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Seems akin to HDTV. RCA was the leader, and most people would rather buy an RCA set than anything else. So RCA had the market, and with such a new technology, smaller companies were probably afraid to try. Also the lack of color programming. Now-a-days, good quality HDTV programming is hard to find. Rarely do you see everything at 1080i, as most of the time movies and shows are upscaled to 1080i. It looks like crap to me. The national HDTV PBS feed had beautiful 1080i, and looked amazing. But in my area, this was the only 1080i. Now on the networks they broadcast multiple channels at 480p, including my local PBS, ABC, WB, CBS, and NBC. The best HDTV I've seen is sports events and Discovery HD. Movies still are lacking unless shot with HDTV cameras or it's a 1080i film transfer.
With this said, it's the reason why I have no HDTV set yet, as the average run-of-the-mill computer monitor I can get for $25 is what I use coupled with an HDTV tuner. It's honestly better to buy an HDTV tuner with both off air and a satellite tuner like directv. (Cable tv is crap in my area, so much so that I usually pretend it doesn't exist)
This was probably the case years ago, but HDTV monitors are so simple to design and build that the chinese monkeys in the sweatshops assemble them for a total cost of $5 per set worth of labor. Since now we have cable, satellite, and off air HDTV broadcasts, it's more sensible to make monitors than actual TVs with ATSC tuners. Most people subscribe to cable or satellite HDTV if they do have an HDTV set. The major cities are the only ones with decent 1080i content on the off air networks, and the rest of us are stuck with cable or satellite for HDTV content that warrents an expensive HDTV.
Jonathan
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