It's funny --- I am so the exact opposite on HDTV: I have one, I've seen my friends HD pictures, and I've walked past the top of the line with the demo pictures in the store, and I do not get it. Is it possible that I was born without the part of my brain that is supposed to appreciate HD? If so, I feel lucky.
That's how I am, and I feel lucky too. I can watch things that are so low quality other people can't even tell what's going on, and I see no difference
It's the same with music, right? 128 AAC sounds fine to me. The CD carriage and solid gold speaker cable set looks at me with pity. I just laugh. Suckers.
I knew someone during the bubble who lived in Manhattan, right when Kozmo and Urbanfetch arrived. He found gift certificate hacks in both --- you could order things on Mastercard web certificates (0-balance valid Mastercard numbers) and get issued a $5 transferable gift certificate before the original purchase cleared. He had scripts that would literally generate money for their sites. The Kozmo and Urbanfetch delivery guys would meet every day in the hallway in his apartment, and apparently became friends.
Anyhow, one of the things he did with them was have a limitless supply of Godiva chocolates delivered for him and his girlfriend.
Eventually, the hack stopped working.
Shortly afterwards, his girlfriend bought a package of Hershey's Kisses.
"Bleh! Inedible!" He'd always liked them before, but had trained himself to hate them by eating nothing but high-end stuff.
Chocolate, sound quality, picture quality --- and absolutely, positively, cars --- all suffer from the Godiva "Paradox". It's better to satisfice than optimize.
This is also one of the key observations in The Innovator's Dilemma. Hulu is a bigger disruptor than HDTV is. I'll happily accept crappy picture quality if I can watch anything I want, whenever I want.
> [...] He'd always liked them before, but had trained himself to hate them by eating nothing but high-end stuff.
He did not train himself to hate the low-quality product, he came to understand the difference between a high-quality product and a low-quality product. The same effect could have been discovered by tasting the two side-by-side. In a similar fashion, if you were to put an HDTV and a standard TV side by side in your living room for a while you would find yourself not watching the standard TV after a while.
Exposure to a superior product does that to you...
So, I see the logic of what you're saying, but the simple fact was, he was happy with the low-quality product. Very happy. They were Hershey's Kisses! But after 6 months of nothing but Godiva, he couldn't enjoy them anymore. Presumably, he now has to pay a Godiva premium to get the same level of happiness out his chocolate purchases.
I recommend See's. They are cheaper than Godiva, but just as good. Consumer Reports did taste tests that corroborate this a few years back. In regards to the freshness of certain ingredients, like nuts, they rated them superior. Godiva charges a premium and puts some of that into fancy boxes and marketing.
I used to be quite happy programming in C. Now, I find I am quite spoiled by the absolute dynamic power, full closures, magical seeming debugger, and everything is an Object environment I have in Smalltalk. I get paid more, but I also "pay" a premium in terms of fewer choices in places of employment.
Maybe there is some wisdom in choosing just not to know. But there is something in me that just wants to know no matter what. Even if I would've been happier otherwise.
