High Definition

It's not just the U.S. market facing an analog cut-off. Or shall we say, "analogue" cut-off?  Europe's deadline is a bit later than us, and without a firm date — the switch to digital should be complete between 2010 and 2013. However, digital doesn't mean high-def, and the European market is facing a lackluster love-affair with HDTV.

The very thing that people love about Blu-ray could very well be the thing that people are going to hate. For the first time, home theaters are able to display every single, subtle detail of your favorite old films, as they've only been visible before in theaters. Part of that detail is film grain.  And people are not happy.

When JVC produced the world's smallest 1.27-inch 4K2K Direct-Drive Image Light Amplifier device last June, it was lauded as completely revolutionary. Not willing to rest on its laurels, JVC just announced a 1.75-inch 8K4K D-ILA high-definition reflective liquid crystal device for projectors.

Comcast isn't the only service provider trying to make room for more high definition channels by compressing other channels into a smaller bandwidth footprint. It looks like they all do it, to some degree, though some carriers are better at masking the differences in quality from consumers.