How soon before SD dies? Not for a very long time. People are still buying SD TV's, SD DVD's & Players and yes even VHS in big numbers. Lots of great little movies are only available on VHS. I was buying VHS for Christmas because the content never made it to DVD. First thing is to transfer them to DVD's.

HD is getting there all be it in a messy way with lots of 733 and 768 HDTV's being sold, old HDTV's that can not display HD copy protected content and the ever present threat of new technology.

HD-DVD is probably going to be around Christmas '06 the spec is not even final. BlueRay will ship Spring '06 for around $300 in the form of the Sony Playstation 3.

Maybe a better question is: When will HD content be a big market? I'd guess in a few years. But that is between the customer and the supplier. Some customers have only use for SD and others want all HD and want it know.

You truly believe the PS3 is going to be $300?!!

I know Sony may be prepared to take some loses to try to knock off the lead that Microsoft has with the X-Box360, but $300 for what they are touting as vastly superior to the X-Box360 would be financial suicide.

HD content is very definitely beginning to reach (quantity wise - maybe not quality wise!!) the point in those countries that adopted HD early and with some sort of governmental guidelines for it's implimentation: like here in Australia, where those thinking of getting a new TV now know what they are missing out on with SD technology.

Does the term 'rapid acceleration' make sense in describing the take-up rates of HDTV in some parts of the World over the past 2-3 months. Of course it's serendipitous that prices on HDTVs (especially LCDs) have dropped dramatically.

SD will be around as long as there's fear about Digital TV and it's delivery, as well as it's cost, so if you're afraid... and it's too expensive for you just keep watching your SDTV until analogue transmissions cease - which they will. See that's an important part of all of this that get's lost in the 'fog of war'... that HD is indelibly linked to digital transmission, and digital transmission doesn't necessarily mean HD!

For some parts of the World that may come a lot sooner than for other parts of the World. It may well be that Asia and Australia go full digital before the States, which in turn will probably drop analogue before anywhere in Europe.

Anyone want to sacrifice an animal and divine the actual days and times for the digital takeover from it's entrails? Once you've got that sorted then the exact day and time of SD's demise should follow like thunder after the lightening.

Latest word here in the US is by 2009 the switchover will be complete. Congress has approved a monetary amount to help those who can't afford a new tv by then to obtain converter boxes to work with their existing sets. It could happen sooner depending on market forces, including those who want to make use of the current analog tv frequency spectrum once it's reallocated to other services.

-gb-

That's the change to digital TV I think, not necessarily high definition. And as you imply, if you read between the lines the real motivation has nothing to do with providing higher quality TV broadcasts. Other people want the big part of the RF spectrum that's currently devoted to television. I read somewhere about government agencies linking this to the criticism of not having adequate communications systems in the wake of 9/11.

Regarding the PS3, I thought this was interesting:

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/techno...222_242937.htm

You'll find that many members of the pubic don't actually care all that much about television picture quality. I've had conversations about HD with many non media involved people and they all look with blank faces when I tell them about HD.

I also have doubts as to statistics that talk about the number of HDTV's sold. This is because many manufacturers have moved vastly towards an all LCD or plasma line up. So many of the televisions sold are HDTV by default, and not necceserily because the purchasers have bought them with HDTV viewing in mind.

When I first saw high def it was on a very high end production monitor displaying a full 1080 resolution. It was pretty mind blowing. But then it should have been for the 30 odd k that the screen would have cost to buy!

However recently many of the stores over here (UK) have started to show HD demos on plasmas and LCD's. I recently went into one store and saw such a demo. Yes, it looked very, very good. It was on a 50" plasma and was very clean, with strong colours and a lot of depth. I still had to check whether it was just a very good SD signal though or a HD one. As it happened it was a true HD feed taken from a dedicated box streaming off HD footage from a hard drive.

So I do wonder what kind of benefit the average person who buys 28" and smaller sized screens and who places their TV in the corner of the living room and sits watching it from 8-12ft away will get from HD.

HD is great for techies who examine a picture by sticking their face up to the screen. For most 'normal' people the enjoyment they get from TV is in the content, not the picture quality. If it wasn't then why are there so many people out there watching TV with bad reception and widescreen televisions with a stretched 4:3 picture?

