The HD TV Evolution: Part 7 – Convergence Rules! [Archive]

Felix Torres

07-26-2006, 04:00 PM

Bill Gates once said that people tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short term and underestimate the impact on the long term. The first part can be seen as a reflection of the natural divide between the tech-savvy pundits and enthusiasts that evangelize new technology developments and the mainstream consumers that need to be “sold” on the new products and/or services. The second part is just good old-fashioned serendipity; human ingenuity finding new uses for a product above and beyond what the inventor envisioned. As we move into the third phase of North American HDTV, broad deployment, we are starting to see examples of both these effects. Adoption to date has been slower than proponents envisioned, while at the same time HDTV is starting to produce some unexpected effects in the movie industry. Specifically, a call among some content providers for simultaneous theater-and-home release of new movies, which threatens theater operators’ revenue, at the same time that we see theaters adapting the emerging digital-theater technologies for closed-circuit auditorium presentations of live events like concerts and sports matches. It is only a matter of time before theatrical plays from Broadway or the London stage start to appear as special live-broadcast events in multiplexes around the world. Think of it as a form of self-defense: as TV-viewing becomes more like movie theaters, the theaters are reacting by becoming more home-theater-like in the range of content they provide. After all, if digital theater technology allows for the transmission of very-high resolution video content for shared public viewing of movies, the same technology allows for the transmission of other forms of shared-viewing experiences. Welcome to the age of convergence. <!> Yes, convergence of computer technology and consumer media has been bandied about for so long it’s practically become an urban legend; everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who swears it is really happening, but nobody can vouch for it on a personal basis. Except that, while everybody has been looking for convergence to come rolling into town in a big revolutionary parade, it has quietly crept into our lives bit by bit in an evolutionary fashion. It’s not here yet, not completely, but enough of it has materialized that we can see it taking shape around us. And when the last few pieces fall into place (cheap HD displays, full digital content distribution, etc.) the resulting impact will far exceed the predictions of even the most enthusiastic evangelists. Thing is, convergence has a price. If the consumer media industry is going to adopt computer technologies as the core of its business, they have to understand that they are also adopting the computer industry’s economics. Some manufacturers and content providers understand this, others don’t. Similarly, consumers need to understand this same basic rule. As the HDTV business, for one, moves closer to the computer industry, it will perforce have to deal with the same basic economic principles of supply chain management, technology learning curves, component supply competition, and continual technological evolution that rules the PC business. This is not a pick-n-choose situation - it's all or nothing. The RISC workstation vendors of old (SGI, SUN, etc) failed to learn this lesson. They thought they could keep PC technologies and economic models at bay and leave PCs in the general-purpose desktop computing ghetto forever; that they could both support PCs as clients and at the same time keep them out of the workstation and server space. They couldn’t. Eventually the l’il bitty “under-powered” desktop PCs grew up into the big bully server PCs that are eating away at their markets and are continually forcing the survivors (SUN and IBM, mostly) to run for their lives upstream into the glasshouse domain. For now. ‘Cause already even mainframes are under siege by the commodity hardware products spawned by the PC business. Even their high temple niches are under siege and it’s just a matter of time before the walls are breached once and for all. The same fate awaits the consumer media industry if they fail to recognize and adapt to the realities of the market that's evolving around us. Much has been made of the threat the music industry faces from online music because of their over-reliance on CD technology and their failure to produce a viable portable digital audio solution internally before the computer industry produced one of its own in MP3s and its kin. That much is well understood by now. More misunderstood is that similar changes are coming to consumer video, starting on the hardware front. As end-users of this technology, it behooves us all to take a step back and take stock in the market that is taking shape around us so we can make properly informed decisions that suit our needs and our preferences. Because the HDTV market that is emerging is going to be very, very similar to the PC business we should all be familiar with by now. It has been 30 years, after all, since the first PCs came on the market. Most techies out there weren’t even alive when the Altair was first released. The PC business as it now exists is all they know. So if we understand PCs and we adapt and apply some of the basic rules of living in a PC universe to the new realm of HD, we stand a better than average chance of surviving the coming transition to HD. The “adapt” part, by the way, is because the PC business of today is already a fairly mature business. The products and categories (desktops, laptops, servers, etc.) are well-defined, generally understood by both vendors and consumers, and the various price-points for entry-level, mid-range, and high-end or specialty products are clearly understood. This was not always so. So the PC rules that we can draw upon in the new world of HD are the OLD rules of PC survival from the far ago era of the 1990s. <PAGEBREAK> Eight Simple Rules First rule: Any HD is better than pre-HD. For