[Las Vegas Dave]

Interested in HDTV? Please Freepmail me (freepmail works best) if you would like your name added to the HDTV ping list, (over 345 freepers are HDTV ping list members). The pinged subjects will be those of HDTV technology, satellite/cable HD, OTA (over the air with various roof top and indoor antennas) HD reception. Broadcast specials, Blu-ray/HD-DVD, and any and all subjects relating to HDTV.
Las Vegas Dave

[Las Vegas Dave]

HDTV pings!

[ErnBatavia]

The entire electronis world is one huge racket...people get addicted to "change", just like Obama hopes.......

Wifey and I have drawn our line in the sand. DVD is as far as we'll go for our "underneath the TV" format. If DVD goes the way of the 8-Track, so be it; we'll do without.

[Military family member]

I live a mile and a half from sony’s Terre Haute plant — its largest Blu-Ray plant in the world — and know several of the engineers who helped develop Blu-Ray. I really doubt that this is the end of the development process. I attended a presentation from the plant manager in March, who outlined several improvements scheduled to appear in the near future.

[Gay State Conservative]

Geeze...I put some serious $$$ into the LD format in the '90s.Then I put some serious $$$ into DVD for the last 7 years or so.Now,I'm in the process of putting serious $$$ into BDs.

When will it stop? BD is cool....*really* cool...with me.I have no need or desire for anything more...PQ-wise,sound quality-wise or content (special features) wise.

[CodeToad]

It seems to me a simple 8GB memory stick can be made real cheap if they started using them for video distribution.

[Sybeck1]

[dead]

I too am sick of all this endless upgrading and refuse to take part.

I watch a cave painting every night and scrape a bit of bone on a rock for audio.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

Yeah sure.

I remember them saying this about 8 Track tape!

[Clock King]

...everything that could be invented has been invented.

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of Patents 1899

[Poser]

I’m not buying anything until I can use it to RECORD. Most of today’s movies are crap. I don’t want to own them. I want to be able to record HD programming and save it.

[mysterio]

I'll buy a blu ray when they are 40 bucks. If they stop offering regular DVDs for rental, I'll stop renting.

I'm tired of being forced into new formats so they can resell their entire catalog over and over again.

[Hurricane Andrew]

One more reason that I’m surprised/upset that HD-DVD lost out...

[SampleMan]

Blu-Ray’s conquered the HD format war, but its design and technical limitations mean the current format is as good as it’ll get.

Reminds me of my quote at the time of my first computer purchase, "No I don't need a 30MHz machine, 25MHz is as fast as I'll ever need."

[Doohickey]

I'm sure glad it was the motion picture racket industry rather than market forces that determined who would win the format war. HD-DVD was the better format but Sony was able to use it's position in both the electronics and entertainment industries to foist this dead end format on us that shows little sign of becoming more affordable.

Here's hoping Sony's victory is a pyrric one.

[yazoo]

In that case, I’m sticking with my old B&W Zenith wood console. Besides, it looks so good next to my HI-FI.

[Mike Darancette]

Moving Picture format can’t be improved.

- Thomas A. Edison

[RayChuang88]

I don't think home televisions won't go much further than 1080p resolution for now because frankly, to see the benefits of 2048-line resolution you need to project a picture on a panel the size of a real theatrical movie screen. A good DLP front projector can display 1080p video with excellent picture quality even onto a screen 15 feet diagonal in size.

I've seen the Blu-ray version of Disney/Pixar's Cars on a 67" diagonal Samsung HL67A750 DLP rear-projection TV and it's so sharp that any further improvements border on overkill.

[moonhawk]

Sometimes this seems more like the Luddite ping list.

HDTV for Amish folk. :-)

[SunkenCiv]

Sony says it'll be the last optical format, after which, we'll move way from shiny discs altogether...That suggests we'll move to a Flash-based medium, or maybe holographic storage, but Miyama's not giving anything away.

Density is climbing in flash RAM, and price is coming down. After 8GB chips get down to under $1 -- or are sufficiently cheap that the power and space savings over DVDs look more attractive -- we'll be looking at the beginning of the decline in optical storage. 8GB USB drives are under $40 and falling. 4GB (which can be argued as a feasible replacement for DVD storage) are under $30, certainly, and probably $20 or less (I haven't checked in a few weeks).