A number of years ago, I heard the following quote: “The jump from regular TV to HDTV is as big as the jump from black and white TV to color. Some time after that, I got my first look at an HDTV and my first thought was, “that’s it?”

It’s true, high definition could have been a victim of over-hyped marketing. But even putting the marketing aside, you have to be honest: HDTV isn’t really all that much better than standard NTSC. There is more than one HD standard, of course, but even the best, most expensive ones aren’t amazing. Better, sure. Not thousands of dollars better.

The problem persists because the standards are nebulous and the consumers are stupid. Nothing new here, of course, except that there are more options than have generally been offered in the past so the problem is exacerbated by choice. Many people don’t even realize there are two versions of HD on the market: one that has twice the resolution of regular TV (720 lines), and another that has twice the resolution of that (1080 lines, or four times the resolution of regular TV).

The 720p standard has two thirds the number of lines as the 1080i standard, but it’s progressive which matters to some people, but not most of us because it’s not physically impossible to tell the difference. It looks “better” from the standpoint that it looks more like film, which actually looks worse. But since film is the gold standard, even though it looks less like real life, if it looks like film, it’s better.

It’s inevitable that we’ll eventually reach a point where digital resolution surpasses film grain density, and it will be interesting to see what happens at that point. Will we just say “okay, that’s good enough” and stop making big leaps in quality since we are able to achieve the arbitrary crappiness that is film, or are we going to go for a “hyper-real” resolution which surpasses even that of the human eye?

But that speculation is beside my main point which is: HDTV is severely overrated. It was introduced a few years ago and, guess what? No one cares.

The offset in marginally improved picture quality isn’t justified by the increase in dollars needed to obtain better quality. Then there’s the size issue: how great is sixty diagonal inches worth of screen, really? It’s a big solution, but not an elegant one. You can’t do anything with a five foot screen except drop it somewhere and leave it. Finally, there’s the fact that even in this modern day and age, the venerable cathode ray tube still offers the best picture quality available on the market. Although you can buy HDTV CRTs, they doesn’t offer the largest picture (maxing out at about 34 inches), the lightest box, or hang-on-the-wall-ability, but in terms of pure, objective, beautiful picture-ness, they win hands down. Yes, all these things serve to overrate HDTV.

At this point, you’re probably still thinking in terms of resolution, but there’s something else going on here which has nothing to do with picture quality. Media corporations are still marketing their products with emphasis on improved visuals. They still think the consumer’s number one priority in watching media is picture quality and resolution. They’re wrong.

Evidence of this is the popularity of sites like YouTube. The quality on YouTube sucks. It’s worse than color TV was in the 50’s. It’s a huge step backwards in viewability. So why, then, does YouTube continue to serve up 1,000 years worth of programming in one day? The answer is obvious: quality is not as important as scheduling.

The internet generation’s number one priority in media consumption is not quality, it’s time. A few days ago, I wrote that a lot of what we consider just or moral has to do with the way the actions interfere with another person’s time. This extends over into a lot of what we do, namely, the things that we choose to do maximize the efficiency and enjoyment of our time.

Back in the day of 3 networks and 13″ screens, there was no way to get visual media except on other people’s time. The instant technology was developed to allow the consumer control over their time, consumers embraced it and never looked back. This doesn’t even have to be the end customer in their living room; take a few minutes to read the story of the first magnetic tape storage/playback system.

The ability to time shift transmissions has no dollar figure too high. Control over the timing of consumption of media transcends quality, portability, and price. As I said before, humans seem to have an innate sense of how time-worthy certain activities are, and this precedes anything else in importance.

The large HDTV will change in the following way: it will have the ability—whether built in, or via a Tivo, a multimedia PC, or some other recording device—to record high definition broadcasts to replay at the consumer’s convenience. Since its huge size confines it to the living room, something else has to give, otherwise media content will be consumed on other devices and at significantly lower quality. In sum, the quality of HDTV is nice, if it’s easy to control, otherwise it will not be used.

Finally, this leads to one last point. Regardless of the laws passed, restrictions invented or digital rights management enforced in order to control when or how a consumer views content, they will be ignored. Average, everyday people will violate the law, and they will not care. It has nothing to do with piracy; it has everything to do with the ability to control when content is presented. In the long term, any attempt to curtail this will fail.

-Ted