It should have been out much earlier this year. It's been bogged down and it's about time we got this show on the road. I specifically will NOT buy a HDTV set until it is in and functioning. Back in the analog cable days this kind of tuner ability was considered basic and standard (though long, long ago even that wasn't true). At the very introduction of digital TV they should have had a plan in place to do this. Don't give me the "this is hard" business. This kind of thing makes the cable folks lives easier (remember having a supply of very expensive boxes isn't in their interest either, and they rarely recover the cost in simple box fees. This is more a matter of one side not wanting to build it until there is demand and the demand side not buying till there is a product.
If they HAD done this in early 2005, I'd bet their subscriptions to digital cable as well as the # of high def tv's out there would be dramatically larger than it is now, and by that I mean night and day different. The sad part is that they've taken till now to get that hint. So during 2005 both the TV mfg's and the cable co's have taken advantage of the consumers, and for that they should be mad.
However, they'd better get the show on the road. This technology is horrifically overdue, and I know a lot of folks who have stayed completely clear of the HD industry based solely on the lack of getting rid of that box. The FCC knows this. Maybe now finally we can get the cablelabs folks and the manufacturers to see the clue...
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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It should have been out much earlier this year. It's been bogged down and it's about time we got this show on the road. I specifically will NOT buy a HDTV set until it is in and functioning. Back in the analog cable days this kind of tuner ability was considered basic and standard (though long, long ago even that wasn't true). At the very introduction of digital TV they should have had a plan in place to do this. Don't give me the "this is hard" business. This kind of thing makes the cable folks lives easier (remember having a supply of very expensive boxes isn't in their interest either, and they rarely recover the cost in simple box fees. This is more a matter of one side not wanting to build it until there is demand and the demand side not buying till there is a product.
If they HAD done this in early 2005, I'd bet their subscriptions to digital cable as well as the # of high def tv's out there would be dramatically larger than it is now, and by that I mean night and day different. The sad part is that they've taken till now to get that hint. So during 2005 both the TV mfg's and the cable co's have taken advantage of the consumers, and for that they should be mad.
However, they'd better get the show on the road. This technology is horrifically overdue, and I know a lot of folks who have stayed completely clear of the HD industry based solely on the lack of getting rid of that box. The FCC knows this. Maybe now finally we can get the cablelabs folks and the manufacturers to see the clue...