Unhigh definition.
Friday, December 9th, 2005
According to this article which quotes this Scientific-Atlanta survey, apparently half of all High Definition Television (HDTV) owners don’t actually use the HD capabilities of their set, and nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven’t set it up correctly.
This reminds me of the research I heard about years ago back in the dawn of ‘bugs’—the translucent (or not) logos in the corner that identify what channel you’re watching. Many people who were asked thought that their TVs made that little CNN, just like the TV put up the big green letters that say ‘mute’.
This more recent survey said that 25%-ish admitted “they thought they were watching HD video because, after all, the programs said at the beginning that they were broadcast in HDTV”…!
Now I’m thinking they ought to super “broadcast via brainwaves directly into your cerebellum” at the beginning of shows.
And don’t even get me started on the number of 16 x 9 TVs in public places showing 4 x 3 channels stretched grotesquely to fill the space. It’s become a small obsession of mine to reset them or, barring that, switch them off.
