Oddly enough I don't think the 57 chevy sold that well when it was new.
They sold about 1.5 million, most of which were 210s and Bel Airs. The bottom-rung 150 wasn't as popular, and isn't as collectible either, except for some very rare fuel-injected models.
I was around in 1966 and believe me, a '57 Chevy was a cool car to have. Some things are classics the minute they are made while other are just space fillers.
One could say the same about the '59 Cadillac or the Hemi Charger. If we're talking computers, the C64 and Apple II were always classics, even in the early '90s when they were retired from production.
Digital TV and LCD/Plasma shift was for money mostly. The government can sell the old bands for a profit while tv companies can sell everybody a new tv and tuner (CRT TV's and Monitors were pretty much low profit items by that point). A broadcast of an old 4:3 program in digital to a widescreen looks bad, especially at low resolution.
True. You can get a new 13" TV (as all the sets in that size are still CRTs) for $100. I found out that my 13" set from 1978 would have cost over $400 new, and considering how that was more money then than today.
Flat-screen TVs are mainly optimized for HD signals. SD rarely looks good except on some top-of-the-line models. I've heard the stories of how people used their old consoles/computers with flat-screen TVs and found how bad the picture looks. The basic problem is that LCD/plasma screens are digital devices, and you're trying to get them to use an analog video signal that was originally designed for CRTs (an analog device).
It's true that flat-screen TVs can do some things that CRTs can't, such as wide-screen and 1080p pictures, but to a large extent the takeover of them has been due to clever marketing and because they look cool. If I had to pick though, I'd probably take a plasma set because they have better color.
The Samsung LCD that I saw was a 20" model, but it was a low-end SD-only set. If you go into places like Wal-Mart though, you'll only see the big HD sets, as those have the highest profit margin.
I think the DTV switchover was done mostly to free up HF spectrum space, not for any quality reasons.
Some of the bandwidth was sold to cell-phone companies, among others. They claim some advantages such as more channels and surround-sound, but digital TV was really just a scheme by cable companies to force the 20 million or so Americans who were still using antennas to subscribe to cable so they could continue using their analog TVs, or else use a converter box and have a terrible picture.
CDs have the problem in that being digital, they cut sound off above certain frequencies. Also, they make it possible to have grossly oversampled music that turns into raw square waves. I'm sure everyone's seen people crank up their car stereo to the point where the whole vehicle vibrates.
On the other hand, some old technologies like dial-up Internet and those computerized carburetors they had in the late '70s and early '80s deserve to stay in the past and never be seen or heard from again.
When I do get something, if it all doesn't work, I remove what does and recycle the rest. Because I only have about 30 cubic feet I can spare on computer storage, I limit myself to Tandy computers and portable computers. Tandy because their awesome, and portables because their... portable...
