Originally posted by: vbangle

What world do you live on? I live in Southern California and with just a few, and I mean a few, exceptions widescreen tvs are the only thing available in the stores right now.....4:3 is DEAD. Even my techno scared "older than dirt" parents have a widescreen plasma they watch the evening news on.

I live in an affluent suburb in the Northeast, and most people I know DONT have a HDTV, and many of them who do have a 4:3 HDTV, probably around 32" or so. Now I am not saying people aren't going to buy these sets in the next 10 years, cause I agree that HD populates all of the Best Buy space, but that doesn't mean these people are going to go out buy an HD Player and rebuy all their movies on HD too.

You have to understand that the majority don't care, or dont' take time to care about the best quality picture they can have. DVD was such a leap from VHS for so many reasons that didn't have to do with quality: No rewinding when you are done a movie, count me in! The movie won't break if you play it too many times, count me in! Oh, and it looks great, that's even better! Wait, what are these damn black bars! How many movies are still put out in fullscreen for the average consumer? All of them!

You will always have the diehards like us who want a great quality picture, but then you have the majority that don't buy stuff until the price comes down to normal levels, and so on. And just look at how slow HD Channels are catching on, as I remember reading back in 2003 that ALL channels would be up to speed by 2007, and the last time I checked on my HD Channels here was the list:

ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, A&E, HBO, CINEMAX, SHOWTIME, STARZ, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, DISC, UNIVERSAL, HYWW. Now of course every Cable System is different, but the bottom line is if HD was so huge, the majority of channels would be HD, instead of the minority of them.