On Jun 26, 10:52 pm, Puddin' Man wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:28:22 -0500, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:37:43 -0000, wrote:

[snip]

Damned if I know how you can claim "everyone is better off in the end".

Yes, some will be worse off, but not by much. There is a small
minority that receive NTSC today over the air and don't accept the
value proposition of having an HD picture that puts to shame what they
are watching now,

Strangely, I find the difference (HD resolution compared to 480 lines)
to be nearly insignificant. There is a considerable difference, but
most of that is in ATSC, rather than HD.

Of course, these people will still need a converter for 480-line ATSC
broadcasts.

This was an important part of my point. There are many (myself
included) who are 100% happy with good current-generation analog
reception, and view the "Great Upheaval" (the "digital" changeover)
mandated by the gov't as just another terminal insanity dictated
by the Vested Interests and not likely to be in the interest of the
public at large.


Have you two guys even seen an HDTV with a HD source? Have you looked
at a sporting event, for example? It is very strange for someone to
think that a decent size screen HDTV doesn't look significantly better
than a plain old TV. In a side by side comparison, the difference is
huge. Many people describe HD as if they were looking at the real
event through a window.. If most people saw no difference, why are
they flying off the store shelves, when they cost more?

As for the argument that there are many who are 100% happy with what
they have today and don't want a "digital upheaval", well that
argument could be applied to any advancement. I'm sure some were
upset when they stopped making LPs, and 8 tracks too. Now granted,
most other changes like this are driven by market forces, not a govt
deadline. But this case is a bit different. Here you would have a
small minority of people ie, those who view via OTA instead of cable
or sat and who don't want to move up to HD, buy a new set, continuing
to use a valuable public resource (the NTSC bandwidth), that could be
put to better use. And for an outlay of $25 to $50 for an ATSC
tuner, those people will still be able to continue use their existing
NTSC TVs indefinitely. And I would not be surprised to see the
shutdown date for NTSC pushed out again, or for the govt rebate of $80
per household to be increased. Doesn't sound so bad to me.




or simply can't afford a new TV. They will have to
buy a converter. The cost is estimated at a whopping $50 to $100.
And the fed govt has already announced a program to give any household
that requests it, 2 rebate coupons for $40 each. That means you
could still use your 2 existing TV's for a cost of ~$70.

I dunno why I bother to respond to stuff like this. You, kind sir,
have bought into what they've told you (as did Mr. Trent). But, you,
kind sir, are -not- in a position to be aware of all the problems
that might well materialize when "the deed is done". If you continue
to believe all that they tell you, then I know of a piece of real
estate that you're truly gonna love: located right on the scenic,
scenic 38th Parallel.

P

I'd say I'm more aware of what's going on than you are. Faced with a
decision of buying a TV, I prefer to find out the facts, which are
readily available and actually look at an HDTV compared to a regular
one. The facts are, ATSC broadcasting is up and running. The 85%+
who have cable or sat have HD available. Network prime time is in
HD. NYC even has HD livecam from news helicopters. The first HD DVDs
and players are appearing. All new TVs sold in the US now have a
built-in ATSC tuner. The prices for HDTVs have dropped dramatically.
And 16 million HDTVs will be sold this year.

You instead ask your buddy, the cable guy, who predicts that something
very bad is going to happen and the changeover to ASTC is gonna turn
to chaos, so you shouldn't do anything about your TV that needs
replacement He's proably one of those cable guys we heard about who
show up to install cable and can't figure out how to correctly hook
the new digital box component video outputs up to the HDTV.