Zach said:
...and then those same people get their shiny new TV home and the picture looks nothing like it did in the store, because they hooked it up wrong and don't have any kind of an HD package.
This is pretty far off the topic of HD radio, but my experience is the picture looks a lot better at home than it does in the stores. That is because most stores have a closed circuit in house HD distribution system that delivers the same signal to all sets as component video. Frequently they are poorly set up, and the kid that is running the department is playing a standard definition DVD of his favorite movie on it. You can up-convert all you want, but the picture won't get better if it starts out as a standard definition source. When you get home and connect the set to an antenna, you will discover OTA stations that are really running HDTV signals. They can look stunning.
Where I live, I can receive about 10 signals in analog. Some come in a lot better than others. Ghosts and snow are familiar companions on about 1/3 of those signals. Using the same antenna, I get 22 DTV channels, none of them with snow or ghosting. Not all of them are 720P or 1080I, but even the standard definition channels look way better than they do in analog.
Add to that the increasing number of HDTV channels that are available from my satellite supplier, and there is a lot of high quality video to watch on your new TV. If people are incapable of connecting this up so it works right, then they have my sympathy. It is very simple to do.
Zach said:
You and I and most folks on this board are smarter than that, but the average TV viewer isn't. I have honest-to-God talked to people who see the "available in high definition" or HD logo on their old TV and think they're watching the actual hi-def feed!
It is true that some people just "don't get it" and probably never will. When I was in High School, I had a part time job at a local TV shop. That was in the relatively early days of color TV. People would actually get upset when I adjusted their TV so the faces were natural looking, the sky was blue and grass was green. It seemed that quite a few of them actually liked beet colored flesh tones, green sky and purple grass. As P.T. Barnum supposedly said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American Public. "
Zach said:
And on a similar note, I've also talked to two different people who thought that they were listening to HD radio on their boomboxes, "because the guy on the radio just said, 'Broadcasting in HD digital
!'" :
I have noted that too, even among people who should be smart enough to know better. I think a lot of that can be blamed on the really lame promotion the Alliance gave HD radio. It was a long time before I ever heard a promo that mentioned you might need to get a new radio. Their "Time to Upgrade," promotion is better, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
The real point is, except for the addition of the secondary and tertiary channels, most people wouldn't know HD if it jumped up and bit them in the a$$. You can tell the difference if you are wearing headphones or listening on quality speakers in a quiet environment, but most people don’t do that. For many, radio is background noise. Traveling down the road at 70 MPH in your car is another story, unless your car is exceptionally well sound insulated. Most aren't. At highway speeds, it is not an obvious improvement. In fact, when it "blends “ to analog, many people find it is an unpleasant experience. Of course the HD-2 channels just stop working, and I’ve met several people who find that to be intolerable enough that they no longer listen.
It is doubtful that most people would notice improved audio quality enough to persuade them to get out their wallets. Add to that the fact that most people accept a 64 kbs MP3 on their ipod as “quality audio,” and you will loose the fight if the only thing you have to offer is “CD” quality. That is even more the case when the quality doesn’t happen to measure up to that of a CD. People who know better do notice that little problem.
So far, other than on these boards, I really haven't heard much buzz about the new HD channels. To the consumer, new channels is about the only selling point, and with few exceptions, they are not representing themselves very well. Most are just "more of the same."
The only way this will work out is if HD decoders are built into lots of devices that coincidentally can receive radio broadcasts. That may happen, but at the moment, technology is moving at a fairly fast pace. I can easily see other technologies being incorporated into these very same devices that will circumvent the need for HD Radio.
