A few years ago I had the privilege of seeing a demo of HDTV over Internet2 at the University of Washington. (Remember Internet2?) Several consumer-sized HDTV showed the HDTV broadcast signal from KING-5, which at the time mostly broadcasted footage of Husky football training because only a few shows had HDTV equivalents (the local news, a few primetime shows and Jay Leno). The HDTV signal over Internet2 was splayed up on a giant HDTV video wall, about 12 feet high. The image was a live picture from Stanford-- of a graduate student sitting in his office. The world's largest webcam, in glorious high-definition.
However, HDTV's purchased before 2002 may be obsolete already. Slashdot predicts that this new HDTV encryption standard combined with the DMCA may very well eliminate TiVo-like devices from our future.
Well, Harry Shearer ("Le Show" on NPR) has long been on a rant about HDTV. His point is mostly about how this new technology is being forced on everyone, including those who, say, just spent a bundle on big-screen analog TVs. He also points to reports of HDTV broadcasts screwing up other electronics in the area, like hospital monitoring devices, &c. I'd simply add that most of TV is drek (big news, yes?). If content does not improve, who needs the new technology? Do we really need super-clear images of beer commercials, super-clear images of info-mercials, super-clear images of "news" that's government propaganda, super-clear images of insipid soaps, sit-coms, bogus "reality"-TV, and on and on...?? When the big switch to HDTV occurs, I might just opt out and withdraw to watch my video collection...