SixDegreesTV

What Sucks About HDTV: Future Proof buying; when will we ever learn?

People are obsessed with so called future proof purchases when they go to the electronics super-mart.  Marketers and sales people alike try to sell the idea of future proofing by pushing features that will supposedly allow you to upgrade or will be compatible with the next big technologies.  But the reality is that future proofing is a misnomer.  More often than not you’re going to spend extra money on something that will be just as incompatible with the next step in technology as the cheaper version.  Since the average person only dabbles in tech toys, who can blame you for being insecure about spending so much money on something you might not fully understand.

It seems like an objective practice, trying to buy the right product that will remain relevant into the future. 

In computer software, as any gamer can tell you; conventional wisdom states that you should buy hardware to run the software you already own.  Newer more powerful hardware is developed faster than the software that uses that hardware.  In fact hardware is developed with built in firmware and APIs in an effort to charm third party software developers into using their standards, that’s business.  If one standard/API/resolution/format has the reputation for being the next wave of the future (Betamax VCRs may have been seen as the wave of the future in the late 70s) that’s good marketing, not necessarily good science.

Buying a new HDTV?  The best thing you can do is find a TV to play your DVDs and current Mpeg2 HD broadcast technologies and look really good doing it.

Moore’s Law states the density of data on an integrated circuit will double every 18 months.  This reverberates through all technologies particularly Home Theater.  It’s why a PC interface technology called DVI was heralded as a godsend years ago as the true digital input for High Definition display technologies only to be almost instantly replaced by HDMI in the Home Theater market.  Now bandwidth limitations of HDMI are being felt by new HD display technologies that are already capable of 1080P/60 resolutions (TI has DLP chips capable of this resolution) but these TVs have no way to input the new resolution from a 1080P/60 source because HDMI, the widest bandwidth connection available today still falls short.  Advances in technology are never smooth, entire families of support technologies must also advance.  What good is RAM that can operate at bus speeds that exceed 66Mhz when there were no PCI chipsets capable of taking advantage of this feature in RAM.  Before 400 FSB became a reality in PC’s a series of technologies had to integrate and participate in what was a great leap in computer technology.  Unfortunately entertainment technologies have more difficulty creating standards than PCs.

The only thing you can predict successfully is that this trend isn’t going to change.  The best you can do is stick to conventional wisdom and buy Home Theater hardware based on the software or media and media delivery methods currently available. 

The future is uncertain.  We can make an educated about what’s coming based on what is currently in development.  But that almost always wrongly assumes the implementation of that new technology currently in development will be expressed through the context of today’s technology.  Trying to buy gear that gets you ready for the next generation of technology is a fool’s game.  You’ll end up having overspent on technology just as obsolete as everybody else’s.  The trick to being an educated consumer is in buying technology that isn’t already obsolete or better yet finding life in inexpensive so called obsolete gear.