As technology marches on, quality usually improves. The computer you're reading this on, for example, is probably much higher quality (more performance, lighter, etc.) than your last one—and cost you less money. But strangely, the quality of digital audio and video seems to be decreasing.
But what about my new HD TV and Blu-Ray player, you ask? True, the video and audio quality in DVD players, audio receivers, and the like continues to increase. But how often do you experience that higher quality? If you're like me, not very often. These days, more often than not I find myself hunched over my laptop watching 320x240 YouTube videos. Or straining to make out what someone is saying over a bad cell connection. Even that new HDTV can look like junk when it's fed with over-compressed video—give me analog snow over macroblocks any day!
At first this trend seems backwards—a de-evolution (Devo) of technology. But look a bit closer and low quality usually makes sense—at least to the companies offering it.
For one, it offers convenience. Low resolution and high compression ratios allow audio and video to be streamed over bandwidth-constrained wireless networks to computationally-constrained mobile devices, allowing us to watch and listen wherever, whenever we want. Content providers love it because we consume more content. Chipmakers love it because we're carrying around yet another chipset.
Low quality also means more content. Take YouTube, for example. YouTube hosts nearly 80 million videos, with tens of thousands of new videos added every day. There's no way YouTube would have this much content if it served up HD instead of 320x240 video. Likewise, digital cable providers aggressively compress TV to squeeze more channels into our homes—although I personally think consumers are getting screwed on this one by being forced to buy lame channels they never watch (vive a la carte!).
Lastly, for a lot of content people don't need or want higher quality. Watching that video of a cat falling into a toilet is just as funny in CIF as it is in HD. Does anyone remember the last HD audio format war? The much hyped battle pitted Sony's super audio CD (SACD) against DVD-audio. Both formats offered higher resolution than regular CDs as well as multichannel capabilities, but both were dead on arrival when they hit shelves in 2000. People were too busy downloading lower-than-CD-quality MP3s from Napster (which debuted in 1999).
Having said all that, there's lots of room for improvement in most of the content I consume—and big opportunities for companies that can deliver it. Hence the rise of services like Hulu, which is trying to deliver YouTube-like convenience and content selection with HD quality. It will be interesting to see what the next evolution of digital audio and video brings.
