What do you guys think about this (HDTV transition):

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LonghornXP

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Now I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea if they have enough factories to handle this or other factors that might come to play to stop this idea but I'm going to say it anyway. I think one way we could drive the HDTV transition forward in less than a year would be giving people a reason to buy a new TV without having to explain picture quality. Giving them another reason that sadly most americans can't resist (and I can't blame them either because besides looks they do have other benefits like space saving).

So with that said because LCD HDTV sets have dropped in price quite a bit and many 30"+ sets have no been sold for less than 700 bucks while 26" widescreen HDTV LCD sets have sold below 500 bucks. Now even if these prices are only black friday prices that does still tell where the prices will be in a few months. We now have more factories making these units and making them better and in more efficient ways to boot. Now as with anything more sales me cheaper prices per unit. Now lets consider from the consumers, retailers and the TV makers points of view for a second.

First from the TV makers point of view. If they can just quit making tube style TV sets and only sell LCD TV sets they might very well be able to get the prices low enough so they would be close to the same price as current tube TV sets at their size ranges of course. Now granted they need to be able to handle the volume but they can ship many more sets at less cost per unit. They also can store many more units in the same spaces they use for tube TV sets today.

Now from the retailers point of view. They also wouldn't be stocking anymore tube TV sets and would now be stocking very thin and attractive TV sets. This means that they can stock and hold more TV sets in the same amount of space as well. They also won't have problems selling these slick TV sets either. If the TV makers just said together to make them all HDTV sets with no analog or EDTV sets than the makers and the stores can just say to the customer that all of these LCD (they say thin TVs) are HDTV TVs. This would simply force the transition because once they are made in volume it won't cost that much more if anything to offer an HDTV over an EDTV for example.

Now the consumers might very well next Christmas go out and buy one of these new sets even if they have a working TV set right now. Look at it from this point of view. I also a customer have a good working TV set and as many HDTV isn't big enough for me to jump to buy a new TV set for a much higher price. Now if that consumer say has a 25" analog set that cost him 200 bucks for example. Lets say that set is two years old so old enough but not too old or too new. Now say if this customer can walk into a store and buy a 32" Widescreen LCD HDTV set for 399.99 or less and this is very very doable at the current system within 8 months I believe. Well I hate to say this but at that price this consumer is getting three very big "important" upgrades. They are first getting a much much bigger screen now that is big enough to show how good HDTV really is. Second they are upgrading to HDTV instead of analog. Now add in the third option which is the fact that these things are very very thin and are easy to move. People how are and will be living in apartments will snag this up in a second because today they would love a big 30+ inch HDTV set but if they move a lot they just can't deal with moving a projection screen or the old tube set. But now they have a big HDTV affordable lightweight set they can carry on their own with great ease that will also fit in small places. Think about how big that would be for a family TV in a small apartment/condo in NY where space is at a premium and money is a big factor.

The botton line is that thin TVs at a very cheap price have many benefits and will drive the HDTV transition and not the other way around. People love HDTV but they only have a great benefit on sets more than 30" in viewing size and until these sizes can become very small, thin, lightweight and cheap enough many people won't see the benefit of upgrading while some can't even if they want too. I'm telling you on a 26" widescreen set HDTV looks no different than digital cable but on a 32" widescreen you can very clearly see the difference and that will be the sweetspot and unlike in the past when 25" sets were the common middleground the 32" will be the common sold set. The 26" will be the cheapest model offered while LCD projectors along with big screens will be the highend sets.

That is my view and I wonder what you all think and let me know if you agree or not with anything I said or better yet please suggest better ways. I hope this gets talked about and gets considered by all parties involved in this business because I think all parties can greatly benefit from this.
 
Pretty good idea. Standard Def on a 32" LCD looks like garbage 90% of the time. All those folks buying them will be storming the walls of ABC to broadcast more than primetime in HD, specifically sports!
 
