Make High-res TVs cheaply using computer monitor technology, and simply bypass all of FCC and it’s concerns about compatibility with old sets and old standards?
These TV would be cheap because they would not need to handle broadcast, UHF, VHF, aerial, analog, interlace…
If Time Warner, or someone with lots of movie rights, is in the cable business, they could sell cable-only sets that would have their private formats.
The non-standard format is already legal for computer access, isn’t it?
Wouldn’t lots of movie affectionados leap to a cheap hi-res way to see movies, and HDTV could just die a long-deserved death.
The cable industry could try to do this but they won’t.
You would be asking consumers to go out and buy an entirely new tv/monitor.
You’d have to find someone to make this monitor.
Even if someone like Time/Warner with lots of movie rights did this they don’t have enough movie rights to do much programming.
Other movie companies would refuse to sell material to them.
History is littered with the corpses of companies that try to go it alone and corner a market with their own proprietary standard. Sony Betamax, Divx, Apple (nearly), Intel (recently along with Rambus), etc… The current screwed-up set of HDTV standards (16 in all?) are there because various industries finally agreed to it all. If one tried to go it alone they’d be left out in the cold real fast.
HDTV will get around to all of us someday…it’ll just take awhile. Maybe by 2005 they’ll be fairly common and by 2010 they should be ubiquitous.
My 19" computer monitor cost more than a 19" TV so your new set won’t be cheap just because it doesn’t get broadcast or analog, etc.
Cable companies get a lot of their feed from broadcast sources [local channels, public access channels, movie channels, sex channels]. If these are not compatable with your new “format”, the user will need to have two TV sets, one for each format.
In theory, a cable provider could form their own “super mpeg” format and send it out. You could then plug your computer monitor into the back of the cable box. What, no connector, well buy a special cable box. Then watch that one show on your 15", 17", or 19" monitor instead of your 30" TV.
Do you still use your Beta tapes? Better does not mean more popular. Unless most people use the same standard you will not have enough product to be commercially successful.
These are probably the least-expensive elements of a TV …
There was a discussion a couple of months ago where someone asked why you can’t buy a TV without a tuner, to save money. Bottom line was 1) tuners, etc. are cheap compared to the rest of the TV, and 2) you CAN get TVs with no tuners- but they’re usually high-end expensive monitors.
Also, keep in mind that although a crisp, clear signal is a major selling point of cable TV, one of the main things CATV providers want to do is send you more channels.
Especially more revenue-generating channels – PPV, shopping, channels so lame they have to pay the cable provider to get carriage, etc.
The more bandwidth the CATV provider allocates to each signal, the less there is available for a larger number of signals.