The HD/Blu-Ray fraud

Please don't ask why they're watching an HD microwave

I was privileged to be one of the first people in the UK to see broadcast HD TV in action at Sky's launch of their HD box many years ago. At the time very few TVs were HD ready - now it's the majority. Yet there was a question I was bursting to ask at Sky's event that still applies when you see HD and Blu-Ray being pushed today.

What I couldn't understand was why Sky didn't show HD alongside normal TV, so you can see how much better it was. They kept going on about the extra detail and clarity and brilliant picture, so I asked this at their launch why we didn't see that side-by-side comparison. They came out with some technie-wechnie excuse for why they couldn't show both images simultaneously. But there was a much better reason for their decision.

Just go into a TV showroom and look at all the TVs showing HD and Blu-ray. Again, why isn't there a clear comparison so we know it's worth paying extra for the technology? Here's that same issue rearing it's ugly head.

The fact is that, although HD is significantly higher resolution, producing clearer, sharper pictures, ordinary digital TV is already pretty good and on many programmes the difference is hardly perceptible. They don't do side by side comparisons because if you saw them, you'd realise there's no great advantage to switching. Except to the wallets of manufacturers and retailers.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog