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Things to Consider when choosing an HDTVOct 29 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Lots of decisions such as aspect ratio, direct view or projection TV, and TV size need to be made when picking out a TV.
Never has it been so confusing to buy a TV. With different aspect ratios and the coming of HDTV, it is probably better to wait 3 to 5 more years to see how everything shakes out. However, who wants to wait that long. My suggestion, get the HDTV and get on with your life. Why a HDTV monitor? An HDTV is much more expensive than non-HDTV. Many people who get an HDTV monitor do not spend the extra $600 to get the HDTV tuner. Why? I suppose, there just is not enough programming out there to justify it and who knows if the tuners will become obsolete in the future. What you do get is a line doubler that makes regular TV look better and it plays DVD's extremely well. DVD's, as great as they look, do not look as good as HDTV, which can be much higher resolution. To watch HDTV, you need to buy a very expensive tape machine or get the HDTV tuner. 16:9 or 4:3 Aspect Ratio. Currently the majority of satellite and cable TV is broadcast in 4:3 aspect ratio, the shape of the current TV today. HDTV is broadcast in 16:9 ratio. If you buy a 16:9 television, normal TV today will be watched with black bars on the side. This means that enormous 51" TV will turn into a puny 41" TV when you watch in 4:3 mode. Plus it will have black bars on the side that might burn into your screen. If you buy a 16:9 TV, multiply the diagonal by .82, this will get you roughly the diagonal of the equivalent 4:3 TV picture size you can watch on your 16:9 TV. Or, you can watch normal 4:3 TV in expanded mode. This stretches the picture to use all of the TV.In expanded mode, the center is not stretched as much as the edges so things on the edge of the TV look stretched, while things in the center look normal. I generally switch aspect ratios depending on the show I watch. Football and baseball I can watch in stretch mode. Benefits of 16:9 -DVD's widescreen look great in this mode -Ready for future, when more HDTV programming becomes available in 2006 -It seems like all latest technology is put in 16:9 TV's Negatives -More expensive for same size TV -Regular TV viewed in stretch mode or on small screen with black bars Not all TV's have the same selection of aspect modes. The Hitachi is the best TV for it's selection of aspect modes for the 16:9 TV. It has 4:3 standard, 4:3 expanded, 4:3 expanded zoom (For letter boxed TV shows), 4:3 expanded zoom 2(not sure what use this is, but has more zoom), 16:9 mode, and 16:9 zoom. DVI Interface: Almost all the high end HDTV come with a DVI interface. What is a DVI interface? It is a connection that looks like a computer cable serial port connection. This interface may be adopted in the future for HDTV. This connection prevents people from copying pristine HDTV movies and then putting them on the internet. You'd think with all the talk on standards that they would have come up with how they want things to be connected by 2006. Not true. Too many players in the industry. It's good to have one, just in case, but you'd think that with so many HDTV's sold already, the government won't let them become obsolete by having a change in how the signal is received. Rear projection or Direct View Rear projection TV's project the image onto a mirror and then reflect to the screen. Direct View projects directly onto the screen. Direct View are brighter and have better resolution, so you can sit closer to the screen. Rear Projection Benefits -Larger and cheaper screen sizes -More models available with 16:9 format -DVD's look great on it -Lighter Rear projection negatives -Viewing angle not as good. Brightness changes noticably depending at which angle you sit. -Resolution is noticably worse with regular TV programming, so you have to sit farther back Right now, 40" direct view HDTV's is the largest you can get. However, Sony is the only one who makes a 40inch and it does have reliability issues. 36" direct views are probably a safer choice in terms of reliability. For me, I got a 43" Hitachi FWX20B 16:9. I sit about 13 feet from the TV and the picture is great. If I sat about 9 feet away, I can start to see pixelization. Screen size could be larger, but I thought erroring on the small screen size would be better. As big as the TV is, it doesn't dominate the room like a 53" screen. The Hitachi has excellent bright colors and a very good autoconvergence. When looking at a TV in the showroom ask the salesman to show the TV using regular cable TV. All the HDTV's look great with DVD's and HDTV feeds, but you need to look at cable to determine what size to get since that will probably be what you watch the most of. Also measure out how far you sit away from the TV in your house and view the TV from that distance. Watch using stretched and non-stretched mode if looking at a 16:9 TV. Even with all that planning, seeing a TV in the showroom and in your house is pretty different. My advice is to buy from a store like Circuit City which has a good return policy in case you don't like the size of your TV.  |
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