> Am I the last one on the planet who knows why the 4:3 format is
> used?

JT> Give it up Bob, I'm still trying to convince idiots that there
JT> is STILL no such thing as high definition TV.

JT> Have you seen the dot pitch on those things? Eek.

 Thank god! At least one of you (besides me) on AVT has a brain.

 I underastand *why* the marketeers push HDTV and widescreen. It's
the same old computer trick... constantly upgrade and there is a huge
pack of wankers who will follow blindly. The PC seems to have reached
the end of that chain. I was amazed to find that prices for a minumum
PC has crashed from $1650 (what I paid for this one) to $680 in three
years!

 Performance still doubled, but no one gives a shit about the extra
performance, no one needs to upgrade every three years... demand and
prices fall. Isn't economic theory wonderful?

 TV is a mature technology, so they've gone the "upgrade" route when
normal TV is perfectly adequate and HD offers nothing. Widescreen is
just plain silly. 

 I don't think the multi-channel interactive (low definition, btw)
approach offers anything either, but I as wrong about the DVD. I
thought VHS was perfectly adequate, but there *is* a need for an easy
way to watch porn.

 In *my* day (the standard cry of the poor old fart), we were still
tryign to improve the product. When I quit active participation in
1975, remote control was the big thing, then VCR's, but since then
it's been all bullshit. Who the fuck cares about a flat TV screen? For
the same cost, the picture is actually *smaller*! Fick'n hell. Are
people stupid?

 Of course, 1975 was the year the Space Gypsie kidnapped me to
Splong through the space warp, so that propably explains it. They're
all fuck'n stupid on Splong. It only *looks* like Earth.

  

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5