Thanks for the HDTV headache Santa
So how many people got up Christmas morning to find brand new HDTV's waiting for them? If your like many out there, you rose to find the jolly ole fat man left you with a nice surprise and ushered your living room into the digital era, leaving you an LCD, Plasma, DLP or some other form of digital television. If your like many of those people, you found out Santa has a jolly ole sense of humor. After rushing the kids through opening packages, racing to make the rounds to various family, scarfing down dried up turkey and fixings, you head off to the living room to embark on this adventure so many of your coworkers brag about experiencing. Only to find hours later, your old television set looked better.
In previous years, whenever we got a new television it was a simple thing to plug them in and turn them on. At most you had to adjust the antenna or maybe wait for the cable company to come by but there was very little effort on your part. That's no longer true. No longer can you simply plug the set in an expect it to work, now you have to have HD service to go along with that HD set.
"People understand why they want an HD or digital set, (but) relatively few understand everything that needs to happen from the source to their set," says Matt Swanston, director of business analysis at the Consumer Electronics Assn., who notes that consumers are used to bringing home new electronics devices and simply plugging them in.
Not everyone today understands that in order to receive digital programming they have to contact their cable provider to get that service turned on, purchase additional equipment from their satellite provider or erect a stationary antenna if they live in a market that broadcasts over-the-air HD. Unlike many "high-tech" devices, and TV part of HDTV is only a portion of what is necessary to experience HD programming. An almost intimate understanding of the technology is also required, or at least a quick run through of the book Mastering Digital Television
