[opendtv] Re: 4KTV at CES
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:49:09 -0400
On Apr 14, 2013, at 7:58 PM, "Manfredi, Albert E"
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Let me say, perhaps young reporters should be made to read articles from 20+
> years ago, on HDTV, just so they don't sound like a broken record to those of
> us who remember.
Bert is right to say: "never say never."
The world keeps changing and the unimaginable becomes commonplace.
But the young reporters have grown up in that different world, and have
different values. They probably never sat down on the sofa with their parents
to take in an evening of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley etc. They grew up with
TVs in their rooms, video games and computers.
Simply put, a few decades ago there was little competition for our attention
when at home, and TV was the big deal. Today there are MANY things vying for
our attention, and TV has become, as Newton Minow predicted, a vast wasteland.
From Wikipedia
Minow became one of the most well known and respected — if sometimes
controversial — political figures of the early 1960s because of his criticism
of commercial television. In a speech given to the National Association of
Broadcasters convention on May 9, 1961, he was extremely critical of television
broadcasters for not doing more, in Minow's view, to serve the public interest.
His phrase, "vast wasteland", is remembered years after the speech after he
said,
“ When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines
or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is
worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when
your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a
magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book
to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off.
I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.[7]
The big error in the article about 4K TV is the assumption that traditional TV
content from the wasteland, will continue to be the driving force that causes
people to invest in a new big screen TV. We are already seeing second screens
proliferate, be they PCs, tablets or smartphones. For all of these second
screens, resolution is VERY important and continues to increase (almost)
exponentially. Meanwhile the quality of video that people stream to these
devices is often no better than the NTSC quality that HDTV was going to
replace. Reading web pages and viewing digital photographs are applications
that now drive the increase in resolution of second screens.
4K is important for theaters and special venue presentations. It is not likely
to be important for the TV in the family room for many years, at least for
watching TV. But I would not discount other applications driving people to buy
higher resolution big screens.
Regards
Craig
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