Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: BULLEish on Zenith Data Systems
Message-ID: <1144@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 16 Oct 89 17:12:23 GMT
References: <8ZCCaG200WI9MMD0YQ@andrew.cmu.edu> <1465@redsox.bsw.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 43

In article <1465@redsox.bsw.com>, campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) writes:

|  Sorry, but this is a stupid remark.  Bandwidth is restricted only if you
|  insist on broadcasting over the airwaves.  Most people receive TV via cable,
|  where bandwith limits are not an issue.  And most people watch movies on
|  VCRs, where bandwidth -- again -- is not an issue.

  What an elitist yippie attitude. About 40% of the people in the
country don't have cable TV, or any chance of getting it in the near
future. And there are a lot of people who can't afford to pay $30/month
to get it if it was available. There are even more people who don't
have a VCR and have no intension of getting one. Don't be mislead by
the number of people and VCR's, the people who have one usually have a
few. I think between my kids and I we have, maybe, eleven?

  It will always be cheaper to broadcast signals than to run them by
cable, so braodcast TV will always be with us. Not that cable-only HDTV
is impossible, but it is only part of the market, therefore the price
has to be higher per unit to give a reasonable return on the costs.

|  
|  No one really cares about watching "Family Feud" on HDTV.  What people want
|  on HDTV are movies, which are usually delivered on tape (or CD in the near
|  future).  Roll over, Zenith, here comes Sony.

  I think you missed this boat, too. What do people pay for on pay per
view TV? Movies? No, they buy a movie channel for that. Sports! Music!
People pay $20-50 per event to see these things, and they would
certainly spend the bucks to buy a new TV to see them better. 

  I think that for movies there's a chance that the market won't develop
for something better, although if something better is in the home people
will use it. Look at the giant flop of commercial movies released on 8mm
film. The quality was a lot better than TV, at the time there were a lot
of people who had projectors and new ones were reliable and a lot
cheaper than VCRs. The whole thing was a total bomb. I really think that
without broadcast or cable as a source for programming, most people
won't buy a HDTV for movies only.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon