LDTV - The Wave of the future.
I was just looking through the glut of hardware that makes up my handheld media system. My IPod Video, PocketPC computer, Neuros 442 video player, Treo video phone, and Playstation Portable. It occured to me that they all play video, but none of them are HDTV.

I started wondering why we care so much about HDTV.

The US government has decreed that we will move all TV signals to HDTV by 2006. The media conglomerates have tried twice to ram legislation through congress that will make it impossible to record HDTV, and half of the people who have HDTV systems think they are watching it, without actually having the systems hooked up properly.

That means half the people who have HDTV only think they're watching HDTV, while they are, in fact, only watching normal TV.

In fact, Hollywood doesn't even want HDTV. Turns out, when you see a movie star in the Megapixels view, you can see their skin imperfections. They look more human, presumably. This, of course, scares the hell out of Hollywood.

So why are we in such a hurry to get HDTV? Every time I've seen it, I've said, "Okay. The picture is clearer than normal. Of course, it doesn't make the movie any better."

Every one of the media viewers I own has the capability to play video at 320x240. And believe me, at 30 frames per second, 320x240 is plenty for a handheld device.

What's more, the compression savings are a godsend. I can get the typical 1.5 hour movie into 450megs at 320x240. That means I can store just about 9 movies (or 13.5 hours) of video on one DVD. 13.5 hours is enough space to store all the Lord of the Rings movies and still have room for the Rankin-Bass versions! (whoa, really showed my geek stripes there)

So that's what I'm doing. I'm letting the whole HDTV movement pass me by. I'm not going to be one of the early adopters who buys a $3,000 TV just so I can get smaller pixels. Instead, I'm going to convert all my DVDs to low res, cut my DVD collection to 1/10th it's size, and carry my videos with me wherever I go.

I think I'd enjoy being the world's first Low-Def Television Missionary.
- posted by BrandG @ 12:37 AM