Digital Hatred

I’ve occasionally gone on about the strange civil war that periodically rages in the planetarium industry circles concerning digital vs. analogue projection systems.  For some odd reason, there are a handful of planetarians that simply do not accept that any sort of digital projection belongs in a planetarium.

I go on and on about my take on this in my Planetarium Definition (long version), but the short of it is: digital is better, for a variety of reasons.

Today, this was posted to the dome-l mailing list:

…the “industry” reps bombard us with the story that “digital is the only way to go”, and imply that anyone with a differing view is some kind of moron, who will be “left behind”… And so some planetarians try to shout us down & shut us up…

Is someone a moron for not exploring and embracing technology that brings increased flexibility and capability to education and presentation?

This analogy was brought up:

Beta-Max WAS way better than VHS video.  But too many people had too much invested in VHS, so Beta-Max lost-out.  Politics, NOT technology…

In actuality, because of its technical superiority and flexibility, Betamax tapes, cameras, and machines were widely-used in professional capacities until well after 2000, and finally in 2002 Sony stopped producing recorders, primarily because everyone was in the process of switching to digital.

Just sayin’.