I'll be shocked if the FCC sticks to their timeline, since it's slipped many times already. SD may be the past, but there are 10s of millions of them and most of those consumers aren't running out to replace them anytime soon. In fact, I'd wager the bulf of SD set owners aren't even aware of HD.
The original deadline was 2006. However, there is a reason the deadline has been postponed a few times until now it's at January 2009, and not outright cancelled due to public outcry. You're forgetting a very powerful motive for politicians -- money.
There is a reason they are pushing hard to turn off analog broadcasting. It's eating a LOT of very valuable radio bandwidth in frequencies that are especially good at penetrating concrete and walls, and wireless providers are dying to get their hands on it. There's a reason Google is willing to pay $6 billion for the bandwidth. It's going to be a feeding frenzy.
Don't cry too much; NTSC lasted from 1939 to 2009, a 70 year span. Incredible for a piece of technology. Bravo, Philo Farnsworth (a name too few people know). I spent about a year of my career in the campus where he did it.
JKP said:
I'm not buying crap on either format until one is the winner... I'll stick with my DVDs...
So you are willing to buy something with inferior quality when something better is out there? As an early adopter and enthusiast, I'm not.
And if you're buying DVDs now, and you won't rebuy them later as you've stated, you're stuck with the inferior quality.
JKP said:
Also, quick fact for you, I have a friend that does market research for one of the major cable co's in Canada and they find that 90% of the people that buy HD sets don't buy HD content... they're just using them as big SD TVs...
I know, these are the same people who were complaining about black bars on their TVs with DVD ten years ago.
They bought DVD players because they had to have the latest gadget to impress their friends, and didn't appreciate what it offerred. Same reason many people buy HD sets today. And then proceed to watch SD content stretched to fill their screen.
My brother in law does this and BOASTS about how good his SD content looks so he doesn't even bother with HD channels even though he has them. I have to cringe. He has it to show off to his other friends who don't know what they're doing either. Not because he appreciates it. Sorry, I know what I'm looking for and appreciate quality. I love HD. I can't go back. It pains me to watch SD content or rent a normal DVD. Not gonna do it, I know what I'm looking for in a quality image.
JKP said:
The reason SACD and DVD-A failed was because normal people couldn't tell the difference. The format war had littlt to do with it, IMO, or either of them or something would have won. But what did win? MP3, a much worse sounding "format". Why? Because 17 year olds mostly can't tell the difference b/w 128k mp3 compression and full resolution DVD-A.
Couldn't tell the difference? Yes, from a quality standpoint, people who listen to 128k MP3s on earbuds can't tell or don't care. However, hearing an album you have spent countless hours with in 5.1? Blew my mind. But the sad truth is the audiophile is dead. People sacrifice quality for convenience. And people just don't plop down in an easy chair to listen to a few hours of music anymore.
And I have to disagree about the format war. The technology would have faced a hard enough time if there were no war. But with studios choosing sides, consumers were confused, tools were expensive, and the uncommitted stayed clear out of it until it was over -- and when it was over, it was because nobody cared anymore and the market moved on, the shelf space disappeared from retail. Exactly what's happening with Blu Ray and HD-DVD. They're both going to rot in hell.
You talk about MP3 like it was a direct competitor to DVD-A and SACD. It wasn't. What it WAS, however, was a paradigm shift that rendered them both irrelevant.
We're seeing the same paradigm shift threatening to kill Blu-Ray and HD-DVD -- downloadable HD movies. Already here on XBox live, inevitable on iTunes. They are the MP3 to these formats.
JKP said:
Yeah, 6-ch analog was another reason DVD-A and SACD didn't make it - the only market that cared about the sound was pissed about dumbing it down into analog cables to get it to the amp. They were so paranoid about people stealing the hi-res audio that they crippled it too much... idjits...
To be fair, they hadn't straightened out high-bandwidth digital interconnects yet. SPDIF was stupidly only capable of 1.4 megabits (CD speed) and not capable of passing anything higher. At the time firewire was the leading candidate, in the end it ended up being HDMI and even then we are still shaking that out with HDMI 1.3 in 2007. Like I said, in the end it works out for me if I get HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players with analog decoding instead of having to now buy an HDMI receiver.
pilotError said:
Agreed, and most folks will never have a 7.1 audio system to take advantage of it anyway. It's the video that will sell the format, not so much the other way around.
To a degree, but to paraphrase Ben Burrt, sound is half the experience. I will show the people I know the way and hope they follow the example.
