The percentage of sales people that recommend Samsung HDTVs.
Salespeople are also becoming less likely to recommend LCD sets over plasma sets, which goes against the industry trend.
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Heh. When I read the last quip about the other MPEG2 discs, I knew this couldn't be Ben reporting this news, even though HD media is his pidgin.
The more MPEG2 discs which get released, the more that will eventually need to be replaced with proper encodes. If one bothers to perform some test encodes of 1080p24 video, one can determine for themselves that 25Mbps is a good average for VC-1 or AVC but it takes about three times that for MPEG2 to match the reproduction of film grain and motion-heavy scenes (Blu-ray maxes out at 40Mbps for video, not 75). Comments to the effect that "most MPEG2 releases look fine" is simply evidence of inadequate scrutinization of the video. There's a reason why Blu-ray has a reputation of looking washed out, and the prosumers buying this stuff didn't make it up.
The only MPEG2 video which has indeed "looked fine" (for the most part) was Crank. Crank was "filmed" with digital cameras. Ergo, no film grain.
- "The only MPEG2 video which has indeed 'looked fine' (for the most part) was Crank."
You are nuts! MOST of the MPEG2 discs look great, especially "Underworld Evolution", "Tears of the Sun", and "Kingdom of Heaven" among others. Just because a disc is MPEG2 doesn't means it's from a poor HD master!
But a few of the initial 6 or so Sony MPEG2 releases on Blu-ray were not mastered properly in HD (like "The Fifth Element"), and most notably HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, which couples mediocre video quality with outstanding uncompressed PCM audio.
For those initial discs, you actually have to increase your TV's sharpness beyond "0" a little, to see the HD picture that's there (since it's so soft).