of displaying full 1080
That's low end? Low end to me is 14". Can you tell the difference between HD and non HD at 14"? Most content is nowhere near 1080p. And you've completely missed the point, whether they are fully capable or not, the difference in quality over SD is barely noticable at small screen sizes.
and practically any flat-screen TV you buy is going to be HD.
Bullshit. You can get cheap flat screens that are not HD, the HD version of the same size will cost several times more money.
Joe Sixpack's 10-year old TV went out a few months ago, and with widescreen HDTVs being cheap, he went that route.
Joe Sixpack's 20-year old TV went out a few months ago, and with widescreen HDTVs being so expensive, he got a bigger, normal TV for a quarter of the coast.
Now he's seeing HDTV broadcasts from one of his local networks
Now he's paying through the nose for what little HD content there is.
and he's not happy his DVDs of special-effects blockbuster movies don't look nearly as good.
He doesn't notice the difference as most 'HD' content is upscaled or the lowest end of HD, 720p, which isn't much better than normal TV.
Alice and Bob went for HDTV because they don't have much space, and large flat-screens are all HDTV.
Alice and Bob didn't get a HDTV because they don't have much space, and you need a large TV to get any benefit from HDTV. They went for a smaller SDTV instead, which also cost a thousand dollars less.
There is a need. There is a demand.
DVDs took years to take off, and you could play them on a normal TV. If you needed a thousand dollar TV to play a DVD, we'd still all be using videos.
They're planning for the future, and in 3 years a *lot* of people will own HDTVs. I'd say at least half of all the TVs being sold today are some variant of HiDef. And DLP sets are rather cheap. As for not having the income - it's amazing how people on welfare can scrounge money for rims, for instance. Anyone who wants one bad enough can scrounge $1K for a decent sized DLP.
No-one wants a TV bad enough to spend a grand on it. Projection will never be anything more than a niche, you need a giant room with no windows. Most people have their TVs in the corner of a small room, how the hell do you project into a corner?
Most people are not buying TVs at all, let alone HDTVs. Especially when a similarly sized CRT is four times cheaper, and HDTV is only beneficial at huge sizes (less than 10% of the market).
HDTV will gradually increase in market share as there is *now* enough benefit to pull in a lot of consumers, and already have a high penetration among younger professionals.
Most people now have at least heard of HDTV; there have been plenty of adverts for high-def digital cable and satellite services here in the UK, especially in the run-up to the World Cup (which can be viewed in HD with the required equipment).
They've heard of it, but in the UK, HD content is thin on the ground. There are a couple of channels which require an expensive Sky box to receive, with hardly any real HD programmes on, but that's about it.
Broadcast HD is still at the trial stage, and you'll still need an expensive box and fancy cables. Once England are knocked out of the World Cup on Saturday the desirable HD content drops to zero.
I'm also pretty sure that people buying larger TVs today are buying HDTVs.
Most people are not buying large TVs. Most people have 20-30" TVs, not the 40-50" necessary for HDTV.
Honestly, the most compelling argument I can make for HDTV (not necessarily HDDVD formats), is for detail-obsessed sports fanatics. Eight times as many pixels can make the argument over a referee's call that much more outrageous.
Actually HDTV has only twice as many pixels as normal TV. Even compared to the American NTSC, it's 2.6 times. In fact even with the extremely rare 1080p, you're only getting 6 times the pixels of NTSC.
Anyway obsessive sports fanatics don't like watching on TV because of all the interruptions and irritations such as ads, angle-changces, replays, commentary etc.
So rather than several people having something to watch in SD, only one person should have something to watch in HD?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole problem with today's Slashdot: selfish elitism. Remember that less channels means less choice, and less chance of your niche sci-fi shows actually being shown.
I'll confine my comments to the sport of (american) football, since that is the only revenue sport I'm aware of Kent State's participation in. There is no minor league for football. You either play college football by NCAA rules, or you have no chance of entering the NFL.
