Aside from the politics of the statistics, my big gripe is why does it costs me more to download an inferior audio quality Album from iTunes than it costs to buy the CD from Play or Amazon?

I’ve got the pay for the bandwidth, the media and the backup to download, play and archive the Album, and then the quality is constrained by the law of the masses, and their ability to cram as many possible tracks onto a given device to meet some arbitrary quality based on a 13 year old view of technology?

Most software vendors offer discounts for “media-less” downloads?

Why should I pay more for this “privilege” for musical content?

However, having scoured the various internet forums for information on my choice of television etc, I read much that was either highly opinionated or downright apocrophal, which must be very confusing for the “average person”. Much of the quality material I read offered highly technical-cum-perfectionist appraisals of the technology which related little to the “real world”, and most of the questions being discussed related to people struggling to set-up their equipment to meet this impossible requirement (and I must confess this includes myself).

The more aprocrophal and negative commentaries and experiences seemed to be from people who you could palpably sense have either never seen a full HD set-up working correctly, or who have either not bought the right equipment, or set it up correctly, to get the experience they were looking for.

Trust Me: I would like to assure anyone reading this that if you move from a high-quality cathode ray tube (CRT)  TV, to a 1080p “Full HD” TV, and watch 1080i or 1080p content on it, if your devices have been set-up to interwork correctly, you will see a MASSIVE difference. You WILL be impressed.

I have even found myself captivated by cooking programmes on BBC HD – just because of the detail (and I’m no enthusiastic chef).

And I beleive therin lies the problem.

How many average people have bought an “HD-Ready” TV, and not a “Full-HD” TV?

How many average people actuially realise that Blu-Ray (and increasingly broadcast HD) content is generally designed for a Full-HD TV (1080p), and may not look as great on an HD-Ready TV (720p).

How many people bought LCD TV’s before the HD badging and “standard” came around and have some very strange “computer screen” graphical resolutions which don’t  align with “HD” content?

I blame the manufactures and the retailers.

I know numerous aquaintances who have been left dissapointed by the HD experience – most frequenly they have bought an “HD Ready” or pre “HD Ready” set “for the look” or because “its easier to move” or because “it takes up lets space”; and have recently bought a Blu-Ray player and “can’t make it look right” – they then call a friendly techie (me) and find-out their newish TV has an odd screen resolution that simply is not able to display full high defintion 1080 content as it was intended. Sometimes, I can help by tweaking a setting here and there, and better matching the TV’s screen resolution to the Player’s output resolution (which is also far from intutive for a non-technical person) –  but frequently they get very upset when I tell them “thats as good as it gets”  – and that their  TV is having to squeeze and stretch the picture to fit - and yes, they nearly always end-up with a sharper defintion picture, but somehow it does have the same WOW Factor.  The experience is ruined.

Their hard earned money has been wasted. People get turned off.

Its a real shame.

Those of us that have served time in the computer industry know that you should always set your computer’s display resolution to the native resolution of your montor.

if you have 1080 content, you watch it at 1080, you will get the optimum experience. if you have a 1080 tv, all content not presented 1080 will look sightly odd if stretched, or will not fit the whole screen if show natively. This is why you pay more for a quality HD TV that can present standard defintion material acceptiably on Full HD panels. Its also why many people still choose a Plasma TV – its the optimum compromise between being able to watch normal defintion material “acceptably”, and high-defintion definition material as it was intented.