"Hi-Def"

This week, Spencer E Holtaway and housemates acqiured a 32 inch widescreen television. While this is a vast improvement on the previous cheap box, Spencer E Holtaway has found a problem.

At 100hz refresh (most TV's today run at about 72hz) the raw quality of betamax recordings becomes very clear. It is my guess that betamax records at something that relates to 100hz but then loses quality when broadcast at 72hz. I love betamax at 72hz. That's what Frasier looks like, what Friends looks like, what any American TV show looks like.

I have just watched Frasier for the first time on this 100hz set. It looked dreadful. It lost the smooth feel American television has (because most televisions in the US are about 15 years behind European and Asian TVs in technical terms) and looked like a dreadfully cheap pilot. It looked like raw DV, from a modern camcorder. Dolly and pan movements are clear - you can see every jerk and jog on the way across the dolly track and every shake of the human hand - something I have never spotted on Frasier. It's very strange.

How can an improvement in technology ruin the way technology works in an emotive sense?

More on this later, as usual. Goodnight.