From the Archives - The Next Generation of Television — Community

#1 Mar 24, 2010 at 3:34 pm

Those of you who have been long-time readers of HDTV Magazine, know that we've been around since the beginning of the movement, quite literally. I began working with HDTV back in the 80's. We had the first newsletter on HDTV (The HDTV Newsletter) and the first website devoted to HDTV (HDTV Magazine, of course). I have penned many articles in the last 25 years on the subject, many of them "lost" in our archives. Well, it's time to bring them back and give them a permanent home.

The article below was written in 1994. It's quite a trip to read again now. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Read Article

#2 Mar 24, 2010 at 4:03 pm

Thank you for re-posting this, Dale.

#3 Mar 25, 2010 at 12:05 am

I always wondered why I have never experienced the "immersion" I hear others speak of and I read about. To me, that 30 degrees is tunnel vision. I and many others can detect motion up to 180 degrees and identify objects over at least a 90 degree field. Now going to an I-Max theater I do experience that immersion and even feel motion related to the visual field as opposed to the systems that actually move the seats. That's not to say I don't enjoy, or see benefits in HD as I do. I'd hate to go back to SD which is one of the reasons I still receive the "local" channels (out to over 100 miles) in HD as satellite only provides them as SD.

Our first color set was well over $4,000 and that's back in the dollars of the day making it far more expensive than the early HD sets I saw. OTOH even our first B&W set was really expensive. With that in mind I've never viewed HD as being expensive. Sure you could spend a bundle if you wanted to, but for normal viewing on a normal size screen it was quite reasonable compared to the original NTSC color sets.

Thanks for reprinting the old article.