Some people believe that 2006 will be the big year for HDTV. Although I'm sure plenty of HD sets will be sold the overall experience of watching HDTV will leave people with a sour user experience.
- Two different channel numbers for the same channel - How is the person watching a show supposed to know that there is another channel that is showing the same content? In my opinion this is dumb. If there is an HD equivalent I should get it automatically.
- Two many cable options for connecting your HD set leads to consumer confusion - DVI, HDMI, Component cables all come as standard options. Just give me one standard that will deliver on the promise of HD.
- Screens don't auto-adjust for aspect ratio. I'm not certain if this is true for all sets but my cable box, and TV has no idea what each other is doing. This means that I have to manually adjust the aspect ratio based on the channel that I'm watching.
- No cable ready HD Tivo (yet.) For me this is a huge drawback, the UI for both Comcast and RCN is terrible and the remote control experience is even worse. There are too many UI problems with the digital cable box to list here. I came up with a nice list with little trouble.
- Current HD programming uses standard TV as the lowest common denominator - Menus, sports statistics, commercials and promos all run at standard resolution in the centre of the screen or stretched out. This will continue to be a problem until HD takes a majority foothold in TV households.
- HD does not make crappy TV shows less crappy. Some people may assume that the TV experience will improve with HD, this is not true. You may be more immersed in the picture and realism but the quality of the TV experience is with the quality of the story you are watching not the number of pixels on the screen.