Does HDTV matter?

In about a year, maybe less, the movie industry is going to try to foist a new standard or two upon us. These new discs will have "high definition" movies, as presumably the current crop of dvd is not nearly sufficient. But do people really care?

More than a third of people surveyed by Scientific Atlanta didn't realize that their HDTVs weren't actually displaying an HD signal. More than a quarter said that the picture looked better on their HDTV set even when the TV was receiving an SD signal. So some people care, but the technology is evidently too complicated for them to reckon with. My impression from speaking with people is that many of them don't see a difference on their high-end sets between DVDs (at 720 horizontal pixels) as 1080i broadcasts (at almost 1920 horizontal pixels).

People go to movie theaters (I've heard) and either don't know or don't care that the movies are almost always poorly projected. Theaters used to have proper projectionists on employ; now it's just a guy. For $9.50 per person you'd think they could actually get the picture in focus, centered on the screen and sync the sound.

Certainly DVD picture is better than VHS was. But did people switch because of the higher resolution, or were there many more reasons? DVDs are cheaper than tapes were, on account of lower materials and transport costs. The players are cheap, compact, and have the ability to randomly access the disc (with no rewinding, instant scene access, etc.). They also came along at the right time: there are tons of new video releases with old and new material, with new movies coming out mere months after theatrical releases.

I guess that the new standard will probably eventually catch on, and if not Blu-ray and HD-DVD, then something else. Of course, the industry intends to make everyone buy all-new equipment with copyright protection built into the hardware. Without "certified" equipment, the player will play at a lower resolution. I can't wait to see the backlash from that.

Fortunately, even though we'll all probably have to replace our current HD sets, we shouldn't have to do it many more times. Jessica and I watch TV from about 8.5' away on a screen that's 3.5' wide, giving us a horizontal angle of about 23 degrees. The very most that a person with 20/20 vision can resolve is 1 pixel per 0.3 arc minute, translating to 200 pixels per degree. So, with the current setup, the resolution of our TV can only go to about 4660 horizontal pixels before it's just a waste. Currently it's at about half of that. One or two more generations out and we can start having family heirloom TVs that last for decades.