Like many (OK – MOST) of my neighbors, I woke up Saturday morning without several TV channels available to me. I’m sure you’ve read about the dispute between Fox and Cablevision over what the distributor is going to pay the programming service. It’s not the first (we lost Food Network over the holidays for a bit) or the last dispute of this sort and I’m not going to take sides.
Instead, I want to raise something this dispute got me thinking about. High-def TV.
You see, I live in a part of Connecticut on the border of two TV markets – NY and Hartford/New Haven. As a result, cable operators here have to carry stations from both markets since we could have seen them over the air (you can read about “must-carry” laws here). However, we only get the NY affiliates in HD and the Hartford stations in standard def.
In the words of Joni Mitchell:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
In this case no HD and watching the Giants game and MLB playoffs in SD was brutal. I think we often don’t understand how tech improves lives until it does. I mean, when you first heard about HD, did you rush right out and buy a new set? You probably didn’t see (pun intended) the need. That’s often the case with an advance, and if your market is consumers the acceptance time for a totally new category of products can be quite a while. However, AS one of those consumers, try going back. I’d argue that you can’t go back to SD just as going back to black and white TV was a non-starter. Some people I know feel that way about smartphones, other about e-readers.
The big question is always business model. Most distributors don’t charge consumers for HD although I know DirecTv does. Advertisers don’t pay extra for it and the distinction between channels that are in HD and those that aren’t (which can drive viewing on a basis beyond the program itself) is fading (I’ll admit to surfing the HD channels exclusively even if there is stuff on the SD channels I wouldn’t mind watching).
If you’re a young person between 18-24 you send, on average, three texts per hour. In fact, texting is easier and faster and preferred over making phones calls for these folks. The tech has changed how they view communication and I’m not even sure if you took away this technology that they would revert to the older tech – making a voice call. Like HD, you can’t go back. Not even if a business dispute forces it.
Try watching something in SD tonight. Want to revert? Would you pay extra for HD – beyond what you already have for the new set? What are3D- TV’s prospects? Thoughts?
Consult Keith 