> 4) A company would never sell a tremendous amount of data storage. They
> want their customers to continue buying their product, so give them 5
> hours. Thus, the chip could be very small, allowing more to be sold per
> production unit. One could say this makes the company more profit, but
> more importantly it keeps the cost of the product down (remember your
> supply and demand curves , and rate of return from economics?).
We have to remember that we are assuming that they are using the same or
slightly better resolution in their displays. Using the home TV as the
base example, it has developed from limited gray scales to the possibility
of over 256 colors and better resolution. The main thing holding back
HDTV or any new type of TV is the FCC. They demand that any new TV system
be backwards compatable (IMHO - a good move) so that poeple do not have
to go out any buy the new sets just to watch the news or whatever program
they want. True the FCC cann't set those requirements for other nations,
but it is a good PR idea. Those advances have come over the past 25 or so
years. What is to say that the base resolution hasn't dramatically increased.
After all, we are not talking about broadcast pictures. And LaserDiscs now
have noticably greater resolution then video tape or broadcast TV.
> Can anyone else think of other reasons why a small chip would be placed in
> larger package? The package could still be the size of a domino, but I
> would imagine it would be a little bigger, for the above reasons.
Kids might have to handle them. The old Atari game system had s small chip
relative to its 'boxed' appearent size. Nintendo cartigest are most likely
has alot of empty space for its size.
Having a large ammount of space would allow for different recording
lengths. ie the T120 VHS tapes and the T160 VHS tapes both fit and work
in the same sized machine(though the tape itself is thinner). Or the
90 min. Cassetes vs 60min or 120min or 100min. It would let the producer
sell "HIGH DENSITY HOLO Crystal. You can record for 7 hours instead of the
normal 5." I can see that being a big selling point particularly to people
who are going on vacation in a back water world where they cann't go down to
the local drug store and pick up a 3 pack of holo crystals.
David Nilles
[email removed]