Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>An interesting case is gathering steam now, there is a question of whether
>the new digital TV transmission capability should be used for HDTV, or
>more conventional channels. It is beginning to look more and more as though
>the public and the hence the networks, prefer more conventional channels.

How has public opinion actually been obtained about this?

One thing sticks in my craw:  surveys in Australia, going back 100 years,
have shown that what people _want_ in the media (the newspapers 100 years
ago, TV nowadays) is science/medicine/technology, commerce/politics, and
sport, IN THAT ORDER, with quite a wide gap between the >50% who want science
stories and the <50% who want sport.  What we *get* is more and more and more
sport.  I believe British surveys show much the same order of preference,
with much the same total disregard of user preference in what actually gets
shown.

Ok, the source of my information about such surveys is New Scientist
magazine, which may be biassed!  But I well remember hearing on New
Zealand radio some 20 years ago that more people in New Zealand (then
famous as the land of "Rugby, Racing, and Beer") actually _went_ to
museums and art galleries than went to sports events.

Quite recently, in New Zealand, the "provincial" network was shut down.
The plan was to replace it with a channel devoted to ``music'' for teenagers,
a group who I believe are already well served in that regard.  That was not
_audience_ preference, it was _advertiser_ preference.

So is it really *the public* who want more conventional channels, or
is it *the advertisers*?  And if it is the public, how many of them who
have been asked for their preference have actually _seen_ HDTV?  (For
comparison, many of the people who ``choose'' PCs have never actually
_seen_ a Macintosh, and certainly have never used one.  And many of the
people who ``choose'' Windows have never seen NextStep.  And so on.)

>For me, I would far rather rely on the consumer to make the decision of
>what features are or are not important and thus constitute the basis
>of answering this question!

This is of course the point of usability engineering.  But I am not very
happy about relying on people to make decisions about features they have
never had a chance to evaluate.

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Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.