While this may indeed be true in the UK, in the US and Asia, it's absolutely the opposite of accurate. While my neighbors aren't into HD and what it can bring, (and I can't allow my neighbors to help me form an opinion) the general public is clearly into this world, especially women and guys who like sports. I've just spent a week touring different retailers selling the products as an "undercover" agent looking to buy a display. The amount of interest I've found in talking to people around the south western US, north eastern US, and Pacific Rim is astounding. The amount of knowledge that people have is equally surprising. What folks know about HDTV is significant, and moreover, what they don't know about DTV is significant. Many are still tying the two together.
As far as numbers of displays sold...given that many independent researchers are all within close numbers, I'd wager it's fairly accurate. Radisson and Hilton together just bought over 650,000 displays alone for their Pacific Rim and South Eastern Asian operations, and in the US, Radisson purchased an additional 175,000 displays. In other words, those sorts of purchases also skew the numbers, but play a big part in the desirability of consumers. Long standing in the auto market has been traction in the rental industry. Therefore, if folks see these in hotels, they want them in their homes, too. Content will only grow more and more, further fueling the desire, and the manufacturers in the US have only just now started the first full-fledged HD marketing campaign that is cross brand combined. In other words, the wave is just starting to build in my opinion, based on what I'm seeing out there. 22 different stores in 4 major chains in a week, in 5 different markets....not a complete cross-section, but a consistent one at that.

Steve,

OT My folks live in Bowral NSW.

The $300 is best guess from the spoiler sites. Sony has an installed base of 200,000,000+ Playstations they don't want to price it for slow sales. The game makers are all having below expected sales as everyone is waiting on PS3. I don't own a console and the only reason I'd ever buy one is if it was an affordable HD disc player.

Douglas,

There are also facts and figures that point to the fact that many people who own HD sets can't actually receive HD, nor even realise that they need to subscribe to a HD channel.

For big screens HD gives an advantage. But speaking personally I do not know a single person who owns a large TV. Amongst the people I know my 32" widescreen is the largest among them. And I sit at a fairly close viewing distance. Most other people do not. The fact is that if you can't see the pixel structure you are not gaining anything at all from HD resolution.

There have in fact been a number opf debates over here on the radio with various professionals discussing HD over here. The overwhelming argument in those features was that it was the content that mattered. Most of them pointed outright that they didn't give a stuff about the resolution. And in fact everyone I have spoken to has also said that they don't care about the resolution. Some of these have also seen the HD demos in the electronics stores.

Perhaps it is just the UK attitude that we just don't care about gloss and instead prefer better quality content. Just an observation not a criticism.

Mmmm... That's so subjective it's not funny. While it's hard to disagree with HD gaining greater advantage over SD with every bit of increase in screen size, it's very dependent on the visual acuity of the individual viewing the image.

The number of folks out there with colour blindness, short/long sightedness and visual disorders of some sort or other is beyond one's comprehension. Even worse is the fact that those with such visual acuity disorders think that what they are seeing is exactly what everyone else sees. Some will even lie to avoid embarrassment, while others just display anger in the hope that their visual failings will seem less of a problem than their angst.

As for sitting close enough to view the pixel structure... what kind of TV have you got?!! If I sat that close to my 83cm LCD HDTV, I'd find the tip of my nose getting squashed against the screen!! Maybe people in 'Ole Blighty' seemingly don't care about "gloss" because they actually can't see it, and what they really need is good optometrists.

Enough with the levity... If you cannot see the difference in quality between 1080i and 720p on a monitor you are viewing - then it's either your eyes or a crappy monitor/screen. To not see noticeable enough difference between HD and SD on a monitor/screen indicates something is seriously wrong - not just with the viewing device or the eyesight of the subject, but also the processing power of the viewer and their mental capacity to accept something they may in actual fact be 'against'.

For instance: a work colleague hassled me to come and look at my HD setup... He knocked the image from the Aquos 83cm LCD HDTV as nothing spectacular, after avoiding looking at it from the distance I suggested (and where my lounge is positioned) preferring to stick his eyes as close to the screen as possible without actually touching the bloody thing!!

Then, he went all 'oowie gooie' over the HD via DVB-t on one of my PCs. Now a 19" CRT at 1280x1024 is nowhere in the same league as the 83cm LCD HDTV... yet he's now going about telling everyone that HD looks better on a 19" CRT.

Sure; he's probably jealous, and knocking what he sees as my "HDTV pride and joy" no doubt makes him feel marginally superior to me in discernment, but I couldn't give a "rat's" about anything other than the misinformation that he's now promulgating. That's one reason that I now tell anyone else who asks about coming to have a look at my HD setup to "check out HD at one of the major retailers - they've got plenty of HDTVs to look at"... I know they think I'm being elitist and arrogant and downright unfriendly, but I'd much rather they make their minds up without passion or malice or any other emotional input.

