What constitutes "more than a handful"

[Tom Snyder]

In his HDTV Playoffs article in the Journal Sentinel Tim Cuprisin has again designated us as just a "handful," and has set out the prediction of bug-free HD when our numbers reach "more than a handful."

The concept desrves discussion. How many of us do there need to be in order to reach that status?

[Gregg Lengling]

With the number of registered users and the traffic the site is exhibiting....I think we're beyond a handful.  In addition by all respectable accounts between OTA and Cable boxes, there are thousands of us in the Metro Viewing Area.  Granted in the Grand Scheme of things this is small but compared to 2001 this is huge.  Prior to Christmas 2001 it was a handful maybe only a few hunderd...but in the last 3 months (let alone the last year) the numbers have gone up a thousand percent.  The future is not coming it is here......wake up and smell the coffee....oops that's right he had to have a loaner STB to watch the playoffs....maybe we should loan him a coffee pot also:D

[mr_yeti]

One interesting and, I think, misguided facet of such a statement is the idea that the demand must be created before a supply is available. Why exactly should the burden fall to the consumer to provoke greater availability of HD signals? As we have at times seen, there is an unwillingness to even discuss the matter openly, and it is possible to start feeling somewhat powerless when honest attempts to attain information are met with stonewalling and sometimes misinformation.

I understand that owners of HD-capable sets represent a minority at this point, but we also represent the future, and our numbers are growing. We are, as a group, willing to work with signal providers in any way we can to help them through what can be a technically difficult process. I think that by minimizing the community here, certain people may be able to convince themselves that HD "doesn't matter yet," and that they're on schedule, when really they are anything but.

[borghe]

My main annoyance with the tone of Tim's articles are the fact that to me they seem very discouraging. Now I'm not saying gloss over the bad and only praise the good, but there is a difference between noting the bad and accentuating it. He almost always seems to go out of his way to let people know exactly how much of a hassle HDTV is. Almost like he has a serious bone to pick with it.

But this topic isn't about that.. What constitutes more than a handful? Easy.. more complaints. Stations aren't reacting because "we" are not loud enough yet. It's like WITI said. They received more Scott Steele emails in a week than they have about HDTV over the last 5 years.

Maybe in that respect Tim's article is, in a very (very very very) slight way, beneficial to us. Maybe we need more people like Tim complaining to 58, 6, 18, 24, 55, and even 12, 4, and 10, to be heard.

However, be careful what you wish for.. It just might come true. We want more people to come onboard because we are hoping they will share our thoughts on multi-casting, content, bandwidth, etc. But the other edge of the coin is that they may want more multi-casting, or even worse, more local SD programming replacing national HD programming, HDNet gone, more Fox channels, etc.

[Tom Snyder]

They received more Scott Steele emails in a week than they have about HDTV over the last 5 years.

But you'll notice that Scott Steele is still gone.  

Think of the history of outrage and TV, and how it produced a movie like "Network." (I'm mad as a **** and I'm not gonna take it anymore!).

When was the last time you can remember a public outcry resulting in a TV station reversing a decision...

The broadcast business is all about immediate ratings dominance. If it doens't produce ratings, it gets removed. And the number of complaints that come in is irrelevant.  If HDTV was new TV series, we'd probably have been cancelled a long time ago.

[Matt Heebner]

I too feel that Tim has almost anti-HDTV agenda or something. If he wants to point out the negative (what very few problems there was) about a particular HD broadcast...fine. But then balence it out with postives too. He compared it to analog briefly, but the went on to talk about multicasting. Huh? Talk about what you viewed. Saturdays game the first half was kinda crummy, but the second half and Sundays game was excellent! There were a couple freezes and audio drops, but I would call it a learning curve, not an experiment.
Just saying that "its like being there" isn't enough. I was totally amazed that I was watching the players sweat literally roll off their nose as they lined up against each other. And whens the last time you could clearly make out what their tatoo's say on the back of their arms?
THATS high def!

Matt

[mcq]

Watch this, I am going to stick to the topic.... Replying in any other fashion upon any other comments made here would be a total waste of my time and effort.

To me a handful is usually 10.

[Tom Snyder]

Technically a handful is what you can hold onto with one hand...

If it's Skittles, it's about 30. Peanut M&M's it's about 17...

If it's people it's only 1, really. :confused: