If ever there were a story that defines why people are still reticent to jump onto the creaky, erratic HD bandwagon, it is this one.

It seems that like playtime with a bunch of 5-year-olds who’ve skipped their Ritalin, everyone in the room has their own chuckleheaded idea as to what HD consists of, and how it should be viewed.  Some are trying to ride both the HD DVD and Blu-ray horses at the same time:

Warner’s Total Hi Def disc combines HD DVD and Blu ray layers on a
single disc, which can contain single and dual layers for both formats.
Warner says the dual-format disc does not compromise the feature set of
either format. Discs can include either 15GB or 30GB layers on the HD
DVD side or 25GB or 50GB layers on the Blu-ray side. Total Hi Def discs
are due out in the second half of 2007.

Well, that should help to contain the formatting and production costs, shouldn’t it? Burning a version of the movie to each side of the disc should jam the production costs up to double what is already an onerous process, where way too many of the would-be HD disks wind up as coasters. Who will wind up paying a premium? If you guessed the consumers, you’d be right.  Are people willing to return to the days when movies cost $50 or $100? Blockbuster is massaging the mink and crooning to itself “Yes … ohhh yes …” (For those of you too young to remember, Blockbuster and other video rental stores were spawned in the early days of the VHS video revolution, when movies from Hollywood routinely cost in the $50-100 range, and the only people who really bought them were either collectors or stores that would then amortize out the purchase by renting them out over and over again.  Which is how I would up watching the first real video hit, The Terminator on a jittery, skipping VHS tape back in the fall of ’85.)

Now pay attention to this next graf and try to imagine what it must be like to be an engineer designing one of these pigs, trying to make sure that the boards and firmware all are compatible with this dog’s breakfast of audio and video compression formats:

LG’s compromise solution is hardware-based. The company’s BH100 Super
Multi Blue player lists for $1,199 and will ship to dealers the first
week of February. The home player packs the functionality of a Blu-ray
player including BD-Java interactivity but lacks CD playback and
advanced interactive functionality on playback of HD DVD discs. The
single-tray player supports MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264, Dolby Digital, Dolby
Digital+, DTS, and DTS-HD. HDMI output is version 1.2. The company
couldn’t confirm at press time whether the output could pass through
the multi-channel lossless formats.

Nice. Does anyone out there in the hardware world really think that Grandma and Grampa, the ones with all the disposable income and time spent watching TV, are really going to wade through all those scary-looking acronyms and numbers?  Much less know what the hell that means?

Yesterday came the story over NPR that most people who buy the new HD flat panels take them home and are disappointed and complaining about how little the picture has improved.  This is because most of them are just hooking the TV into their plain old cable or dish connections and expecting HD to just pop up and dance for them. 

Heh.

No no no, they are told upon going back to the store (if they have the stones to complain, which I’d guess about 80% of the people out there don’t, not wanting to look stupid) you have to have special HD equipment to get HD signals for your HD TV.  A special antenna. SPecial cable box. Special satellite dish receiver.  And that all will be … hmmm … you want the extended warranty and the special rustproof undercoating, right? Of course you do …

The HD Revolution will, sadly, not be televised, due to technical problems and a lack of installed user base…

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