Just my 2 cents, but I bought an HDTV to watch HD content. If I only cared about SD, I would have kept my old Sony 36".
I have DishNetwork and I have to subscribe to 100 crappy SD channels in order to get a handful of their HD counterparts. The SD channels are so bad, that I don't even watch them. The local cable service is just as bad, they give you a few HD channels as they say for "free", but you have to subscribe to their equally crappy SD package to get them.
Even though the majority of cable channels are now available in HD, it seems they are impossible to get by themselves. The logic of this evades me.
It seems like too much changed, too fast. The switch to digital transmission enabled HD capability and in very short order the public was presented with 2 options. If you were not interested in HD content, you just keep your old TV and your viewing experience would basically remain unchanged. However if you were like me and many others, once you saw HD, you were hooked and thus we were thrust into the whole world of HD and SD quality issues.
If only it could have been as easy as the change from black and white to color was, back in the 60's. As I recall, when color capability was first proposed by the TV industry, the only way the FCC would allow them to proceed was to insure existing B&W TV's would be able to process a color signal with no change in picture quality.
|