We have written before that one of the hindrances to maximum sales faced by the consumer electronics industry is consumer confusion over the many options, technologies, scanning formats and display resolutions, to name a few. This is inevitable in a world of high technology. Some of the writing about last week's Consumer Electronics Show demonstrates that it is not just consumers who need a better understanding of HDTV. Reporters writing about the technology don't always understand it very well, either.
Two HDTV articles written about last week's CES (the publications will remain nameless), illustrate this. Both contained mixes of correct and incorrect information about HDTV scanning formats and comparisons among HDTV, EDTV, and SDTV displays. Writers often appear to have shallow knowledge of scanning formats and what their parameters really mean. Examples of this include a discussion about "vertical lines of picture data", and statements that "HDTV constantly refreshes the image", while SDTV, "displays 480 lines, but refreshes only half of those lines at a time."
There are grains of truth scattered through here, but there is a profound lack of understanding of the technical details. The problem is, of course, that lay readers accept this writing as technically accurate.