There's me thinking that people went to university for an education. No-one has a god-given right to play in the NFL. If a football player on a scholarship is studying for a business degree, then that business degree should be his main priority, and football should be treated as what it actually is: an extra-curricular activity.
Wanting to play a sport shouldn't stop one from enjoying the same social opportunities as everyone else at college.
Students are still allowed to play sport, just not get a scholarship for it or play for a NCAA team. What's stopping them going down to the park on a sunday morning, or joining a recreational league?
Actually in the case of sports scholarships, students are being paid tens of thousands. If they don't like being told what websites they can use, they are free to fund their education like everyone else.
I think the atheletes should shut up and be grateful they're getting a free education because they're good at something so irrelevant to education. Unless someone can tell inform me of the academic merits of throwing a ball around on a Saturday afternoon.
No, unless you also make the case that all the people who aren't blessed with the great academic ability of throwing a ball or running around a track, and therefore unable to get a scholarship, are not being allowed an education.
Once a person has earned money and paid taxes on those earnings, it should be his decision what to do with the remainder -- period -- and government should have no further say in the matter.
When I go to work and earn money, I pay income tax on that money. So if I don't go to work and still get money through inheritance, why shouldn't I also pay tax on that?
Slashdot Mirror
Why should a teacher be forced to teach someone who wants to kill him?
Can you please tell me someone who's been sentenced to ten years for copying a film?
I'm going off this:_ res.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_video
More like $100 and falling. Many TVs sold today are digital, but not HD.
Would you trust your bank account to software that had been reverse engineered from protocols the developers don't know anything about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class
You do realise that digital TV is a completely different thing to HDTV? That you can get HDTV over analogue signals, and SDTV over digital signals? You are very lacking in knowledge.
I think you should learn more about your own country, I mean outside of your little yuppie universe.
Why not just make your own? That price list in the article is a rip off. 50p for instant coffee? I wouldn't pay that for real coffee.
Most people just use the speakers built into the TV. Unless you're confused about what 'surround' means.
No it isn't. Most people are working class. Most people don't have surround sound or HDTV, and probably never will do.
Can you please tell me what the benefit is in something that doesn't exist?
And in one swoop, Nintendo have condemned people to upgrading to the wee if they want to play games on a dominant console.
You've also not realised that most major developers will not use DirectX 10 if it only works on Vista, as they'd be cutting off most of their customer base. They'll only switch once most people have Vista, in which case it's the right time to cut off the stragglers.
For people with jobs, there are other costs, such as rent, car payments, gas, insurance, loan repayments, food, clothes, and a million other things.
Come out of your 1980s yuppie world and realise that most people live in small houses with small rooms. The TV is in the corner so everyone in the room can see it. Put it along the side and only the person directly opposition can see it, everyone else sees it at a 45 degree angle.
How many people have surround sound?
Most people are not middle class. HDTV, much like surround sound, will remain a niche yuppie product for many years to come.
(1280x720) / (768x576) = 2.083
Well there you go you've proven my point, at low screen sizes there is no benefit to HDTV. For the masses living in small apartments with a portable TV in their bedroom, HDTV is just not going to happen.
I'm not interested in 40" TVs, I don't even have room for one. When they invent a cheap 14" HDTV I might give a fuck about this latest fad.
It's 2x the number of total pixels, so an average of 1.4x in either direction. An improvement but not by much, especially on smaller screens.
That's low end? Low end to me is 14". Can you tell the difference between HD and non HD at 14"? Most content is nowhere near 1080p. And you've completely missed the point, whether they are fully capable or not, the difference in quality over SD is barely noticable at small screen sizes.
Bullshit. You can get cheap flat screens that are not HD, the HD version of the same size will cost several times more money.
Joe Sixpack's 10-year old TV went out a few months ago, and with widescreen HDTVs being cheap, he went that route.
