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Roderick Stewart wrote:
In article , DAB sounds
worse than FM wrote:
60% of households are predicted to have HD-ready displays by 2011. HD
players will also drop in price over time as sales volumes increase,
and once someone has an HD display it'll only be a smallish cost to
get an Blu Ray or HD-DVD player.

Will those "HD-ready" displays all be "ready" for the same type of
HD,


HD-ready displays can obviuosly handle HD signals.


and will everybody connect all their other equipment to them
correctly, so that they actually get to see an improvement?


I think for a TV to be HD-ready it has to have the right connectors, and HD
set-top boxes are bound to have the right connectors, as are HD DVD players.
I don't know this for a fact, but I get the impression that it's going to be
more fool-proof than it has been up to now.


How many
of them will care if they do?


I'm not even going to bother answering that other than to say some will care
and others won't. I'm tired of the broadcasters trying to justify the low
quality they provide by taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge
of the public without people like yourself who think that they should
receive good quality (e.g. Radio 3) but screw everybody else.


DVD didn't take off overnight, and nor will the HD formats, but it
will happen over time.

I don't doubt it will, but it will take a *lot* more time than the
replacement of VHS with DVD.


I agree, but if HD were being broadcast on all the digital TV platforms now
I think uptake would have been faster than with DVD.


This time it's not so much a
revolutionary breakthrough, more of a slight improvement if you get
everything right, which isn't such a big incentive.


No, it's more than a slight improvement.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm

In article , DAB sounds worse than
FM wrote:
Will those "HD-ready" displays all be "ready" for the same type of
HD,

HD-ready displays can obviuosly handle HD signals.

But which kind of HD signals? Since there are displays with several different
pixel resolutions available, and possibly several different HD systems to be
catered for (Has American HD the same number of pixels as European?), they
cannot possibly all give optimum performance.
[...]
How many
of them will care if they do?

I'm not even going to bother answering that other than to say some will care*
and others won't. I'm tired of the broadcasters trying to justify the low*
quality they provide by taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge*
of the public without people like yourself who think that they should*
receive good quality (e.g. Radio 3) but screw everybody else.

I don't speak on behalf of the broadcasters, but you've certainly invented that
bit about me.

Rod.

In article , [email protected] says...
It's not.

How many people do you know who are telling you they must buy an
HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player?


Even though I'm obviously in favour of the HD formats I wouldn't dream of
buying a player at current prices. All in good time though. I did notice
this post the other day though:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....3aa1e5eb67bdc8

"I've got the new Samsung hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player on order, should
be available in January."

If that was your bag you'd probably be better off getting an Xbox 360 (£230)
and HD drive (£100), and a PS3 with 40Gb hard drive (£270) from Amazon, so
you'd get the gaming in with it, even though it's overkill to have two
consoles with similar graphics capabilities.
--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever email: dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 1136 DVDs, 362 games, 338 CDs, 110 cinema films, 51 concerts, videos & news
/* half life 2 episode 2, beatles: help, spiderman x360, russell brand, kylie
New music charts - http://dvdfever.co.uk/music.shtml
Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DVDdom

In article , [email protected] says...
Dom Robinson wrote:
In article , [email protected]
says...
People don't like the price of DVDs (even though they've
dropped significantly over the last few years) which is why piracy
is considered such a problem, and we have to suffer "Knock Off
Nigel" and unskippable "You wouldn't rape an OAP!" trailers on
DVDs. I think that if Joe Punter has the choice between forking
out what he considers to be too much for the HD DVD down at HMV, or
downloading the DVD quality version as a torrent, he'll go for the
latter option.


The music industry was predicting that downloading would kill the
entire industry, but in reality the vast majority of people still
buy CDs or pay to download music, and the same will be the case with
DVDs now and it'll be the same with HD discs as well.

"Vast majority"? How do you measure the numbers of those who download
without paying?


I can remember reading some article or other that said that the number of
people that download illegally is only a small percentage of the population.
You can tell that this is true as well, because CD and music downloads have
fallen, but they haven't fallen all that much, so either the tiny minority
of people still paying for music are buying far, far more music these days,
or in reality the vast majority of people are still paying for CDs or music
downloads.

Eh? The number of people who download illegally is unquantifiable.

--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever email: dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 1136 DVDs, 362 games, 338 CDs, 110 cinema films, 51 concerts, videos & news
/* half life 2 episode 2, beatles: help, spiderman x360, russell brand, kylie
New music charts - http://dvdfever.co.uk/music.shtml
Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DVDdom

In article , [email protected] says...
Dom Robinson wrote:
In article , [email protected]
says...
Fact is, few CRTs are being sold and certainly not in the likes of
Currys and other chain stores where Joe Punter goes, so the only
choice he has is a flatscreen which are all HD-ready by default.


People chose to buy flat panels, which is why the large majority of
TVs on display in the shops are now flat panels.

"The public wants what the public gets".

If so, you're going to have to stop uploading your DomDrones videos to
YouTube, and you can't criticise any politician ever again.

I'm sure that makes sense to you.

They get steered towards
them because they're "sexy" in the eyes of the retailer, and a damn
sight easier to move about for the delivery men, even though they
deliver an inferior SD picture to a CRT.

It's human nature to want things to be better.

So they stick with the CRT, then.

It's all about the circumstances, and the circumstances for HD all
point to it replacing DVD. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

No need to apologise but you're still wrong.

but they didn't, and they skipped those and went for
recordable CDs.