most consumers their next HD display will be their first. So comparisons will more come against the old analog CRT-based sets or what the early-adopter neighbor got last year. Which means that pretty much any product they buy—and keep—will be better than they expected. Second rule: Don’t buy until it hurts not to. Just like in the PC business, next year’s model WILL be better than anything you can get today. It will also be cheaper by as much as 25%. If you can’t accept that fact, don’t buy. If you can afford to wait, wait. You’ll be better off. No matter how good a sale they may be offering today, there will be better deals six months away. And, yes, the neighbor’s new set WILL be better than yours. Deal with it. Third rule: Separate the subjective from the objective. It’s a cliché but true nonetheless. Picture Quality is in the eye of the beholder, and in the beholder’s living room/den/whatever. A lot of folks will happily volunteer to tell you what the “best” display technology is. They also will tell you what the “best” computer OS is. If you are a clone of them you can accept their word for it and likely be happy. If not, you might be better off making up your own mind. Honest: the ONLY way to judge the picture quality of a specific display is to take it home, set it up in your viewing room, and feed it your content. Then you let your Mark I eyeball tell you if you like it or not. That’s when you will know what is “best” for you and not somebody else. This is not Macs vs PCs zero-sum game, where the network's effects that help one player could conceivably hurt the other. Here, your choices are not at all impacted by the choices others make, so live and let die, alright? Fourth rule: Do your homework. Just because the subjective can’t be measured until you take it home doesn’t mean the objective can’t be qualified. It can and it should. With HD displays the objective consists of essentially four parameters you can vary to get a good candidate display: screen size, resolution, form-factor, and price. (With PCs is CPU-power, graphics power, form-factor, storage, and price.) Simplistic rule of thumb: you can get any three of them to converge if you can sacrifice the fourth. (E.G.; You can have a thin, high-res display at an affordable price if you don’t need it to be too big in screen size or you can have a big, high-res thin display if you’re willing to pay.) Try the other permutations. When you find a display that APPEARS to violate this guideline, it’s time to buy. Fifth rule: The footprint matters. The flat panel form factor is sexy, isn’t it? It’s way cooler than a micro-display rear-projector, no? So, which takes up more space in the living room? The flat panel? Not always. Yes, the panel is flat, but the stand isn’t. Typical flat panel stands are in the 9-12” range. Typical rear-projector displays range from 12 to 20 inches deep (with some newer ones going as thin as 7”). Now, unless you are wall-mounting that flat panel display, you are most likely going to stand it atop a piece of furniture (credenza, display stand, or entertainment center) that will most likely be, yes, 18-22” deep. So, if you must have sexy and cool, start by looking at flat panels, but don’t stop there. Don't overlook rear-projectors. They offer very good value. Sixth rule: Beware price creep. Retailers love price creep: a customer comes in to look at an interesting display on sale and they end up buying a more expensive model. Why? Incremental price creep - a few inches here, a boost in resolution there, a universal remote here, an extra digital port over there… Pretty soon it all adds up. Anybody that spec’ed out a PC for online purchase knows about price creep, right? Seventh rule: You’re going to live with the thing for years. The flip side of price creep - low-balling yourself. Yes, saving money is good. But a TV set is, for most people, a multi-year commitment. Much like a car, you need to consider the long-term value of that extra feature. Some features are just conveniences but others are practically necessities. If you’re only going to hook up one external device to the display, maybe a display with only one digital port is enough for you; maybe a lack of port-specific settings memory isn’t important. Maybe. Or maybe not. For most people, the lack of certain upfront features can entail a larger, later expense (for input switching devices, an after-market remote, etc.) or years of aggravation. Scrutinize every last add-on but don’t short-change yourself. Eighth rule: Don’t look back. Once you buy the set of your dreams, don’t second guess yourself. Just as with PCs, there will always be a newer, better model out there every six months, like clockwork. And no, the Red Queen’s race is not going to stop any time soon. Technology will keep on improving and prices will keep falling for at least the next five years. That is the price of convergence. Manufacturers using PC technology to build HDTVs means accepting PC pricing and competition rules, whether they like it or not. And as consumers we should like it. Even if it means that your six-month-old display is now technically “obsolete” and replaced by a newer model with desirable new features. (Been there, done that; Westinghouse LVM-37W3.) Just remember, it still does everything it did the day you brought it home so excitedly. So relax, stop worrying, and go watch that nature documentary on the mating habits of preying mantes over on DiscoveryHD and get your money’s worth out of your new HD display before the newer model comes out next week. Or don’t. That’s it. Eight simple rules for surviving the North American HDTV transition. Follow them if it makes sense, ignore them if you want to. It’s all about entertainment, folks. Just go and have some fun in the age of digital convergence. Me, I’m going off into Oblivion. Felix Torres is a dabbler in home entertainment electronics and a survivor of both the home computing wars of the 80's and the multimedia wars of the 90's who is currently most interested in home media networks and the North American transition away from broadcast media.