HDTV confusion - I'm not alone!

Look at the UK - one in 5 TV viewers in the UK don't know they have to get a HD TV to view high definition TV. And then half of them don't know they have to get a HD set top box, and 2 thirds of them don't know that they have to pay to get HDTV.

Looks like I'm not alone in my confusion. In Gadget Crazy Singapore, people will get a HDTV whether or not they want to view HD or not. SO it's different. BUT our broadcasting authority, the MDA, must make clear statements to the people, so that they know what to do. If we're gonna get struck by HDCP, they must tell us. And they must tell us what happens if our TV isn't a HDCP. And they MUST TELL US NOW. Because so many people are buying new TV sets in preparation for the world cup, the urgency is even greater now.

And IF THEY DON'T KNOW THE ANSWERS, THEY HAVE TO SAY SO. Not saying so, and still implying to be the `know it all', gives people a false sense of security. If they don't know, PERHAPS people may hold off purchases until they do.

Granted, their website has stated many things. Among them, they stated plasma technology. Hey, PLASMA may not give you the resolution you need for HD. Did they tell anybody that? Or it's not their job? Whose job is it anyway? Mine?

They're having a press conference next week. I fear that some of the answers that the fully prepped press will ask might not be answered there. And I fear, if the MDA doesn't know, then why are they into HDTV at all. So much money spent now at HDTV's infancy, on equipment which may well be outdated once things become clearer globally. The whole wide world is rife with rumours, misinformation, half censored marketing information, and real uncertainty.

And if some of the things I said come to pass, like HDCP blacking out your analog outputs or degrading them, tons of people will NOT be happy - as late as 1 year ago, many LCD TVs and Plasma TVs were sold as HD-ready devices, without HDCP!!!!! And since TVs last a normal human being in Singapore for 5 to 10 years, won't they be pissed?

The way it's going now, why do we even need a broadcast authority? One broadcaster's going on about having MPEG4 HD based on what was previously known as H264, and the other's probably gonna broadcast on MPEG2 HD, and nobody knows whether HDCP is going to be embedded or not. That's the state of affairs in Singapore, and yet, they're gonna charge us for the HD trials. Nobody knows nothing, and let's face it - the MDA's not gonna change the minds of any of the content owners, so what's the use anyway? There's no standardization, no information, no real insight, no nothing. So, might as well leave it to the free market huh? And save a few million bucks a year not having an MDA.... after all, isn't it ideal to have the free market without extraneous funny considerations, like national pride of being the first in Southeast Asia to have widespread HD Trials, to blur the distinctions between what is best for me/us and what is best to the regulatory body?

But yet, the allure of watching the World Cup 2006 on HD is .... intoxicating.

Intel Woodcrest Benchmarks Claimed WRONG!

I spent the entire half of today in the Intel seminar launching the Bensley platform, a new platform with allegedly great improvements over their old stuff. The Platform Manager himself showed us some `recently available' benchmarks showing that Intel had finally caught up with AMD and will NO LONGER PLAY CATCH UP.

I thought, Wow. Opterons had so much lead over the Intels, and nothing much has changed except for the CPU, what must have changed, I thought, was that the new 0.65nm process gave the Woodcrest processors so much more lead. I even asked the platform manager WHEN he was about to integrate their memory controller unit into their CPU, and he told me that this is not necessarily yet (in view of the benchmarks) and in a few years they'd do it.

Imagine my surprise, when I came back, I found this thread in my Instant Messaging:

Intel Woodcrest performance claim a fraud

In summary, the blogpost content includes:
1) Intel based their results on the tpc.org results, but Intel claimed that the AMD Opteron machine was using 64bit software like the Intel machine, but at the tpc.org website, the Opteron machine was loaded with 32bit software.
2) The AMD machine was using different, smaller hard disk storage compared to the Intel machine

Anyway, let these guys clarify this first. Intel Server Platform Group has been informed of this blogpost, and he'll respond.