You can have the best possible TV quality visually, but there's no guarantee that the programming itself will follow suit.
High-definition TV looks great, right? I mean, who can really argue with having television that's crisper and more realistic, not to mention generally two to three times the size of what had been regarded as the top size of existing TVs. That's only half of the equation, however -- it does you no good whatsoever if the TV you're watching is in high definition if the content itself has the mental weight of a brain-damaged garden gnome.
I just spent a week in Tokyo breathing in the fine pollution, drinking my entire body weight in sake and just taking in the electronic atmosphere. Naturally, after a heavy day's working (for the record, and for the sake of ethical disclosure, I travelled to Tokyo as a guest of Sony to cover the launch of the their new HDR-FX1 HD Handycam), I'd collapse into my room and flick on the hotel TV.
There are several words I could use to describe Japanese television. Certainly, there's a level of language incomprehension and cultural differences that undoubtedly flavour my outlook, but from the TV that I watched, three things came to mind. The first is rather mundane -- people hired to do TV shopping channels the world over all share the same teeth, hair and presentation styles, even if the products differ. The second had to do with program content, and although that's a cultural issue, I'm still not sure that anyone needs to be shown what happens when you drop a live lobster into a food processor, especially at 3 in the morning.
The abiding impression I got of Japanese TV, however, was that it was (by and large) being produced as quickly and cheaply as possible, with predictable results. Sets wobbled precariously, and whenever it looked as though a gameshow might go slightly off the rails, they'd tend to jump to a shot of a presentation model's cleavage -- an effective tactic for 49 percent of the population perhaps, but a delaying tactic nonetheless.
Cheap TV production techniques will work up to a point -- check out what's playing at around 10am on any of the free-to-air Australian commercial networks and you'll see some of the cheapest TV production around -- but once you start moving into an HD world, the cracks don't just show -- they jump out at you with a vengeance. Not only do you have to buy new camera equipment just to shoot in HD; you've also got to plaster the talent with new makeup, make sure that the sets don't have obvious gaffer tape at the sides, and at all costs make sure Eddie McGuire is nowhere to be seen. Oh, wait, that's just my personal preference speaking there.
In one sense the Japanese are in a better position than we are -- digital broadcasting is still in its infancy there, even more so than here. On the other hand, with the general Japanese mania for having the latest and greatest technology, it's likely that the take-up rate once digital becomes a full-time reality (currently meant to be in 2011) will be much faster than that in Australia.
I asked an executive at one of Japan's biggest TV companies, Fuji TV, what percentage of programming they ran that was produced overseas, and while there was still a language barrier, the stare of incomprehension at such a concept pretty much answered my question for me well before the actual answer was translated. We're not likely to be in quite the same boat in terms of having decent HD content -- I suspect just as it was when TV first launched here, the large mass of programming we'll get moving forwards will be US-centric, but there will be the need to produce our own HD-quality content. Hopefully, however, the content on offer will be more appetising than liquefied lobsters.
What do you think? Will we get programming content equal to the quality of HD, or will it be the same old, same old recycled stuff? Let me know your thoughts below!
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