This week, I joined the growing ranks of those with HDTV sets. In doing so, I discovered that there’s some sado-capitalist involved with creating the specification for HDTV.

You’d have to be living under a rock to not know about HDTV — the first sets went on sale in the U.S. in 1998 — but what you probably don’t know is that the whole system is a mish-mash of standards — there are multiple “levels” of HD, plus there’s the ongoing format war in the high-def DVD field (however, it looks like HD-DVD is pretty much done for).

My big point of hatred here, though, isn’t those things — figuring out the difference between 1080p and 720p is easy enough, and so’s waiting for the high-def DVD format war to shake out. No, my point of contention is the cables.

Yes. The cables.  Cables have become to HDTV (and computers, for that matter) what film was to cameras before they went digital…a necessity that costs far more than it should.  I mean, really, $40+ for an HDMI cable?  Really?  Could you buy me a drink before you fuck my ass?

Furthermore, could we settle on one standard, goddammit?  Composite video, HDMI, DVI, etc., don’t all work the same.  But they should.

Ah, well.  At least I got to see Zednik bleed in high-def.  Because holy shit, nothing shows off high-def like someone with a severed carotid artery.