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We had digital cable here for a while, and dropped it after two months. It wasn't HD, but the picture was just SO BAD that it wasn't worth the trouble for the extra channels. The analog picture has always been crystal clear, and only fuzzy on a couple channels. The digital picture was always full of digital artifacts, it would skip frames/get stuck frequently, and the sound sometimes dropped out. The cable company could never get it to work properly. They swapped out the receiver box a couple of times, and for a while we had a DVR. All the digital boxes suffered from the same major pain in the neck problem - the delay when changing channels. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I press the "Channel UP" button on my remote, I expect the channel to flip to the next highest number. Instantly (or pretty close to it). Not in two seconds, not in one second, and reliably every time. This thing was horrible, the delay between any action on the remote and the actual action was very annoying. Not only that, but the digital box didn't even have a display! Sure, it had a clock, but is it too much to ask to have a couple little numbers on the front of the box that tell the number of the current channel? I mean, this isn't compicated stuff here.
Another pet peeve - DVR's. The one we got from the cable company was a piece of total junk. Sure, you could set it to record shows. But then what? It's stuck in that box. Not only that, but the quality was absolutely terrible. It was like watching a VHS tape that was recorded at the SLP speed, on very, very low quality, worn tape. The picture was just that bad. The digital artifacts only got worse on the recording, and the colors were all faded and 'compressed' looking (you know, that grain from bad image compression). Also, you'd see things where not the entire screen was being updated, so you'd get this smear across the screen as a character moved or something. Sure, it varied, but it was generally always pretty bad. Sound was flat sounding too. Also, say, for instance, you now wanted to copy ths show you had recorded. Simple, huh? I mean, it's a digital format, so I should just be able to connect the firewire port on the back of the box to my computer, and transfer... wrong! Those ports aren't even active. It says so deep in the manual. (And yes, I tried it. It didn't work.) Also, if the cable goes out, or the box gets moved and isn't hooked up to the cable, it doesn't work. At all. You can't even play the shows you've recorded to the internal hard drive.
Oh... right... the topic... Back to HDTV - from what I've seen of HDTV, the picture is, indeed clearer. But is is necessary? I too absolutely hate the 16:9 aspect ratio. It's totally unweildy and not well suited to much of anything, save for certain wide shots, which the directors can't seem to use right anyway. Right now, on regular television, they can't even come up with programming that's any good on a 4:3 screen. Do they think a wider screen will magically make "Survivor" good? Do they think that new technology will make their bad writing better? I don't know. Do I _need_ to watch these shows in high definition - no, especially since I don't watch them anyway. Now, I do watch TV. I absolutely love CSI, Law and Order, Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, and a lot of other shows. Some of which are available in HD. But I've never found myself thinking. "Gee, I wish CSI was higher resolution", or "Man, 512 lines just isn't enough to convey the true terror of the Klingon battle cruiser".
They're even using 16:9 for laptop screens now! Laptops! Isn't the point of a laptop to make it SMALLER? Not only that, but what use is a wide screen on a laptop? Word processor documents are still not going to fit very well, and Windows will still not be bearable even with a longer taskbar. I really wonder how Linux would run on one of those things, I mean, the standard 80x24 console would be rather stretched. Emacs would look really weird.
Also, speaking of modern television, has anyone noticed that the cameramen seem to have gotten really terrible as of late? What happened, did they cheap out on tripods, or have they just been serving up stronger coffee at the studio?
</rant>
Hehe, oops. Sorry 'bout the rambling there...
-Ian
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