Xref: utzoo sci.electronics:10560 comp.graphics:10353 comp.std.internat:606 rec.video:11065 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!snorkelwacker!think!samsung!usc!apple!ames!decwrl!sgi!shinobu!odin!horus.esd.sgi.com!thant From: thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) Newsgroups: sci.electronics,comp.graphics,comp.std.internat,rec.video Subject: Re: U.S. HDTV STANDARDS DELEGATION SCUTTLES 1920x1080 COMMON IMAGE FOR Message-ID: <5197@odin.SGI.COM> Date: 13 Mar 90 18:25:42 GMT References: <8Zx8Ip200ioEMMrHEF@andrew.cmu.edu> <132618@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <2694@sactoh0.UUCP> <1990Mar13.023805.24765@athena.mit.edu> Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM Reply-To: thant@horus.esd.sgi.com (Thant Tessman) Organization: Silicon Graphics, Entry Systems Division Lines: 81 In article <1990Mar13.023805.24765@athena.mit.edu>, pshen@atrp.mit.edu (Paul Shen) writes: > In article <2694@sactoh0.UUCP> mfolivo@sactoh0.UUCP (Mark F. Newton) writes: > >.... > >OUr companies should save the money, and come up with better and > >less expensive HDTV sets, rather than spend money onsomething > >completely different, thus making early HDTV sets incredibly > >expensive, as the US companies try to recoup development costs, > >thus making the sets very unpopular. > >.... > You are right. We have to develope low cost HDTV sets. But this will be > possible, only if we knows about the detail of the technology. It is > doubtful that we can easily get them from them. After the cold war, > the only market can keep our semiconductor industry running is the > consumer market. I don't think we can afford to lose it. This isn't the place for this, but I can't stand it anymore. Reagan's (and now Bush's) protectionist measures benefit the semiconductor industry, but only at the expense of the computer industry as a whole. Who cares if the Japanese are better at building chips? The U.S. still produces the best computers (using Japanese chips) and the best software. The cheaper and better the chips (no matter where they come from) the better the computers we can build. The U.S. shouldn't try to redo what the Japanese have done (and force the consumer to pay for it), but rather should leverage off it. For example, the potential HDTV industry doesn't just stop at building consumer television sets. There is a lot of leveraging that the computer industry, as well as the entertainment industry can be doing right now if it wasn't for the FCC. It was the television industry got the fucking FCC to shoot a lot of new technology development in the foot in order to save their own investments in older technology and get consumers to pay for it whether they wanted to or not. (It's exactly as if the record industry outlawed CDs. The difference is that the record industry didn't have an FCC to do it for them.) The U.S. industries are incredibly innovative when it comes to creating new technology. Almost everything is invented here: the transistor, the VCR, the photocopier, Sony's trinitron technology, all invented in the U.S. Yes, the U.S. has to learn some things from the Japanese about manufacturing, but it isn't what most people think. There was a Scientific American article (sorry, I can't be more specific) that pointed out that a car designed in Japan and manufactured in the U.S. has the same high quality and low defect rate that one built in Japan has. They are very good at designing things with manufacturing in mind. They are also very good at refining technology (which realy is what their HDTV technology is). These are the lessons that need to be learned, and are being learned, from the Japanese. The worst thing the U.S. could do is to set up retaliatory trade barriers because they almost never work to reduce foreign trade barriers. (e-mail me for a more detailed article on this.) Also, government subsidizations of technological development does more harm than good to the economy. And just like trade barriers, all it is is a thinly disguised subsidization of a single industry or even a single corporation, at the expense of the economy as a whole. A much more healthy approach would be to just lower taxes so consumers could afford all this technological development, and investors would be more likely to invest. And as a side-effect, investors would invest based on potential consumer demand. (Gee, what a novel idea!) (By the way, taxes during Reagan's administration went up by 50%, not down.) Canada holds far more investments in the U.S. than Japan does. All this Japan bashing is a government/media fabrication, because the government needs an enemy to use as a scapegoat for what the government itself has done to the economy. thant