I fear that most of those discounted LCDs on sale for Christmas, 1) don't have an ATSC tuner, and 2) suffer from the ghosting of fast moving images. Unbelievably, I saw an LCD hooked up to a D* HD receiver as a store display. PQ looked very good until the objects on the screen made a few quick moves. The ghosting was horrendous.
 
LonghornXP said:
People love HDTV but they only have a great benefit on sets more than 30" in viewing size and until these sizes can become very small, thin, lightweight and cheap enough many people won't see the benefit of upgrading while some can't even if they want too. I'm telling you on a 26" widescreen set HDTV looks no different than digital cable but on a 32" widescreen you can very clearly see the difference

Of course, it's completely bogus. Is this supposed to be a joke?

Anybody, who cannot see the difference between a digital SD and HD on a 26" LCD HDTV, should seek professinal medical help immediately.

PS: by the way, cable is the worst quality SD usually, due to its low bandwidth capacity which results highly compressed crappy picture.
 
Carl B said:
I fear that most of those discounted LCDs on sale for Christmas, 1) don't have an ATSC tuner, and 2) suffer from the ghosting of fast moving images. Unbelievably, I saw an LCD hooked up to a D* HD receiver as a store display. PQ looked very good until the objects on the screen made a few quick moves. The ghosting was horrendous.

Around $700-800 you can get a decent 27" LCD HDTV.
 
T2k said:
Of course, it's completely bogus. Is this supposed to be a joke?
Anybody, who cannot see the difference between a digital SD and HD on a 26" LCD HDTV, should seek professinal medical help immediately.
PS: by the way, cable is the worst quality SD usually, due to its low bandwidth capacity which results highly compressed crappy picture.

Why do you think I said digital cable and not just cable. I have a 26" widescreen LCD TV and on most programming on digital cable its actually hard to tell the difference between the digital cable feed and the HDTV feed. Now this doesn't apply to say ESPN in analog and ESPN HD because that is a wicked difference in picture quality. But if it wasn't for the widescreen black bars on the top and botton on some of the movies on both HBO and SHO HD I couldn't tell the difference between the airing on the SD showtimes/HBOs versus the HD feeds.

Now on my 32" Widescreen LCD HDTV set I can see a big difference in picture quality on the HBO HD feed compared to the SD HBO feed. Just that little bit extra screen sizes can show the imperfections of the SD feed which aren't present in the HD feeds. Also on a 26" Widescreen set a hockey game on InHD doesn't look much better than if the game was being shown on a channel in digital above 100 while on the 32" set you can see its better than digital.

I'm not saying its not worth the upgrade to a 26" LCD set but today for the price most people still don't see it worthwhile to upgrade to that size of a set even at 300 bucks for an old CRT tube HDTV set. The point I was getting at is that those customers who don't feel that a 26" set is big enough to warrant the extra HDTV pricetag compared to the SD price tag of much less for that sized set might need another reason to upgrade to that higher priced HDTV set.

In simple terms a cheap LCD set is what the customer would be willing to buy and the HDTV would be a bonus throw-in and not the reason they would buy the set. Do you know how many people I know who actually don't see the difference in quality on my 60" HDTV set between digital and HDTV. I even had one person tell me that he didn't see that much of a difference between the analog ESPN and the ESPN HD channel with a Sunday Night NFL football game being shown in HDTV.

If you have one customer that believes and said this do you think their might be tons that just don't see a difference between HD and digital on a 26" set. You are a different customer than most. You unlike many others cares and can see the difference in quality. You like myself can see and does care about the HDLite we get from DirecTV while many other DirecTV HD customers don't see the difference or just don't care.

Prices are at an all time low for flat-panel sets and they are selling like crazy and maybe just maybe that might be because of wife appeal and just the cool factor. People aren't buying these LCD TV sets in droves because their HDTV sets you know.
 
