OK, lawyer here, and I can't let these comments mislead this discussion. Respectfully, you couldn't be more wrong on just about every point. The plaintiff here only has to prove that D* promised a certain level of PQ at the time he signed his commitment and D* then knowingly failed to meet that contractual obligation. I read the judge's order denying D*'s motion to dismiss (it was posted on avsforum, IIRC), and it explained that the plaintiff had claimed breach of contract and fraud, not negligence. FWIW, the legal claim of "negligence" (breach of duty of care causing injury) doesn't even make sense here. The plaintiff is not claiming that D* carelessly lowered its resolution! (Furthermore, negligence is exactly the opposite of "intent." Think about it.).
As for the lawyer bashing, I don't get it. Your gripe is more with your peers who comprise the jury pool, not the lawyers. The lawyers argue the case. If the jury concludes that it doesn't have merit, the plaintiff loses. The people themselves are the ultimate check-and-balance. Simple as that. Lawyers don't just walk up to a civil judgment ATM and get money, you know.
And if a plaintiff wins, how exactly does "the consumer" lose? In this case, if the plaintiff wins, either D* will be ordered to restore PQ to the level promised or the plaintiff(s) will be compensated for the difference between what he/they paid for and the diminished value of the service D* actually provided. That's the way the system is SUPPOSED to work.
I certainly don't agree with all of what dishcomm has said but in his defense, he is right about how business works, business losses affect everyone, including the plaintiffs if D* loses and has to pay $$$$$$$. This would be a loss to the stock holders, the salaried employees and the customer base as the monetary settlements would be made from gross revenues as a cost of doing business.
So how might the plaintiff win? Hopefully the court will define what constitutes HDTV for the consumer. The problem, as I have stated before, is not about monikers of HDTV, or "HDTV lite", but actually what is considered industry practice for HDTV. The plaintiffs, I believe are being quite unreasonable in one specification in their complaint / case. This would be the demand for 1920 pixels since that specification, considered to be the upper limit for ATSC 1080i horizontal specification to maintain channel bandwidth, is mostly unattainable with today's HDTV acquisition and distribution system. It is limited to 1440 pixels by infrastructure. IF a case is won that demands 1920 pixels, we will see one of two possible outcomes. 1. the defendant will be forced to shut off all HDTV 1080i transmissions until / unless it can be supplied in the required 1920 pixel format.
2. Fool the content test methods by artificially boosting the H pixel count from 1440 to 1920 but this actually just generates video noise and adds bandwidth in the transmission without picture content.
In case #1. there have been recent technology developments which allow HDTV field acquisition and distribution to the full 1920 pixel count but being recent developments, is not yet a part of the infra structure for HDTV broadcast. There are just too many traditional HD technology (1440 pixel ) recording systems in place. IMO, demanding the full 1920 is unreasonable based on present day state of the art.
Secondly, the monitors used by consumers do not resolve 1920 pixels except for the latest 1080p which also are not common in households or the HDTV subscribers of D* HDTV channels.
Dishcomm is correct in that the H resolution is not guaranteed by D*, Only that "HDTV" is and IF D* can show that it supplies HDTV by state of the art common industry standards, I believe it will win. I would be surprised because independent tests of their signals show it does not.
However, having said that, I have to state that if the case can demonstrate the actual tested signals being sent by D* HDTV channels they will show that D* has further restricted the industry standard of 1440 pixels to less than 500 pixels in some cases and this, is most likely what the Plaintiffs are referencing as picture quality reduction. I would hope that the Plaitiffs would back off the stiff demands of 1920, agree that meeting the industry state of the art standard of 1440 is a minimum HDTV pixel count for 1080i version and be able to make the case that D* has reduced their quality to well below that. This would make for a very strong case as the tests to verify the reduction are not that difficult to run.
Some additional technical reminders-
1080i is interlaced format and was set by the ATSC to accomodate, analog scan line monitors, not digital pixel based monitors. The common native resolution of pixel based monitors are 720p by 1280. As such, all HDTV signals must be reduced to this native resolution for display! While 1080p x 1920 monitors are just now becoming wide spread in the stores, the only format that fully supports these monitor's native resolution is bluRay and HDDVD. There are no 1080p broadcasts permitted as they do not fit the licensed bandwidth limits.
When 1080i is converted to progressive for display native on a 720P monitor, it is at 540P, not 1080i. This is just math on the conversion and not some secret conspiracy. Under laboratory conditions, a CRT can be made to display a full res test to 1080i x 1920 lines but these lab conditions do not represent ideal viewing brightness for good picture quality. Instead the beam width must be broadened to give good picture and this limits the resolution to between 1100 and 1300 lines. Again, the monitors do not display the full 1920.
At the end of the day, the demands of the HD lite fighters for 1920 is not only too aggressive but technically without practical merrit. I fight for good HD PQ and for me, it would be a minimum of 720P x 1280 pixels or 1080i x 1440 pixels with a bandwidth of no less than 15 Mbps. If the plaintiffs sued for this minimum standard, I think they would have made an excellent case and everybody would be blown away with the improvement. D* may have to shut down a few HDTV channels since their TP count would not handle this minimum I have suggested. But what remained, would be of superb quality, that would maximize everone's monitors native resolution.
