Posted by Richard Crowley on 11/24/05 18:22

"bmcswain" wrote...
>>>>So you think NTSC will disappear just because terrestrial broadcast
> is migrating to a new standard?
>
> Richard,
>
> Thanks for the great response.
>
> Here's where I think this is different.
>
> You can keep a record player/turntable or cassette deck
> on a shelf with the stereo in a very small space. At most
> you lose storage space for 10-15 books, if that.
>
> A televison is not a device that easily sits on a shelf. If fact
> most of us have a dedicated space just for the TV and other
> video electronics. The TV is the center point of that space.
> The TV demands a space in front of it for viewing. It could
> be a 9'x10' area or, as it is in our house, 12' x 17 den'. Other
> things are in that space but it is arranged and primarily for the
> TV.....

You may have a point with the continued support of the
analog interconnection ports (composite & Y/C). Another
good reason to get your NTSC analog stuff into digital in
the next ~5 years.

But I think you are missing the merging of tratitional "TV" and
"computer" roles. It will be trivial to support NTSC (particularly
the digital forms) via appropriate software, etc. Most projectors
already handle multiple image resolutions and frame rates, and
I see "TV sets" getting smarter along the same lines as they
are requried to handle more different kinds of signals. If the
consumer demand to view their old NTSC material exists, the
manufacturers would be stupid to eliminate it and miss out on
their market share.

While there have been many NTSC television programs shot
in 16x9 (on film using Panavision compression), there are still
thousands of titles/episodes out there that are 4x3 and we will
need to continue to support 4x3 material.

[Back to original message]