Thanks Don my point exactly
 

That's the response when relatives come over and watch HD, I do mention the program is broadcast in hd, but I get this ho-hum response.

On the other hand we were the first family to get color in 1963, and when relatives came over we got an oh-wow! Response. Color was a tangible change to where HD for us in the business is a major improvment over analog but is wasted on the masses

Critical eye
 

I was such a critical color viewer, I could tell you which network you were watching based on the color images broadcast by the networks.

Of course that was back in the sixties. Now I gues it really doesnt matter.

I can remember going to relatives homes in the late sixites and early seventies when color was finally starting to overtake b & w. And I was horrified by what people were content with. I don't think they ever tried to adjust the color pictures for accurate color rendition.

My favorite was always the Motorola 23" color series. People just loved that soft, inaccurate color picture. I gues the lack of detail helped hide the lousy design put out by Motorola, the best part of those sets was the cabinets made by the Drexel furniture company.

You really think so? I've had HD for a couple of years now and while it can be impressive depending on the programming, it seems to have an awful lot of glitches. Picture freezes, sound dropouts, out of synch sound/picture, and pixelization problems are fairly common. It strikes me as much the same as other digital technologies -- great when it works, but beset by an infinite number of bugs and compromises that nobody really understands very well.

I've seen bad "HDTV" done in places like "Best Buy". Lots of low res, over cored images on every screen. The source images look to be low res over processed, and then cascaded by more processing in each set. Barf. I've seen real HDTV, so I know what it should look like.

HDTV and digital TV in general "just plain work" for me, too. Yes, there were some problems with it here in, like, 2000 and 2001, but I can't remember the last time I had any issues with receiving TV signals. I haven't watched any analog TV in years.

I was recently asked to help set up a new HDTV (Samsung LCD, I guess is what it was) and digital cable. I know nothing about either one, but that was more than anyone else in the room. The folks there included a college-age guy, his mother and grandmother. When we got it up an running they all agreed that the picture was lousy, worse than the 20 year old Magnavox console they had taken out of service. Some programs and commercials looked quite good, but the local news and some other programming was worse than any late model NTSC set I've seen. We played around with it but couldn't get it any better. I blame it mostly on the cable company but I don't really know. It didn't have me in a hurry to change.

Hi, when you talk about those 'quad' vtrs..I wonder, just how finicky were they..especially about being in the right environment, having to be cleaned, and the adjustments that had to be made to get a decent picture, either in black and white or color? And what color cameras did you get to work with?:scratch2:

Yeah, DVD is great...but what about being able to record onto a DVD? I had enough troubles with burning audio CD's on my computer...the discs would be rejected 70% of the time..and I'd end up frustrated beyond belief! Do DVD recorders have the same problem..and how would it be dealt with?:scratch2:

I am surprised that anyone has trouble recording DVDs anymore. I have had both fairly expensive DVD recorders, which did have some problems with compatibility with computer DVD drives early on, and I now have two relatively inexpensive DVD recorder/VCR combos, both of which work like a charm and are compatible with my computer. I figured it was worth buying the combos to have backup video cassette players in case I want to view some old tapes that I don't have time to transfer to DVD. Last year, I did take the time to transfer my vacation videos from Hi-8 (the older ones are starting to show drop outs) to DVDs for archiving. I exchange DVDs of programs each other has missed with friends and have no problems. I have also transfered tapes to DVD and copied them on the computer for fellow New York World's Fair enthusiasts. I have stayed with the DVD-R format, which seems to have settled down as the most common.

I have literally hundreds of DVD's recorded off the Satellite movie channels using a Panasonic VCR DVD combo, the thing has been running almost non stop for a year and a half!

I've also dubbed several hundred pre-macrovision VHS tapes to DVD with it and it actually upscales VHS so it looks better.

As far as burning DVD's on the PC the burner makes all the difference, I've had a 99% success rate with a Plextor 12x burner, my previous burner was a Lite-On and it was temperamental from day one and died in 6 months.

I have heard that burned DVD's have a limited life and will go bad in time? This has kept me from upgrading. Perhaps it was just some brands/types?

Depends on the brand and the dyes used. High-quality DVD-Rs can be quite long-lived. Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs (generally regarded as very high quality discs), for example, have a claimed 100-year life.

order of longevity, as I recall from what I have read:

chiseled stone (if not subject to weathering)
ink on papyrus/rag paper (if kept dry, cool, dark)
chiseled stone (subject to weathering)
pressed commercial DVDs (with physical pits) (maybe)
black and white photos
high quality recordable optical dye DVDs (maybe)
video tape, low quality optical dye DVDs

Video tape has the problem of deterioration causing the coating to flake off; recordable DVDs can suffer from gradual dye deterioration (not so terrible for the good ones) or worse, delamination of the layers (disastrous). Life estimates for DVDs are just that, based on accelerated tests, since they haven't been around for 100 years.

By the way, I haven't seen any estimates, but I would guess that the magnetic information on a hard drive platter might last nearly forever if it's not subject to corrosion, head crashes, etc. -- anybody know?