>Gary,
>
>Glad to see that the tutu still fits.
>
>I disagree to a minor extent regarding manufacturer led changes vs consumer
>led changes. It's been the responsibility of the manufacturer to "create"
>the demand through marketing, marketing and marketing. HDTV hasn't been in
>demand because it hasn't been marketed properly. Remember back to the
>Olympics that were held in LA? Who and what was advertised extremely
>heavily? That's right IBM and the PC. They created a market with those
>crazy Charlie Chaplain and Allen Alda commercials. If it wasn't for IBM's
>highly successful advertising we all would be mousing away on Macs right
>now.
>
>You can't leglislate demand. We tried here in the US several years ago with
>HDTV development (woe is us, the Japanese are so far ahead of us in
>developing HDTV....), Pres. Clinton (take his Viagra away, please) tried
>several years ago to push "The Information Highway!" Huh? Government need
>not try to build infrastructure such as the internet. Private industry has
>done a fine job of creating and meeting the demand.
>
>Supply or demand side economics. That's what we are discussing here. On
>one extreme you have the Reaganomics which is purely Supply side: Kodak
>will supply a digital solution and stop production of film. Consumers will
>adapt out of necessity. A middle approach is that Kodak will supply digital
>solutions along with Film and create the demand side through marketing. The
>Clintonomics side is that Government has to leglislate the change and force
>Kodak to make the digital products, cease production of the "environmentally
>unsound chemical based imaging" and take away their income from digital by
>making them "pay" for all the years of standing in the way of digital
>development by building better films."
>
>Ahem, I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry to everybody outside of the USA,
>this is a sore topic among many here that have been directly affected by the
>economic mismanagement of our fair leaders.
>
>Ah! If we could get OM's listed as endangered species! The government will
>pay us to keep them in use! To bad Olympus isn't an American company
>located in a farmer's field in California.
>
>Ken N.
>
>
It is usually wise to spare others your politics. They are either offended
or tend to lose respect for you.
1. The internet was created by the government as a means to share
information between university research laboratories and the pentagon.
Common knowledge reported frequently in both general and special interest
press. It was essentially given away. And now Bill Gates has everyone
convinced that he created it. Tsk. Tsk.
2. There was never an attempt to market HDTV in the U.S. The U.S. industry
realized they had lost their manufacturing base for televisions to the
Japanese and knowing they could not compete when the Japanese were showing
prototypes 10 years ago.( They were analog, by the way.) The industry here
decided to develop a digital television system, which would separate them
from the Japanese effort. In addition, it would have the advantage of
creating a system which was incompatible with the Japanese boxes and the
U.S. could control the manufacturing. They would hold all the patents on
the technology and could license manufacturing to whoever paid the most.
They have done it. It is incompatible both with the Japanese sets and with
current U.S. television. Their lobbyist$ pursuaded the Congress(lets not
get into the politics of that, the 'free enterprise' party and all!) to
mandate a complete changeover to the new system by, I believe, 2003. No new
jobs. Licensing money flowing into corporate coffers. Great!
In addition, the broadcast frequencies, which have always belonged to the
people and licensed to broadcasters on condition of good stewardship, were
essentially given away to private companies, mostly large media
conglomerates, for a pittance. Interestingly, the industry arm twisted the
gov(Ah, that PAC money.) so that they would not really be required to
broadcast HDTV. They demanded and got the option of using their bandwidth
to broadcast several low quality signals instead of one high definition
one. Need that advertising profit.
If you have bought a television for use in the U.S. recently it will be
obsolete in about 5 years. Don't expect your local "Great Guys" to tell you
this if you are currently in the market for a TV. This has been in the
popular press and daily newspapers off an on for the last 3 years. If you
want to watch television after the deadline it looks like you will need to
buy a new digital TV with a stripper price of over $2000 with no marketing
needed at all. Not only that there may be no high quality signal to
receive on it, just the same old stuff. Just makes you want to jump up and
sing America the Beautiful. Whoops! Did not intend to be ecological there.
The only question left is whether the good old "free enterprise" state
will be able to shut out competition from abroad. Ford and GM tried it when
they got 2 door sport-utes redefined as trucks by one of the previous
'free enterprise' administrations so as to slap an exorbitant duty on
Japanese imports. The Japanese manufacturers then bounced back and created
the market for 4 door sport-utes.
Relative to the digital camera thing there may be a lesson in this. Maybe
our next camera will after all be digital, especially if Oly resurrects the
long dead but prestigious OM label sometime in the future and tags it onto
a new professional digital imaging system. Hey and maybe sales will be up.
Who will be able to afford television?
Winsor
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
mailto:wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx
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