Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[bobs10]

OT I guess if the Tec’s can argue endlessly about the heating and energy characteristics of this chip or that we can talk about convergence.

I fully expect to replace every piece of entertainment, communication and PC equipment I own at least once over the next decade. In fact replacement cycles seem to be getting shorter for almost every device in the home. And the devices that are replacing the older ones are always more sophisticated and complicated. Extrapolating on this trend it's not to hard to see a huge need for smart devices as the replacing inventions do more in smaller spaces and a nexus is created within the home.

The problem with CRT's is that as the size of the screen increases distortion becomes more and more of a problem at the edges. The deeper the CRT the easier it is to control the distortion, but the weight of the CRT becomes a big factor. 22 inches isn't bad for a CRT, but about a 36" screen seems to be the max you can go to without introducing too much distortion and weight.

There's a lot of different technologies out there now (CRT, Plasma, LCD, LCOS, DLP, etc.). Since there is no clear-cut winner, like CRT was for years, this is causing decision-making problems. While HDTV has come a long way, it's still in the chicken and egg stage with lots of people sitting on the sides waiting for prices to drop and a standard to emerge. With a single standard, or two, economies of scale and price drops would soon follow. Still, it does look like the hump has been crested and by 2006 HDTV should be pervasive.