Topic: High Dollar Generation

[Renny]

Half of HDTV owners aren't getting HD. I hate articles that link to articles that link to articles. Crazy enterweb!

So half of all HDTV owners aren't even receiving HD broadcasts, and a quarter of HDTV owners thought they were receiving such broadcasts when they weren't. Do these results surprise anyone? It's clear that the whole HD campaign has been bungled from the start, hence the repeatedly delayed digital broadcast switch-over. From the poor in-store demos to the tepid adoption of HD by content providers and distributors to the techonology ignorance of the new wealthy, the result is a fumblebuck of a push towards the eventual standard.

So how does the Xbox 360 fit into this mess? Will the 360 be the needed push that opens peoples' eyes to the wonder of HD? Despite HD being the cornerstone of the 360's launch (marketing-wise), and despite the 360 being bundled with a component cable, will ignorance still reign supreme? You can call me a fanboy for stating this [plain truth], but I've always seen a large share of Xbox users as being ignorant in general (anyone here played on Xbox Live?). They're either PC gamers who've just 'rediscovered' console gaming since the NES days. Or people who got the best system to show off their phat TV. The irony being the fuzzy, washed out display of the Xbox, and the near absence of games that support HD, making it graphically moot in my opinion. Yes, I think the GameCube has the best output, and the graphics to match it.

Are things different this time around (...) for the 360? Are the early adopters the enlightened ones? I don't think actual graphics do matter at all, I don't think anyone not visiting games forums can tell the difference. This could be advantageous for the Revolution. Nintendo needs to show that their graphics look as good as the competition's. They need to push the bigger developers to support 704x480 progressive, which the Revolution will be capable of as the GameCube is. With this as a 'semi-standard' I think the average mainstream gamer would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and HD games (see PGR3, rendered at below Microsoft's mandated standard of 1280x720, yet people are still falling over themselves for it). At least where developers are familiar with the GameCube's API and still learning multi-thread, in-order code the Revolution could compete early in the 'horsepower race' without throwing away money. This could be enough of a foothold to earn a place alongside the 360 and PS3 in the 'core' market. From there Nintendo can focus on expanding into the 'mass' market.

Of course this is highly dependent on getting the Revolution to the market on time. With an expected launch of late 2006, that strategy has less hope as gamers will be too impressed with teh mature grafix of the 360 and possibly PS3. It is also highly dependent on dispelling the tiku tiku tiku!  myth of Nintendo systems. They've at least started off on a good foot with the aesthetic engineering of the system. Can they capitalize on this? Otherwise they're left to sell the system on the novelty of the controller alone. I think they'd fare much better if they had an ally in something more familiar to gamers than originality: screenshots.

[KDR_11k]

I've always seen a large share of Xbox users as being ignorant in general (anyone here played on Xbox Live?). They're either PC gamers who've just 'rediscovered' console gaming since the NES days.

Strange, when I rediscovered console gaming I went for the platform that's the least like a PC. I went because I was tired of the PC genres, not because I wanted even MORE games like that.

HDTV isn't much of a topic here, I think they just introduced it this year so obviously there's no affordable HDTV devices or HDTV broadcasting (from what I read most stations figure that one HD broadcast takes the bandwidth of 8 regular channels and understandably don't want HD). I think the X360 demo kiosks had the only HDTVs I've ever seen and I'm not very impressed by them since I'm used to PC monitors (that's what I consider par, TVs are sub-par) and my 19"er provides the same horizontal res, more Hz, CRT (LCD sucks) and 4:3 (16:9 is useless).

[Renny]

I did the same. Missed out on owning a first-generation 3D console, played PC games, gave up on PC games and got a GameCube thereafter. HDTV penetration is supposebly best in the US (is Japan a close second?), but it's still a pretty dire situation considering how long they've been talking about it. And the TVs on the market several years on still offer pretty poor quality per dollar. The technology is too new even now, with each angle on the HDTV having its share of tangible inadequacies. Of course if you're stepping up from a creaky old tube you're going to see an improvement. Just not a $1k+ improvement, in my opinion of course.

[KDR_11k]

I don't think the technology is really new as it has been present in PC monitors for a long time now, I think they're either going cheap or deliberately producing crap so you'll have a reason to buy a new TV in a few years again.

[Hans Beckert]

Quote
Originally posted by: Renny
HDTV penetration is supposebly best in the US (is Japan a close second?)

