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Over the last two years I went HDTV, then HD-DVD, and blu-ray from standard def DVDs.
Over the last year, my 60+ father-in-law has gotten an hdtv as well as a couple of younger but much less AV-geeky friends. Then of course their was my wife, who swore she didn't see the point of HD in general and that I was being "picky."
Pretty much a cross sampling of the mass market and all the reasons why HD is going to be a hard sell.
The TVs are a relatively easy sell. A nice big screen, and at the store they look better than their TV at home. The benefits and cost are obvious.
Then they get them home and it starts to fall apart.
First is all the cables. HDMI is great, but the $80 cable is pretty much enough to make the average buyer feel buyers remorse and want to set their local big box store on fire. Right there anything periferal suddenly becomes and extra $100 in their head or they have to understand the 137 other holes on the back of the TV. That isn't a $400 player to them, it's a $500 player. Ow.
Then there's picture quality. Most people don't want to manage the black bars. Which means they are watching stuff in bloat-o-vision. And the scaling on most TVs sucks pretty bad, and still scale the HD images somewhat. Unless the source material is really high quality, the difference between a meh HD picture mangled by the scaling and a good DVD transfer scaled up well is not that huge. Unfortunately fixing this means tv's need to get REAL cheap, or you have to educate the consumer. Fat chance on both items. But it makes enough difference that my wife asked me why our HD looks so much better than her dad's and was concerned he got ripped off.
Then there's the cable companies. Who are already compromising the HD feeds to the point upscaled DVD DOES look as good or better. Are you going to know enough to be pissed at the cable company rather than the technology.
Then there's just making stuff needlessly confusing. Don't give folks component outs if you aren't going to give an HD signal on them. It jsut makes people wonder why it doesn't look any better and think it is crap. Also, having BR disks out there with standard def transfers because you dind't want to license a good codec was perhaps the stupidest idea on the planet. The only thing stupider would be to have included one with every BR player.
Then there's the audio. Most folks don't want a 5.1 speaker setup. They just don't. Most TVs I've run into don't deal well at all with getting 5.1 audio over HDMI and not having a center channel. People won't be impressed by not being able to hear voices well, especially if they are older and don't have the hearing of a 20 year old who never owned an ipod or went to concerts.
(BTW, for thsoe last two, HD-DVD and my A30 player were awesome. The 2 channel audio setup was the default and had dialogue as sharp as a tack right out of the box, it was super clear it was HDMI or nothing to hook it up, all the disks looked like decent HD transfers, and it is a kick-ass upscaling DVD player. I can't say as much for blu-ray.)
HD content really has an uphill battle and in many ways the folks making the standards worrying about "protecting" their interests are cutting their own throats and making it undesirable. To those thinking streaming content from the internet is going to win, it's plagued by as many or more barriers, and has even less to make a consumer go "man, now THAT'S why I bought this."
The only thing even close to being a painless answer to run away with the win is on-demand from your cable company. The learning curve is minimal, and the cost is incremental, and the installation is already done. Now if only they weren't already hated with a passion by 98% of their customer base, they might stand a chance of winning.
Over the last year, my 60+ father-in-law has gotten an hdtv as well as a couple of younger but much less AV-geeky friends. Then of course their was my wife, who swore she didn't see the point of HD in general and that I was being "picky."
Pretty much a cross sampling of the mass market and all the reasons why HD is going to be a hard sell.
The TVs are a relatively easy sell. A nice big screen, and at the store they look better than their TV at home. The benefits and cost are obvious.
Then they get them home and it starts to fall apart.
First is all the cables. HDMI is great, but the $80 cable is pretty much enough to make the average buyer feel buyers remorse and want to set their local big box store on fire. Right there anything periferal suddenly becomes and extra $100 in their head or they have to understand the 137 other holes on the back of the TV. That isn't a $400 player to them, it's a $500 player. Ow.
Then there's picture quality. Most people don't want to manage the black bars. Which means they are watching stuff in bloat-o-vision. And the scaling on most TVs sucks pretty bad, and still scale the HD images somewhat. Unless the source material is really high quality, the difference between a meh HD picture mangled by the scaling and a good DVD transfer scaled up well is not that huge. Unfortunately fixing this means tv's need to get REAL cheap, or you have to educate the consumer. Fat chance on both items. But it makes enough difference that my wife asked me why our HD looks so much better than her dad's and was concerned he got ripped off.
Then there's the cable companies. Who are already compromising the HD feeds to the point upscaled DVD DOES look as good or better. Are you going to know enough to be pissed at the cable company rather than the technology.
Then there's just making stuff needlessly confusing. Don't give folks component outs if you aren't going to give an HD signal on them. It jsut makes people wonder why it doesn't look any better and think it is crap. Also, having BR disks out there with standard def transfers because you dind't want to license a good codec was perhaps the stupidest idea on the planet. The only thing stupider would be to have included one with every BR player.
Then there's the audio. Most folks don't want a 5.1 speaker setup. They just don't. Most TVs I've run into don't deal well at all with getting 5.1 audio over HDMI and not having a center channel. People won't be impressed by not being able to hear voices well, especially if they are older and don't have the hearing of a 20 year old who never owned an ipod or went to concerts.
(BTW, for thsoe last two, HD-DVD and my A30 player were awesome. The 2 channel audio setup was the default and had dialogue as sharp as a tack right out of the box, it was super clear it was HDMI or nothing to hook it up, all the disks looked like decent HD transfers, and it is a kick-ass upscaling DVD player. I can't say as much for blu-ray.)
HD content really has an uphill battle and in many ways the folks making the standards worrying about "protecting" their interests are cutting their own throats and making it undesirable. To those thinking streaming content from the internet is going to win, it's plagued by as many or more barriers, and has even less to make a consumer go "man, now THAT'S why I bought this."
The only thing even close to being a painless answer to run away with the win is on-demand from your cable company. The learning curve is minimal, and the cost is incremental, and the installation is already done. Now if only they weren't already hated with a passion by 98% of their customer base, they might stand a chance of winning.
) and I know how much/many parts are in those....the change to a "blu ray" version is not exactly hard to do
