P3D Re: Film redesign

["Greg Wageman" <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Michael Kersenbrock <michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx>

>In other words, it wasn't the invention of 35mm that caused 127's
demise,
>it was the market moving to purchase 35mm that probably did the deed.


Perhaps.  I remain unconvinced.  What might be telling is what the
annual sales figures were for 127 film when Kodak pulled the plug, and
what peak sales were as a basis for comparison.  Unfortunately I don't
have those numbers.

>"Support" for rotary phone is trivial and truly costs next to nothing.
The
>off-line detection is already there.  It makes no significant economic
impact to
>leaving that legacy support in there.  A B&W TV will still work because
>it costs nothing to keep the support in the current broadcast
structure.


Pac Bell is installing a brand-new Lucent 5ESS switch on my exchange
next month.  I'm willing to bet you that there are a significant number
of lines of code in that switch devoted to handing pulse dialing, and
that those lines of code were not written, debugged and tested for free,
or even "next to nothing".  It isn't just a matter of "leaving"
something existing in place.  And this cost accumulates with each new
generation of equipment that is developed.

B&W television is a completely different story.  The National Television
Standards Committee was given a mandate to come up with a scheme for
broadcasting color that did not obsolete the millions of existing B&W
televisions in the U.S.  As a consequence, NTSC color television is a
compromise, and nowhere nearly as technically state-of-the-art as it
could have been, even for the late 1940's.  In other words, someone felt
that not obsoleting existing televisions was worth the price of
crippling color broadcasting for decades to come.  Fifty years later, we
are still living with the consequences of this decision.  It was not a
technical nor market-driven decision.  It was a political decision.

When I buy a DVD player, which is looking like it will be inevitable,
you can bet your bottom dollar that it'll be able to play Laserdiscs
too.  This dual-format compatibility isn't free.  Such players contain
essentially two completely separate mechanisms.  But then neither was
our Laserdisc collection that spans 10+ years.  I'm sure the studios
would love it if I had to scrap all those discs and re-purchase them on
DVD, but fortunately that's not necessary.

Technical improvement without unnecessary obsolescence is the name of
the game.

>If the people who buy their goods don't think it's an improvement, then
>why do they stop buying the old stuff and buy the new?  If nobody
bought
>APS and everybody bought 35mm, does one think that they'll phase out
35mm
>and continue APS?


Many don't see any difference because they never have enlargements made.
For those consumers, APS is perfectly OK, until Kodak invents the "next
new thing" and discontinues it.  Kodak is discontinuing their
finest-grained, sharpest, most vibrant color print film.  Who knows what
they'll kill next and for what hare-brained reason?

     -Greg W. (gjw@xxxxxxxxxx)





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