This bit from slashdot warms my heart this snowy morning. Broadband Reports and Techdirt posted The Technology Liberation Front’s article that said apparently half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don’t actually use the HD capabilities of their set, and nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven’t set it up correctly.
A few things. Obviously it’s fun to blame the morons who’ll spend $3000+ on an HDTV and then not ever figure out how to set it up. It’s fun to laugh at them when they don’t realize that they’re watching normal TV that’s stretched 1/3 wider so that everyone looks fat. But really this is a technology issue, and an implementation issue. A device as expensive as an HDTV should do all the configuring itself. Sure, techies will want to tweak everything, so it should have those options, but the makers of HDTVs should just take a guess at how most people will want things and do that. It should, for instance, know when you’re watching a widescreen program and when you’re not. It should not give you the option to stretch 4:3 TV, even though idiots think they want that “feature.”
Of course, a lot of the issue comes from the cable companies and the terrible cable boxes that Scientific Atlanta sells them, which are fairly hard to use. And now that they offer hundreds of channels, you really need to be using DVR technology to manage all those shows. Additionally, the regular, non-HD channels should have special banners along the sides of the screen that say, “IDIOT! You’re watching this program on an HDTV, switch to channel 426 so you can see it in HDTV.” Even better, it should just not even give you the option unless it knows you’re smart enough to tell the difference, and only offer one version of NBC.
Of course, none of this matters because there’s no incentive for the TV makers and the cable companies to take pride in their products. If the customer’s already shelled out his money, why bother?