Re: [ARSCLIST] Blu-Ray gets the BetaMax treatment

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know a bunch of people with digital cable and a couple who have HD flat-screen TV's at this point. 
Everything I've seen on these systems, including premium channels, has obvious compression artifacts 
(pixellation), not any better than NTSC sound quality, artificially bright colors and high contrast, 
and frequent dropouts/pixel dumps. I can't understand why people aren't up in arms about this bill 
of goods they've been sold, except then they'd be downright militant about the horrible cellular 
phone systems in place in this country.

Like I said, once the NTSC signal starts getting switched off, I predict some major outrage. I think 
most people haven't paid attention and don't know what's coming.

BTW, just to be clear, the forced switch to "high-definition" TV in this country has nothing to do 
with which HD disc format wins or loses. There can be a thriving HD-DVD or Blu-Ray or whatever 
market and with no forced inconvenience/expense to anyone. Many of the next gen computers will play 
these discs, for example, or one can go out and buy (by choice, as opposed to being forced to 
because their old equipment has been obsoleted) an HD monitor and player. It seems to me that one 
who cares about picture quality and "features" so much that they'd invest in an HD disc system and 
be unsatisfied with regular DVD wouldn't be a person who watches too much broadcast TV anyway, so 
his preferences should have nothing to do with the wider market.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Breneman" <david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:05 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Blu-Ray gets the BetaMax treatment


> --- Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I wonder if either of these HD formats will catch on near-term. I
> > predict a major outrage and
> > perhaps outright rebellion among "da folks" when NTSC TV really
> > gets switched off.
>
> I was hoping for HD-DVD to prevail, simply because it's
> backed by Panasonic, and their DVD recorders also support
> the DVD-RAM format, which is a magneto-optical disk that
> promises much greater longevity than regular DVD-R disks.
> So, I'm hoping we'll get higher-capacity DVD-RAM disks as
> a result.  A tenuous hope to hang your hat on, I'll admit.
>
> >  Sure, everyone in
> > certain elite groups now has a flat-panel HD television, but most
> > of the rest of us don't and don't
> > want to spend thousands to replace the TV's in our house simply
> > because someone is hyping an allegedly better boob-tube.
>
> My friends with big-screen HD sets have 720P models on which
> the cable company's compression is very obvious, and half the
> time they're watching NTSC pictures stretched out to fit the
> 16x9 aspect ratio of the screen.  *That's* progress?!?
>
>
> David Breneman         david_breneman@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check 
> it out.
> http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469