Anybody that has experienced HD knows that it's pretty friggin sweet. Everything just looks better. Watching a Blu-Ray movie, or playing some Xbox 360 on a 42" Plasma is just an impressive experience. With prices on everything dropping faster than Bush's approval rating why are people still afraid to take the plunge?
Because the Industry can't get past the PR one-upmanship that is leaving the general consumer in the dust.
Before HDTV most people didn't even think about things like resolution and frame rate. Now they feel like they need to know what 1080P is and how it differs from the other half-dozen options. That's not including aspect ratios, contrast ratios, brightness, viewing angle, etc etc.
The absurdity of it all is epitomized in the HDMI connector. With better TVs, companies wanted to upsell better speakers and home theater equipment. Then you just have a mess of wires going every which way. Enter the HDMI cable. ONE cable that goes from ONE device to your television. It carries all the audio and video. Easy.
WRONG.
Now you have to worry about which SPECIFICATION (try explaining that to the average consumer) of HDMI. Do you have. 1.3? 1.2a? What about HDMI-CEC? I mean, are you serious? Oh you have DVI, well if it's DVI-D with HDCP then it works with HDMI. Ok. It's so much clearer.
As a tech-geek I'm cool with companies constantly trying to innovate and improve themselves. However, when they start marketing those improvements in a poor way that ends up confusing most people it's actually detrimental to innovation as a whole. Companies are innovating in ways that don't even matter! Why is it still a pain in the butt to get HD content from my computer to my television? I don't care about controlling my receiver from my television, I just want to be able to watch YouTube on my TV without having three different devices in the mix.
The confusion makes people hold onto their money. And when people aren't buying, the companies and standards aren't progressing, and we're left with even more confusion. Don't companies see what happens when they cooperate? Look at DVD. Almost every company aligned itself behind the DVD standard, and we saw the most rapid adoption rate of any new technology ever.
Now instead of repeating that success they're going the complete opposite route.
It's annoying. It's frustrating. It's stupid. It's not going to end anytime soon.
I don't blame people that are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the dust to clear. I blame the arrogant companies for holding everyone back for nothing.