Konrad... Your folks are in Bowral eh? Crikey; I could hit Bowral with a decent spit if the wind is blowing strong enough!! It's only about 30 miles as the crow flies... just a shame there's a flamin' big valley in between here and there, making the journey more like 90 miles.

I suspect there's been some quality attempts from Sony "true believers" to stop 'ship jumpers' going to the X-Box360 which is $400 right NOW... How realistic do you think PS3 at $100 less than X-Box360 is... given it's supposed to have HDMI, Blu-Ray drive and supposedly superior processing power for 1080p rather than 1080i? Methinks whacky weed is getting a very big workout for a growing number of soon to be disillusioned Sony fanboys .

$300 or $400 it is still an artificially low price for a brand new technology video player. I read reports of a Japan only HD-DVD that was multiuples of that price. The first VHS and DVD players were multiples of $400 before you adjust for inflation which would only increase the gap.

The real point is Sony is going to put millions of Blu-Ray players in homes before HD-DVD even gets of the ground. The actual Blu-Ray player instantly achieves massive economies of scale. That means sony can flood the Christmas '06 market with $199 Blu Ray players. Merry Christmas '06 it's "*&^%$#" Sony BetaMax v. VHS all over again.

PS I'm still pissed about the BMG virus.

No, as per always people read things wrong. I did not say to stick your face up against the screen. I said that if you cannot see the pixel structure you are not gaining any benefit from HD resolution. That is to say that at the distance most people watch their telelvisions from they can't even distinguish the pixel structure of SD, unless of course you know someone with superhuman eyesight? They might get a perceieved sharpness increase, but that isn't due to more resolution but to many other factors instead.

WTH?! Anger? Visual failings? ROTFLOL!! Steve, I'm speaking basic facts. Ignore what I have said, fine, but there's no denial or anger excuses going on here.

Fraid not. But we have been used to watching 16:9 PAL for a long time now so the HD jump simply isn't as great. Steve, I simply cannot see your arguments. You might own a 50" set but that is NOT the average sized television set in peoples homes now is it? Perhaps you are lucky enough to have a circle of friends with money to throw away and hence they all own sets that big. But it certainly isn't my experience. I've spoken about HD again and again to people and the vast majority of them say they DO NOT CARE. Thats not me making it up. Thats not me exagerrating. Thats not me trying to kill HD (I happen to like HD and own a HD set myself. Not that there is much to watch other than downloaded demos though). It is simple fact.

If someone owns even a 28" widescreen set, at the distance most people watch they are NOT gaining much benefit from HD resolution at all. The optimum distance to watch a TV is three times the height of the screen away. How many people watch their TV's like this though? They simply sit far too far away from the set. What most people over here care about is the content. Give them a crappy programme in HD and a great programme in SD and they'll take the latter each time. Further to this much more can be gained from SD digital broadcasts by vastly improving the compression. Have you ever watched Super Speedway on a really good set and progressive DVD player? If not, you should. It shows just how incredible SD can look, and if SD digital broadcasts all looked as good as that there'd be even less use for HD.

At the end of the day people want to know what HD really gives them. Thats why HD is not exploding despite the hype that is thrown out there. Video games look great when the resolution and framerates are higher. But would you play a rubbish computer game just because it was able to display at a higher resolution? Of course not. So why on earth would you expect the general public to be more concerned with their TV set resolution than the actual quality of the programming itself? If you place the importance of HDTV higher than improving current programming and vastly improving the compression of existing digital broadcasts you have your priorities completely wrong.

Where in the hell did I say anything about not being able to see differences between HD resolutions? Hellooooo Steve? Did you actually read my original post? If you had you would notice that I said I first saw HD on a hugely expensive production monitor and that it looked amazing, but that the HD I saw on a consumer plasma was less impressive. It still looked very good, but it certainly didn't justify a huge expenditure.

However it is also a fact that the perceived resolution of interlacing is 30 percent less than the same number of lines in progressive scan. So 1080i gives the same perception of resolution as 720p. Thats one big reason in fact why the figures are defined as 720p and 1080i. 1080i also has problems such as line twitter due to the interlacing.

