01.01.07
HDTV (And The Weirdness Of Not Allowing Comments)
Kevin Marks, a very nice chap who I had the honour of chatting to a couple of days ago (or was it longer), has posted on his blog some thoughts on HDTV.
I wanted to comment on this, but his blog doesn’t have comments – fair enough I suppose if you want to avoid comment spam, but I personally think that the immediacy of a response to a post is one of the strengths of blogging. Instead, to ‘comment’, you post something on your own blog and link to the originating post. It then shows up on Technorati and Kevin can read it.
Which doesn’t help if you don’t have a blog.
At least I originally thought it might be about stopping comment spam. If I were being cynical it may just be a cunning ploy to get people to link to his blog thereby increasing his google-juice…
But no matter, we have all moved past that desire to rise in the various rankings haven’t we?
So, on to the comment that I wanted to make. The reason why HDTVs look so cruddy in shop displays is that the store often has one input which is amplified and split between huge numbers of televisions. This makes the pictures look incredibly awful, often worse than the traditional television which, due to it’s low resolution, is a little more forgiving.
Until shops start arranging better displays of their goods, your average person off the street isn’t going to be sold on the benefits of HDTV.
To be honest, I’m not sold on the idea of HD TV, or the HD DVD replacements, but then I have crappy eyesight and don’t watch much broadcast TV at all.
(…And as I was about to post this Kevin used Twitter to point me to something he wrote in the past – it seems that I do have a nasty cynical mind… And I agree with Jeff and Ben’s comments in that post, that comments are a good thing and are more natural than using Technorati to backtrack conversations. And have a happy new year in a few hours Kevin.)
Chris said,
January 1, 2007 at 14:53
I think that HD is going to be fabulous for gaming (xbox 360 and ps3) and probably really good for watching films at home.
But I don’t think it’s going to sell much to the regular Joe wanting a new television to watch Eastenders on.
I’m still waiting for on-demand, on-line TV to become the norm.
Happy New Year!
Faith said,
January 1, 2007 at 21:10
My sister bought an HD TV- to be honest, I can’t tell the difference.
Is that bad?
Mary said,
January 1, 2007 at 23:04
My plan for HDTV is to do what I do with all other technology… wait for a couple of other people to try it out first.
My blog comments are moderated. I feel bad that stuff doesn’t get published instantly, but I get a lot of abusive comments, from mindless and rather boring swearing and name-calling, to actual threats, and, when I wrote about how I was coming off antidepressants, encouragement to kill myself “for the good of [my] family” and so on… you get the idea. I don’t mind being criticised, or disagreed with, that isn’t a problem, but some of the stuff I get goes too far over the “abuse” line. Free speech is important, people can say what they like about me on their own websites, but I don’t feel that I am obliged to *provide* anyone with a forum to anonymously yet publicly attack me or those close to me for no apparent reason.
Simon Farnsworth said,
January 5, 2007 at 15:43
For the curious, there’s a good (if American-biased) viewing distance calculator for HD and SD at http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html
To use it properly, fill in the three boxes, and click Calcuate (it needs JavaScript); the results are explained above the boxes you fill in. The visual acuity one is the box I find most interesting; it suggests that I’d need a 90″ HDTV to get the same pixel size as my current 32″ SDTV at the current viewing distance (comfortable, and far enough that I don’t see individual pixels).