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HDTV sets of today: obsolete tomorrow?

kranky

kranky

Elite Member
In the new issue of PC Magazine, John Dvorak talks about new copy-protection schemes being discussed which would make every single HDTV set sold to date obsolete. The Hollywood people, concerned about people copying HDTV movies, want the decoders built into the displays and not the set-top boxes. That means the set-top box would have to send a signal to a connector that NEW HDTV sets would have. Having the decoder in the display keeps people from grabbing the signal on the way out of the box to record it. No plans for any retrofit to make existing sets work. The reason no one is talking is they don't want sales of those expensive HDTV sets to dry up until this issue is settled.

Dvorak says, "Anyone even thinking about HDTV before this is completely resolved is just throwing money away."

The column isn't online yet at pcmag.com (I just checked).
 
Back to reality:

Not going to happen.

Also not going to happen is the switchover to all HDTV in 2006.


Most people care about important issues like gun control, abortion, health care, etc when it comes to choosing who to vote for. But noone is going to riot or go nuts over issues like that.

But fvck with the TVs of the masses, and the politicians are going to have a REAL issue to deal with. If all of the TVs in the country just stopped working one day until people bought boxes they dont understand why they need, or expensive tvs that most dont care for, there are going to be riots. TV keeps our society docile.
 
Most TV sold today have the tuners on the outside of the box, by doing what dvorak says they will do will screw too many people, i seriously doubt it will happen. Besides the people who make the tuners have to agree to do this and people can buy tuners like the HiPix card for there computer which has a bulit in HD Tuner which you know will get hacked to do pretty much everything.
 


<< Back to reality:

Not going to happen.

Also not going to happen is the switchover to all HDTV in 2006.


Most people care about important issues like gun control, abortion, health care, etc when it comes to choosing who to vote for. But noone is going to riot or go nuts over issues like that.

But fvck with the TVs of the masses, and the politicians are going to have a REAL issue to deal with. If all of the TVs in the country just stopped working one day until people bought boxes they dont understand why they need, or expensive tvs that most dont care for, there are going to be riots. TV keeps our society docile. >>

I know. The reason that the switchover has already taken so long is that most people don't even care if there's "only" 400 lines of resolution. All they know is that they can watch Friends, Frasier, and 60 Minutes, and see a satisfactory picture with current technology. Best of all, their new 27" TV only cost $300. Most people don't see anything wrong that needs to be "fixed," so they just don't care.
 
I enjoy my 53" 16:9 HDTV set. I find myself watching both HDTV HBO & HDNet a majority of the time thru satellite. Otherwise I am watching a DVD thru my progressive player. The image quality is stunning. Dvorak is way off base on HDTV.
 
The main problem with HDTV is that theyre too expensive, and would be fairly uselss at smaller sizes.

Monitors can have insane resolutions because we sit so close to them. TVs are usually much further away. Therefore HDTV is a waste unless the TV is huge. Make smaller HDTVs and we'll gain nothing unless we sit closer.

For the standard 500 lines of resolution, when we sit 4 times the height of the TV, the image is just right. Even the best eyes couldnt make out more than 500 lines at that distance.

Double that resolution, and make it widescreen, and youll have to sit at less than 2 times the height of the tv(correct me if I'm wrong). For your average 27 inch Widescreen TV, thats probably somewhere about 3 feet.

Which makes basically anything under a 40 inch HDTV basically useless to the average family. And 40 inch TVs, HDTV or not, are not going to be cheap anytime soon.


Maybe we'll see smaller 720p sets come out. But I doubt we'll see 1080i 27 inchers anytime soon. Besides, interlacing is the devil, and I still cant conceive of why the idiots who came up with the HDTV standard allowed it to remain.
 
es.

Monitors can have insane resolutions because we sit so close to them. TVs are usually much further away. Therefore HDTV is a waste unless the TV is huge. Make smaller HDTVs and we'll gain nothing unless we sit closer.


what? you must be blind, even on smaller tvs hd would be a nice improvement. hdtv is like looking through a window compared to normal tv. Just play a full screen dvd on a 19" monitor and compare that to a 19" tv, it just looks so much better from being progressive alone. hdtv is better then dvd obviously. as for your 40" requirement, thats a tad high. if you want to watch widescreen dvds or tvshows in HD then your normal 4:3's usable screen area drops big time. a 27" tv loses a huge chunk of its size when displaying normal widescreen movies, you almost have to sit 4 feet away b4 it gets too small. ITs even worse when displaying cinascope or panavision very widescreen epics where you little 27" tv now has a tiny stripe of image going across the middle. not to mention that the resolution is now even less as a ton is wasted as black lines😛


its true hdtv prices have to go down, but it definetly is something worth switching to eventually. 500lines of res when not displaying widescreen doesn't cut it, the color information in NTSC doesn't cut it which is why people that see pal think it looks better. normal res tv just blows.
 
I think the copy protection is a definite possibility, given the # of 4:3 aspect ratio sets that'll be outdated, the % of current HDTV owners is miniscule.
 
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