LonghornXP said:
Why do you think I said digital cable and not just cable. I have a 26" widescreen LCD TV and on most programming on digital cable its actually hard to tell the difference between the digital cable feed and the HDTV feed. Now this doesn't apply to say ESPN in analog and ESPN HD because that is a wicked difference in picture quality. But if it wasn't for the widescreen black bars on the top and botton on some of the movies on both HBO and SHO HD I couldn't tell the difference between the airing on the SD showtimes/HBOs versus the HD feeds.
Now on my 32" Widescreen LCD HDTV set I can see a big difference in picture quality on the HBO HD feed compared to the SD HBO feed. Just that little bit extra screen sizes can show the imperfections of the SD feed which aren't present in the HD feeds. Also on a 26" Widescreen set a hockey game on InHD doesn't look much better than if the game was being shown on a channel in digital above 100 while on the 32" set you can see its better than digital.
I'm not saying its not worth the upgrade to a 26" LCD set but today for the price most people still don't see it worthwhile to upgrade to that size of a set even at 300 bucks for an old CRT tube HDTV set. The point I was getting at is that those customers who don't feel that a 26" set is big enough to warrant the extra HDTV pricetag compared to the SD price tag of much less for that sized set might need another reason to upgrade to that higher priced HDTV set.
In simple terms a cheap LCD set is what the customer would be willing to buy and the HDTV would be a bonus throw-in and not the reason they would buy the set. Do you know how many people I know who actually don't see the difference in quality on my 60" HDTV set between digital and HDTV. I even had one person tell me that he didn't see that much of a difference between the analog ESPN and the ESPN HD channel with a Sunday Night NFL football game being shown in HDTV.
If you have one customer that believes and said this do you think their might be tons that just don't see a difference between HD and digital on a 26" set. You are a different customer than most. You unlike many others cares and can see the difference in quality. You like myself can see and does care about the HDLite we get from DirecTV while many other DirecTV HD customers don't see the difference or just don't care.
Prices are at an all time low for flat-panel sets and they are selling like crazy and maybe just maybe that might be because of wife appeal and just the cool factor. People aren't buying these LCD TV sets in droves because their HDTV sets you know.


This is completely ridiculous. Visit your eye doctor immediately, for your own sake.

I'm dead serious.

PS: of course, maybe your unit is a PoS, that's also a possible explanation.
 
T2k said:
This is completely ridiculous. Visit your eye doctor immediately, for your own sake.

I'm dead serious.

PS: of course, maybe your unit is a PoS, that's also a possible explanation.

First off I did say that their was a difference in picture quality between a digital cable feed and an HDTV feed on a 26" widescreen set but its not a super big difference. Like I said in my earlier post I along with you and many others can see that difference. What you are failing to read and pay attention about is that for this transition to move forward it has to be done with the average joes which aren't you and I. Because quite a few people just will not accept how good HDTV really is thus their unwillingness to buy a new HDTV set even at a great price. Because of this problem we must give another reason for these people to upgrade to an HDTV set without that reason being HDTV. Well if we had very cheap LCD HDTV sets that are big and very very small that would be the reason for these customers to move upto HDTV but again its not the HDTV they care about its the form factor they care about. I wouldn't be suprised if these customers never ever get an HD box from their cable companies even if it didn't cost them anything more per month. You just cannot stop attacking me and paying attention to what I'm saying because the truth of the matter is I'm in 100% agreement with you on the picture quality issue but that isn't what is being talked about in this thread and that is the problem you are having.

Before you go attacking someone please do them a favor and truely read their posts because if you did you would understand exactly what my point is. Also keep in mind that if I didn't see much of a difference in picture quality with HDTV even on these smaller sets why in the hell would I pay almost 4 grand for my 26" & 32" widescreen LCD HDTV sets when I could get a lower quality set for at least half the cost. I also bought these sets because they are LCD sets but unlike those average joes I spent much more for quality HDTV pictures while they will get the cheapest because one they don't have as much money to spend and two they still won't care about HDTV like we do. All we can hope for is that some of them do call their cable company up to at least try HDTV at which time they will like it.

Just remember again that we own HDTV sets right now so we aren't the people who must move this HDTV transition and last time I checked my thread title wasn't talking about us HDTV owners now was it.
 
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