Your insults are getting ridiculous now. I can't believe people get so emotional just because some basic factual info conflicts with someones desire to watch HDTV! You are obviously talking about viewing a large screen in fairly close proximity. That IS NOT the situation in many peoples living rooms. It is a FACT, complete and utter FACT that beyond a certain viewing distance you will not gain anything from HD resolution. As I said earlier at the distances most people view their TV's they can't see the pixel structure in SD. If you can't distinguish the pixel structure the extra resolution isn't gaining you anything. However what you are referring to is percieved sharpness which is down to other factors, and is not neccesrily exclusive to HD. See the Super Speedway DVD for a good example.

Yes, I do the same. In fact I tell them to go and see HD in the major electronics stores not so that they can go google eyed over it, but so that they can see through the hype for themselves. In all of this you forget one thing. You are a techie whose major interest is video. Most other people in the world don't give a rats arse about it, and THOSE are the people that have the buying potential to make HD take off. In fact we've already had people on these forums who love HD saying that they rarely watch it anymore. The novelty has worn off and they are more likely to watch a channel with good content than the HD one they are paying a premium for!

You are. And if you are implying I have some kind of malice or emotional input into what I am saying, you are so incredibly wrong. I am speaking lucid fact from my experience. I know people who eat, drink, and sleep HD want everything to be HD. But there is an almost religious fanataticism going on here whereby any idea that HD might not be all it is cracked up to be, or that it won't change peoples lives is jumped upon. Steve, take your evangelist head off and put on your 'real world outside your doorstep' hat instead and start looking at things from a more level headed perspective. Conversation will be a lot more constructive as a result.

Merry Christmas :(

Indeed!! So let's straighten some things out.

I ain't no HD evangalist!! Cynicist more likely... I don't believe HD is going to be killing SD in any sort of a hurry, and if you've read my previous posts in this thread you'd know that. My mentioning in a post above about the cut-off point for analogue broadcasts should have made that clear. It's not the cut-off of SD. SD will be broadcast alongside HD for many years to come.

Perhaps I was being a bit too obtuse in the wording of my response to your post, because the meaning between the lines seems to have been lost.

Allusions to the high resolution and the fineness of each light emitting element on the latest LCD panels seem to have been missed. They are so fine that viewing from very close to the screen is required to spot them. Does this mean that I must be short sighted to have too get that close myself to see them? Maybe... and I'm sure I'd not be the only person who has ever been to see a movie with friends, and whilst watching the main attraction, turned to ask a companion "do you think it's a little out of focus?"... only to find they think it looks fine? Every individual on the planet is just that - an individual with individual perceptions of the things we come to believe as being common and immuteable to all... the senses: smell, taste, touch, hearing and eyesight aren't common. One man's red is another's orange. Another's big is small to someone else - one woman's plasma is another's LCD...

The whole point is that HD is going to be a "so what" experience for quite a few people, while others will go "Wow"!!

The fact that I liked the quality of image from the 720p JVC HD10u was the reason that I bought it. The reason that I bought a 1080i Sony FX-1e a year later, was the comparison I was able to do between both formats on a 76cm CRT HDTV and 83cm LCD HDTV. I know you may not agree with my appraisal of 720p HDV compared to 1080i HDV, but the reason that I got into HD/HDV was to enjoy the best possible image at the lowest possible price available at the time, and for me - that was the right choice. Do I still use my 720p JVC? You bet ya!!

The so-called HD/HDV 'revolution' is an opportunity provided by opportunists. That's the nature of life.

A guy I knew once told me "the reason a building is demolished when it's been paid off, is because not enough people are making money out of it any more". I wouldn't mind betting that concept is behind the "push" for HD. If folks had TVs that would last for many decades... they had to come up with something to keep sales rolling over!! I can see both sides. I decided to put both feet onto one side because I could.

It seems the biggest difficulty is accepting that some people will like HD and buy into it - whether you or I think that they're nuts or not is beside the point. Anyone deciding to stay with SD until their screen goes blank because there's no more SD broadcasts is fine with me... heck, they'll probably die before the last SD transmission.

I didn't know SD was still alive =)

Good one!!

Thank God (or whatever non-corporeal, totally omnipotent, trans-dimensional, genderless deity, one is either forced or chooses to believe in) for a bit of humour!

So much deadly earnestness. Whatever happened to the enjoyment of life and acceptance of the responsibility for the choices that we make.

Humanity is truly a very strange and mixed up little beastie. When are the Japanese corporations going to replace us with totally compliant cyborgs? Maybe once HD dies... Bring it on!!

I cannot cumpute SD. I repeat. I cannot compute SD. I repeat. I cannot compute SD. Malfunction. I cannot compute SD. Brain overload... Get ready to evacuate.. DANGER DANGER!!