[opendtv] The Extra-Large, Ultra-Small Medium

The Extra-Large, Ultra-Small Medium

By JODI KANTOR
October 30, 2005

ON Monday morning, news networks were breathlessly covering two 
entirely different hurricanes. The first blew off the screen in all 
its fury, droplets speeding by, stop signs spinning, palm fronds 
flying and strands of soaked hair clinging to correspondents' 
foreheads. Debris clattered down deserted streets, and the wind 
screamed from a growl to a whistle and back again. The second storm 
was much tamer: palm trees swayed, but with something that looked 
more like stop-motion animation than deadly natural force. Mostly it 
looked like a foggy, soundless gray blur.

Both hurricanes were Wilma, but one was the large-screen, plasma 
version; the other belonged to a mobile phone with a screen about 
one-twentieth the size of the first. One was affixed to a wall; the 
other could roam all over New York, on the subway, at a playground, 
in a coffee shop.

Technology tends to shrink. Hulking mainframes begat slim laptops; 
boxy mobile phones and digital cameras have dematerialized into 
silvery credit cards. But something curious is happening to 
television: it's simultaneously growing gigantic and minuscule, 
stretching across living room walls at the same time it slips into 
pockets. People can brag about their 60-inch plasma screens and their 
palm-size nanocasters in the same breath.

For now, television may still mostly be a medium-size medium. Plenty 
of bedrooms and doctors' offices still have 20-inch sets - and 
depending on picture quality and where the viewer sits, those screens 
can be impressively clear. But there is a growing fetish for 
televisions on the far ends of the size spectrum. Huge, crystalline 
displays, once the province of wealthy A/V geeks and Hollywood 
executives, have dropped so far in price that they are within reach 
of everyday people. And the same audience can buy televisions the 
size of candy bars. The newest Apple iPods can be loaded with 
television shows, and nearly every major cellphone carrier is 
building television capability (live broadcasts, on-demand 
programming, or both) into its devices, hoping that Americans will 
embrace the feature the way they did the cameras planted in phones a 
few years ago.

It seems a little silly to call any one of these devices televisions. 
The big ones are home theaters, intended just as much for DVD 
watching and video-game-playing as for catching "Law & Order." The 
small ones are variously communications devices, music players, hard 
drives and cameras. But there is another problem with the common 
name: the two sizes of televisions make for such a different viewing 
experience that they almost seem like two separate media altogether. 
In a few years the extra-extra-extra large and ultra-ultra-ultra tiny 
televisions may come to seem like distant ancestral cousins, bound by 
a common genealogy and little else.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/arts/television/30kant.html?ex=1288324800&en=0a0f7278f9d70c84&ei=5090

 
 
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