No, quite a lot of people bought MD, but I think Sony held back
from pushing MD hard because they probably knew that recordable CD
would take over.

So along with DCC and DAT that's three formats that have failed
because the manufacturers underestimated the public giving a ****.

Considering that I've never said that DCC or DAT were likely to
become mass market formats, I fail to see why you keep on mentioning
them.

For reasons I've already explained which you can see but are ignoring
because it doesn't fit with your theories.

I repeat: I have never said that DCC or DAT had any chance of going
mainstream.

Whoosh!
--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever email: dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 1136 DVDs, 362 games, 338 CDs, 110 cinema films, 51 concerts, videos & news
/* half life 2 episode 2, beatles: help, spiderman x360, russell brand, kylie
New music charts - http://dvdfever.co.uk/music.shtml
Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DVDdom

In article , [email protected] says....
Roderick Stewart wrote:

and will everybody connect all their other equipment to them
correctly, so that they actually get to see an improvement?


I think for a TV to be HD-ready it has to have the right connectors, and HD
set-top boxes are bound to have the right connectors, as are HD DVD players.
I don't know this for a fact, but I get the impression that it's going to be
more fool-proof than it has been up to now.

Joe Punter barely understands SCART cables and things don't get more foolproof
than that.

How many
of them will care if they do?


I'm not even going to bother answering that other than to say some will care
and others won't. I'm tired of the broadcasters trying to justify the low
quality they provide by taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge
of the public without people like yourself who think that they should
receive good quality (e.g. Radio 3) but screw everybody else.

And they'll justify the low quality of HD when they drop that to the levels of
SD now, if HD continues to broadcast that is.

And given that that's what will happen with HD picture quality, there's no
point Joe Punter spending all that money to get the same bitrate as he has
now. Even if it means less artifacts in the end, that means nothing to Joe
Punter if he's gone out and spent £1000 on the whole thing.
--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever email: dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 1136 DVDs, 362 games, 338 CDs, 110 cinema films, 51 concerts, videos & news
/* half life 2 episode 2, beatles: help, spiderman x360, russell brand, kylie
New music charts - http://dvdfever.co.uk/music.shtml
Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DVDdom

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:08:15 -0000, Dom Robinson put finger to
keyboard and typed:

In article , [email protected] says...

I can remember reading some article or other that said that the number of
people that download illegally is only a small percentage of the population.
You can tell that this is true as well, because CD and music downloads have
fallen, but they haven't fallen all that much, so either the tiny minority
of people still paying for music are buying far, far more music these days,
or in reality the vast majority of people are still paying for CDs or music
downloads.

Eh? The number of people who download illegally is unquantifiable.

It can't be measured precisely, but you can get a pretty good idea
either by simply asking people in a survey (and making the necessary
corrections for honesty) or by analysing traffic flows across the
Internet. It's not that difficult.

Having said that, the article referred is making a false dichotomy
anyway. Unauthorised downloading and purchasing are not an either/or
choice - a lot of people who download material in breach of copyright
also pay for other music. There's a fair amount of evidence that
people who do a lot of unauthorised downloading are more likely to pay
for music on physical media as well - often, they use the free source
as a taster, or to obtain individual songs, but then go and buy the CD
if they like what they hear.

Mark
--
Blog: http://Mark.Goodge.co.uk Photos: http://www.goodge.co.uk
"Save me from the nothing I’ve become"

In article , Dom
Robinson wrote:
It's human nature to want things to be better.

So they stick with the CRT, then.

If it's human nature to want to replace a CRT telly with a flat panel,
then human nature has a price. Maybe not everybody can afford this
price, or maybe they can, but their values are such that they think the
money is better spent on other things. There's more to life than telly.

I have a CRT. It takes up quite a bit of space and I'd really rather
have a projector out of the way on a high shelf, but it works well, and
if it's like most modern domestic electronics, it will probably
continue to do so for many years. So my options are these:-

1. Buy a projector. Fit a shelf. Install cables. Cost: £500 upwards
depending on what I bought, and a bit of work.

2. Keep what I have for the time being. Cost: Zero and no work at all.

Tricky decision....

Rod.

In article e.net,
Mark Goodge wrote:
Eh? The number of people who download illegally is unquantifiable.

It can't be measured precisely, but you can get a pretty good idea
either by simply asking people in a survey (and making the necessary
corrections for honesty) or by analysing traffic flows across the
Internet. It's not that difficult.

How do you know what correction to make for honesty without some honest
information upon which to base it?

Rod.

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:13:24 -0000, Roderick Stewart put finger to
keyboard and typed:

In article e.net,
Mark Goodge wrote:
Eh? The number of people who download illegally is unquantifiable.

It can't be measured precisely, but you can get a pretty good idea
either by simply asking people in a survey (and making the necessary
corrections for honesty) or by analysing traffic flows across the
Internet. It's not that difficult.

How do you know what correction to make for honesty without some honest
information upon which to base it?

You can do the survey with a group of people who, unknown to them, are
already being monitored (eg, by analysing data flow on their broadband
connection), and see how many of them tell the truth. :-)

Actually, that's a bit simplistic, and it probably wouldn't be done
like that. But the problem of people not being truthful on surveys is
not specific to this particular question, and polling organisations
have developed various ways to try and correct for that when doing
their research. So long as you can get the untruthfulness bias down to
something within the normal limits of statistical variation, then the
results are sufficiently useful.

Mark
--
http://www.MotorwayServices.info - read and share comments and opinons
"Every whisper, every waking hour"