Posted on 06/15/2006 8:01:01 PM PDT by Lunatic Fringe
You can't beat 8-track for portable music and reel to reel for video.
:^P
I have cable access, but I rarely use it to watch local broadcasts, which are useful when severe weather moves through the area.
I know two families who do not have cable because they want to exercise control over what their children can access.
>Haven't you heard, the Federal Government is going to fund and adapter for people so they won't lose access to television once the move takes place.<
Seriously, what about people who have tvs throughout their houses--but don't have cable/satellite connections for each of those rooms? I have not heard of providing adapters for EACH receiver in every household.
I can appreciate the local weather angle, but increasingly, local cable networks are carrying these stations as the cost declines (along with aerial broadcast viewership). Additionally, you have many other options for local information, including the internet (weather.com, www.erh.noaa.gov, etc.) As for parental control, that's a real concern, but all TV's made in the past decade have V-Chips, and cable network boxes frequently have additional content controls. I use the latter in my house to limit program and movie ratings for the kids' benefit.
>produces an excellent picture on a reasonably-sized HDTV (42-50 inches).<
Not everybody wants a large screen tv. I like tv on the small side, because I don't care for the way large screens dominate a room. I have 4 color tvs, not counting the portable Casio, and none of them is larger than 19". Nearly all the time I spend watching is on a receiver dedicated to playback of DVDs and VCDs [I have a large collection of Korean, Hong Kong, Chinese and Japanese movies, many of which have never and will never be released here in Region 1 format].
Not everyone wants to see the individual pores on an actor's face.
The technical advantages are obvious in true HD tv, but I am not sure most people are going to be enthusiastic about replacing their systems at the present prices. For people with extensive movie collections, I doubt they are going to run out and replace all of their present DVDs, either.
There are large numbers of technophobic people in this society who adopted DVD reluctantly, if at all, and if you have ever tried to explain coming changes to such people, you've seen their eyes glaze over.
By the way, the new DVD formats also have DIFFERENT regions than the present DVD regions. I'm interested in television from all over the world, so my 4 DVD players are all region free and convert PAL to NTSC. Regions are an evil marketing scheme. People sneer at VCD format, but it crosses borders so nicely.
I don't know the answer to this question, but I suspect a lot of people are going to be disappointed.
Most current models have at least one HDMI, two are better. It pays to check, especially on bargain models. This is a spec that is usually prominently noted.
IIRC, VHS won out over Beta in part because more porn was available on VHS than Beta. Will porn settle this one too?
This may sound silly, but I think all things being equal, Blu-Ray will win because of the cooler sounding name. While I was in college, I worked at a beverage drive-in. One of our products was a cheep wine called Reunite - pronounced Re-u-neat-ee. Folks would drive in and ask for our Red Reunite. I'd ask 'em, "Which one, we have regular and Lambrusco". I bet 49 out of 50 times, they, without knowing a dang diff between the two, would order the Lambrusco. Cooler name.
Cool names? How about the sound of Sony copy protection?
Why yes....that IS the purpose of HDMI. (among other things)
It is now believed that HDCP will not be implemented until 2012. That's plenty of time to trade in the earlier (and crappier) HDTV sets.
all the new ones have it.
I'm the type of tightwad, low-spending consumer that the market hates. I have a $99 TV that I use to play DVD's, and that's all I'm ever gonna buy to play DVD's. Unless I hit the lottery.
Government is crap. Government is set up to screw the little person and give breaks to big business. Both parties, having agreed to this thing, are crap.
Yeah, ME! I'm retired and I had to cut my expenses. Once my cable TV went over fifty bucks a month, it was history.
Same here. Extended basic plus roadrunner was well over 100 bucks a month here so I cut the cable TV part, had to keep RR though.
Now I get the major networks and PBS in 1080i or 780p for FREE over the air via rabbit ears. :)
Ain't nothing wrong with rabbit ears. It gets me local news, PBS, the local Fox station ("24" and "American Idol"), and the local religious station. And it's free!
May (as is usually the case) the inferior system win!
Sorry about that. You may want to call and speak with someone at the company. Most national cable providers hate to disconnect anyone. They often have "unadvertised" packages of basic service that include local channels and a few cable networks. Phone companies do the same thing, by the way. In addition, with a little technical knowledge, finding streaming TV content on the Internet is not too difficult. What a world.
Remember when we had only three or four channels and needed rabbit ears to get those semi-clearly? Ask a kid what "rabiit ears" are today and he'll put two fingers behind his head...
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