Joe Sixpack's 20-year old TV went out a few months ago, and with widescreen HDTVs being so expensive, he got a bigger, normal TV for a quarter of the coast.
Now he's seeing HDTV broadcasts from one of his local networks
Now he's paying through the nose for what little HD content there is.
and he's not happy his DVDs of special-effects blockbuster movies don't look nearly as good.
He doesn't notice the difference as most 'HD' content is upscaled or the lowest end of HD, 720p, which isn't much better than normal TV.
Alice and Bob went for HDTV because they don't have much space, and large flat-screens are all HDTV.
Alice and Bob didn't get a HDTV because they don't have much space, and you need a large TV to get any benefit from HDTV. They went for a smaller SDTV instead, which also cost a thousand dollars less.
There is a need. There is a demand.
DVDs took years to take off, and you could play them on a normal TV. If you needed a thousand dollar TV to play a DVD, we'd still all be using videos.
No-one wants a TV bad enough to spend a grand on it. Projection will never be anything more than a niche, you need a giant room with no windows. Most people have their TVs in the corner of a small room, how the hell do you project into a corner?
Most people are not buying TVs at all, let alone HDTVs. Especially when a similarly sized CRT is four times cheaper, and HDTV is only beneficial at huge sizes (less than 10% of the market).
HDTV will gradually increase in market share as there is *now* enough benefit to pull in a lot of consumers, and already have a high penetration among younger professionals.
Yuppies are also a very small part of the market.
Most people now have at least heard of HDTV; there have been plenty of adverts for high-def digital cable and satellite services here in the UK, especially in the run-up to the World Cup (which can be viewed in HD with the required equipment).
They've heard of it, but in the UK, HD content is thin on the ground. There are a couple of channels which require an expensive Sky box to receive, with hardly any real HD programmes on, but that's about it.
Broadcast HD is still at the trial stage, and you'll still need an expensive box and fancy cables. Once England are knocked out of the World Cup on Saturday the desirable HD content drops to zero.
I'm also pretty sure that people buying larger TVs today are buying HDTVs.
Most people are not buying large TVs. Most people have 20-30" TVs, not the 40-50" necessary for HDTV.
How does using open office stop other people from using clip art?
Actually HDTV has only twice as many pixels as normal TV. Even compared to the American NTSC, it's 2.6 times. In fact even with the extremely rare 1080p, you're only getting 6 times the pixels of NTSC.
Anyway obsessive sports fanatics don't like watching on TV because of all the interruptions and irritations such as ads, angle-changces, replays, commentary etc.
So rather than several people having something to watch in SD, only one person should have something to watch in HD?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole problem with today's Slashdot: selfish elitism. Remember that less channels means less choice, and less chance of your niche sci-fi shows actually being shown.
There's me thinking that people went to university for an education. No-one has a god-given right to play in the NFL. If a football player on a scholarship is studying for a business degree, then that business degree should be his main priority, and football should be treated as what it actually is: an extra-curricular activity.
Students are still allowed to play sport, just not get a scholarship for it or play for a NCAA team. What's stopping them going down to the park on a sunday morning, or joining a recreational league?
Actually in the case of sports scholarships, students are being paid tens of thousands. If they don't like being told what websites they can use, they are free to fund their education like everyone else.
I think the atheletes should shut up and be grateful they're getting a free education because they're good at something so irrelevant to education. Unless someone can tell inform me of the academic merits of throwing a ball around on a Saturday afternoon.
No, unless you also make the case that all the people who aren't blessed with the great academic ability of throwing a ball or running around a track, and therefore unable to get a scholarship, are not being allowed an education.
When I go to work and earn money, I pay income tax on that money. So if I don't go to work and still get money through inheritance, why shouldn't I also pay tax on that?
Just an FYI... the US operated just fine without taxing its citizens for over 100 years.
Of course, if you ignore the non-existant road infrastructure, lack of schools, hospitals, police etc.