On Jun 27, 9:49 am, Puddin' Man wrote:

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

Industry hype.


Look, there is plenty of info available today about HDTV from a
variety of resources, many of which are not connected to some evil
industry conspiracy. You obviously won't even look at it, yet you
go around telling people calamity is ahead. You can stick you head
in the sand, while the rest of us move ahead.




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.

I've seen 'em. In the store (a somewhat artificial environment),
they look better. But not -that- much better.

And do you know what you were looking at? Just because it's an HDTV
doesn't mean the program that happened to be on at the moment was HD.
In stores, I've seen all kinds of material being shown and at times,
it wasn't HD at all. It's gotten better in the last couple years,
but before that in many stores that I've seen it was pretty bad. But
if you have an HDTV with and HD source, and a regular TV next to it,
the difference is huge.




'Tis the cost/benefit curve, as applied to the public at large,
that you fail to comprehend. Possibly because you're just
not interested in what effects others.

You make these sweeping statements with out elaboration. The cost to
the public at large? If you have 2 tv's and buy 2 ATSC tuners, you'd
be out about $50. Is that so bad? When the local or state govt
decides to buy open land or make a new park and your tax bill goes up
that much for something you personally never will use, do you get all
upset too? And further, for the public at large, the fed govt is
gonna get billions when they sell the bandwith previously used by
NTSC. That sounds like a lot of money they can **** away instead of
instead of taking it from taxes. So, where exactly is this big cost/
benefit problem that I fail to comprehend.




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.

Hey, it's OK to get abusive. It's obvious that you lack info about
both my circumstances and my friend (who, 'tho retired, knows
vastly more about the industry than either of us).

Yeah, I tend to get that way when someone who dismisses readily
available info from a wide variety of sources and obviously knows less
than zero about HD, tries to tell me I'm some kind of mindless dummy
that's bought into a bunch of hype.



They pump up the hype in preparation for shoving the unproven
technology down the consumers throats. You seem to accept it all at
face value. You are their "Perfect Consumer". Or perhaps an
industry employee. Eh?


What exactly is "unproven"? About a third of US homes now has an
HDTV. ATSC broadcasting has been up for years. Every TV set sold
now has an ATSC tuner. Geez, I notice for all the facts and
statistics I cite in an attempt to have a reasonable discussion, you
counter with what? No facts. Just personal feelings, and the
opinion of your buddy the cable guy, that HD/ATSC is unproven stuff,
heading for calamity. Now thats what I call hype.

BTW, I'm not an industry empoyee, though I am an electrical engineer,
so perhaps I know a little more about technology than you or your
cable guy.