I'm pretty sure Japan's second, yeah, but I wouldn't call it "close." More "laughably distant." Last I heard 'bout five people in Japan own HDTVs. Yep, it's true. Five. I do not lie. Well, maybe a little bit. It might be six.

[Renny]

And how much of that ownership constitutes Tomonobu Itagaki and Hideo Kojima? ;] LCDs have been around in the PC realm for a long time, but the early ones were really only suitable for the PC. The ancient Latitude CPi A sitting here has a 16k color, 50ms LCD. That wouldn't do a 2600 justice. I think the biggest problems introduced with upping the scale of LCD displays have been with backlighting. And manufacturers are probably looking for very nice markup from early adopters. Then you have the HD CRTs at the bottom end of the market, which have their own melange of issues and really aren't helping the HDTV push.

I expect the adoption of HDTV to be very strong in five years. Even if most homes still have traditional tubes, the public's mindset will be as if HDTV were the norm. I'm not sure how relevant it will be in the meantime though. But regardless, as I said before I think most people would be very impressed with a 704x480 progressive image on the typical HDTV. Most people aren't buying 50" displays, as far as I can tell.

[KDR_11k]

Then why don't they build proper HD CRTs? Sure, there's this constant notion of "LCD is better" but LCD is a halfbaked technology. Dead pixels should have reached zero by now yet they still happen. The color values should have been corrected a long time ago but some idiot decided that more saturation is better. Prepare for a rude awakening if you try to color anything on an LCD. And by the way, 16:9 is a useless aspect ratio. 4:3 makes sense because most TV is in that format and you want pretty equal horizontal and vertical size for most tasks (text editing, viewing ANYTHING from above like a map or an RTS). That cinema format makes sense because cinema movies are in that format. 16:9 is neither, you have black bars with TV content and black bars with cinema content.

[ThePerm]

as far a color goes..i dont know...house of 1000 daggers looked great on psp

[KDR_11k]

LCDs oversaturate colors. People tend to call that "more vivid" and equal that with better.

[Renny]

Manufacturers would like to abandon CRT altogether and focus on the various 'flat panel' technologies. So we get half-assed CRTs until they're phased out altogether. The whole market has to mature at least a couple years before I'd even consider getting one. They might be affordable and not suck by then. Ditto that sentiment for the 360/PS3.

[BiLdItUp1]

What about the Sony Grand Wegas? Aren't they HD CRTs? (then again, this is sony we're talking bout.)

[IceCold]

I've said it before, using a HD TV for games is like getting your first pair of glasses when you're at -0.75 or -1.00 diopters. Yes, it's clear, but suddenly you see so much more detail that you notice things that you don't want to see. Like when you sweep the floor .

It's the same with games... HD will bring out a lot of texturing flaws in games. It could be ugly...

[bmfrosty]

HDTV pisses me off.  It's the premature child of a grand alliance that couldn't make up it's mind.  18 different supported formats.  Nothing that goes above 60fps.  Blah.  The correct answer would have been a single resolution at a single framerate in progressive scan.  Add backwards compatibility however applicable in each region, but past that everything should be a single standard.

Personally I would have voted for something like 720p at 72 frame.  But they decided to have 18 different supported formats, so now I'm screwed no matter what I buy.  If I buy 720p set, anything I watch that 1080i looks wrong and vice versa.

The funny thing is that it would have made everything easier in the long run.  I wonder how many developers are tearing their hair out trying to figure out to make their both look good and be functional at three different resolutions and two aspect ratios.  I'm sure advertisers are annoyed at having to the same.  

Personally I think my only real hope is that some company comes up with a DLP projector that can deal a zoom and lens shift whenever it hits a signal change, and therefore give proper pictures no matter what signal is thrown at it.

[Renny]

Grand Wegas are rear projection LCDs. Agree about the poor job defining standards, especially the low framerate. Of course even if HDTV required 100Hz, games would still be rendered at 25fps, regardless of what Phil Harrison has to say about it.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

LOL, not even 30fps?  How weak.

[KDR_11k]

It's the same with games... HD will bring out a lot of texturing flaws in games. It could be ugly...

Have you ever played a PC game? Those run at comparable resolutions and textures don't get ugly.

[trip1eX]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k


Strange, when I rediscovered console gaming I went for the platform that's the least like a PC. I went because I was tired of the PC genres, not because I wanted even MORE games like that.

Same here.