On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Stewart Marshall <revsamarsh...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> It is a commentary on what TV's are bought for nowadays that emphasizes > everything but the tuner. I do not disagree with you at all. > In the US by far the largest percentage of viewers receive their TV through > another medium other than broadcasting. Dish or Cable. (FIOS is not a huge > player yet.) > > So TV's emphasize how well they play someone else's content. Plus the > proliferation of DVD players etc. TV's are mainly display screens on a > larger format. > > Manufactures do not really count on you having to pull in TV stations with > their tuner. If a device is marketed and sold as being a television, then it is a current requirement of United States law that it be equipped with a digital tuner. That being the case, any piece of crap tuner will fill the bill since there are no governmental or even industry standards that specify how sensitive or how well a tuner actually has to be able to perform. Now, if a video display device is marketed and sold as a monitor, it does not have to have any sort of tuner at all. However, most folks in the United States would not even understand what a monitor is, and such a term would be confusing and confounding to them. Therefore, and although they are more costly to make by virtue of having to have a tuner, almost all video display devices that are sold, including those intended solely to display content that is not over-the-air TV, are marketed as being "televisions." > I have no seen a CR magazine in a little while but do you know if they even > reviewed the Tuners on LCD TV's? I know of none. However, as I stated earlier, tuner sections were fairly heavily reviewed when it came to converter boxes, but I think that was only due to the initial desires of viewers to be able to get the same stations they had become accustomed to being able to receive under the old analog system. As you pointed out already, most folks buy a television set these days and then never use the TV side of it at all. Steve ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
