Wow, it's finally happened. Technology has finally gotten so fast, that even the manufacturers of the equipment that uses it can't release their products fast enough to keep up with it. When a company realizes that their 'BRAND NEW, STATE OF THE ART' product is out dated before it's even released... then we know we're moving forward too fast.
While I love new technology, when they start coming out with new, bigger, better giggets faster than the consumer can keep up with them, it creates a serious problem. Think back to the day when the world switched over from vinyl to cassette tapes. The transission was long, and steady. It gave everyone time to prepare themselves for the technology cassette tapes had over records (the ability to record, portability, no worries about scratching, could play in your vehicle, etc...). If you were caught out in the cold for that switch, it was because you were just plain lazy.
The switch from cassette tapes to CD's went a bit quicker, but still went by fairly slowly. I have to admit that when CD's came out I was a bit stubborn about switching over because I already had 500 some tapes, a very expensive tape deck in my car, and many cassette players in my house. I did not want to have to buy all new hardware to play CD's. So I procrastinated over that for a few years until I met my first wife and she had a collection of 300 some CD's and a CD player. Once I got used to all the advantages of CD's I never wanted to use cassette tapes again.
Flash forward to 2002 when I bought my Denon 4802. Up until that point people had been using the same reciever they'd bought in the early 80's without missing out on much. But the new technology out at the time was optical audio, composite video and component video and digital coax... the world was changing over to digital. I'd waited about as long as I thought I needed to, to upgrade to a new reciever. Now I did buy my big screen Toshiba rear projection TV at the same time, and that was right when the market was trying to figure out if they were going to go with DVI or HDMI connections... my Toshiba had a DVI connection. None of the recievers out around that time had either connection built into it, and I didn't even think about waiting around for it because I didn't think I really needed that incorporated into my reciever.
So with more bells and whistles than I could shake a stick at, I picked up the 4802 and thought I was good to go for the next few decades at least. Only to find out that within the next year or two HDMI would defeat DVI completely and go on to become a hugely important part of reciever usefulness. The only thing is every other year we have to upgrade the HDMI technology. We're currently on HDMI 1.4, how high will it get? Nobody knows. Why would we ever believe that 3D is where it's going to end? We have no reliable resource to tell us when and where we should pull the trigger to give us the best long term product for our money. The industry does not seem to want to settle down and go with anything long term anymore. They just keep pushing things further and further, which I might add is truely wonderful if you can afford to overhaul your $10,000 plus HT every two years or so. But for those of us with much more humble incomes it only creates madness wondering when we should finally spend our wad.
I bought my 65 inch Sharp LCD last year because I'd seen the 120 hz and even the 240 hz LCD's and didn't think they were worth spending two to three times what I spent on this 60 hz model. Now if I want to enjoy 3D I have to scrap this $3000 dollar out dated dinosaur and plunk down probably upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 bucks for a unit this size that's 3D capable... for the first 3 or 4 years anyhow. Once they start coming down in price to where I can afford one, then the NEXT thing will come out. The next thing that I'll decide I'd rather wait 3 or 4 more years to come down in price before I get it. And on and on the waiting game continues.
Technology rocks and sucks, all at the same time.
