Transitions, Perceptions
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 4/5/2004
A couple of weeks ago, I got up far too early and couldn't get back to sleep. I turned the TV on and caught the 1957 comedy, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" It starred a young Tony Randall as a junior executive at a major ad agency. His mission was to get a major movie star, played in breathy splendor by Jayne Mansfield, to endorse a client's brand of lipstick. There's a pause in the story as Tony Randall emerges from behind a curtain and talks directly to the audience and says, in effect, "We are having this intermission in our movie for you TV fans in the audience. You're used to that."
Eventually the CinemaScope of Randall gets reduced to the equivalent of a 4:3, 20-inch-or-so black-and-white TV, with a slightly fuzzy picture that begins to flutter. Randall said something like, "See the wonderful, clear picture? You TV fans must feel right at home."
I saw this old movie a few days after Thomson announced that it was closing its more than 50-year-old CRT picture tube production plant in Marion, Ind. and its related plant in Circleville, Ohio, due to declining demand for tube TVs.
A few days later, Thomson issued a press release marking the 50th anniversary of the introduction of color TV by the old RCA Corp., the company whose brand is now owned by Thomson. At practically the same time, MT Picture Display Corporation of America, based in Troy, Ohio and owned by Matsushita and Toshiba, announced that it had begun production of widescreen CRTs for HDTVs.
Aside from an ironic confluence of events, what does all this mean? The future of color TV is HDTV, but the digital format will be rife with technology competition. Manufacturers are choosing sides. All the formats and their backers may survive in some form or another. Or maybe there will be one or two format winners, supported by a handful of suppliers. Time and consumers will decide.
When will HDTV take over from old analog color TV? Based on what we heard at the HDTV Summit last Monday, that goal is getting closer and closer.
In a year or so, a typical consumer with a new HDTV may catch another showing of "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" By that time for HDTV owners the CinemaScope portions of the film will seem antiquated, just like the black-and-white segment seems to today's analog color TV owners.
TWICE Says 'Thank You'
During last Monday's HDTV Summit, TWICE received the Best DTV Journalism award from the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers. (See story on p. 8.) Our thanks go to the Academy. Special kudos go to our executive editor Greg Tarr who heads our coverage of digital TV and HDTV. This is the second time in three years that TWICE has been so honored by the Academy.
And the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) National Electronics & Appliance Industries Division has selected yours truly to receive its Torch of Liberty award at its annual dinner dance on Saturday, Nov. 13 at the Grand Hyatt hotel. I'm proud to report that my fellow honorees that evening will include Don Iwatani of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, Gary Shapiro of the Consumer Electronics Association and Dave Workman of Ultimate Electronics. For more on the event, and how to attend, see our story on p. 8.
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