No, it would not. Your first point, do consumers care about resolution, is easily answered by the advent of THX and Cinema Digital Sound, not to mention the superior clarity of Laser Discs, which are now a strong marketing success. People care not only about clarity, but also about aspect ratio, hence the wide-screen format of future TV. As for going straight to digital, this is obviously the proper way to go, and this point is being strongly argued by some of the competing vendors, who are trying to keep the Japanese away long enough to come up with a practical digital system. Clearly, if current HDTV is permitted to become a standard, it will be obsolete in ten years anyway. The boundaries between media and platforms for the reception/manipulation will dissolve over the next 20 years. > It seems to me that the ones who think HDTV is so great are those who > are in the industry and academics. What I wanna know is, do the > consumers really care about higher resolution? How great a picture does > The Simpsons need? If we're so het up about a better picture, why not > just go straight to digital and work out the compatibility problem > once, instead of now for HDTV and later for digital? It seems to me > that since digital transmission will give a better picture than analog, > no matter how high a resolution the analog might have, we should skip > the middleman. Then this discussion of film vs. video would be a mute > point. Or would it? ;-) >