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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives We finally bit the bullet. A few days ago, my wife and I went out to buy one of those newfangled HDTV's. It took several weeks for us to work up to it. Still it was not easy. It is definitely not like the good old days where all you had to know was the screen size, price range, and brand you preferred. Now those ads and sales people throw so many acronyms, jargon phrases, and misinformation at you, that you feel like you are under assault. It makes you want to put up a bull-crap shield. I had no idea what they were talking about and I trusted the sales people like I trust politicians. We did get through it and ended up with a 42" Samsung DLP HDTV which we like very much. I'll explain what DLP means later on. First, why should you buy on of these new expensive TVs? If you are satisfied with the set you have, you should not buy one until you are forced to. January 1, 2007 is the date our magnificent government has mandated that analog TV broadcasts will cease and your old set will go dark. Of course, it is 2006 now and we can doubt that it will happen. Given that we are talking about the government, that is not unusual. What we can count on is, even with too may broadcasters dragging their feet, it will happen eventually. In our area only four of about 24 broadcast channels are broadcasting the new digital signals. The rest are dragging their feet and probably hoping for a government reprieve. Direct TV and cable are doing much better on this, but, like many other folks, I don't have either one. I have an antenna. When your old sets do go dead, you will have a couple of options. You can anti up and buy an HDTV or you can buy a thing called a converter. At that time a new HDTV will surely cost considerably less than what they cost now. Prices have plummeted in the last few months and I expect that trend to continue. However, the converter will cost even less. What the converter does is convert the digital signals from your antenna to analog signals so your old analog set can display them. I think once HDTV is common and you see the difference in picture quality, you will want it. There is a lot of technical jargon I could throw at you, but the big deal is simply picture quality. HDTV is profoundly better than the old analog TV. As one friend put it, "it is absolutely breathtaking." However, the longer you wait, the less it will cost to upgrade. My advice for someone contemplating the move up to the wide screen is, do your homework! I did, and I'm glad I did. It turns out that much of the information flying around the sales floor is misleading at best. These guys have memorized a whole bunch of buzz word and acronyms and they throw them at you like they really knew. I discovered, too often, they did not know any more than I did. In that, I can be of some help to you. I did the research and found out. Much of this information came from my good friend Charles P. Anonymous so I know it is reliable. First lets take the two key concepts here, analog TV and digital TV. Analog TV is what most folks now have. Digital TV is what the government is mandating for us. It is really a technical difference in how the signal is broadcast and received and how much information it contains. We really don't have to know that unless we are, God forbid, video engineers. For the rest of us, it is sufficient to know that an analog television tuner is called and NTSC tuner. That's what your old set has. You should not buy another set like that if the one you have works. On the other hand, a digital tuner is called an HDTV tuner or an ATSC tuner. In practice, I did not run across the ATSC acronym in the sales rooms. The one used is HDTV, Another acronym you will encounter is HDMI. This stands for High Definition multimedia Interface. It is though the HDMI that you can connect your set top box an other devices to the TV. Aspect ratio is a term you may encounter. It is simply the ration of the width to the height of the picture you see on the TV. You old analog TV has an aspect ration of 4:3 meaning, if the width is 4 units the height will be 3 of the same units. In wide screen HDTV the aspect ration is 16:9. So, if the width is 16 units the height will be 9 units. Many of the movies you rent were made from wide screen formats and, as they say, "reformatted to fit your screen." That means they just cut of the ends of the picture to fit the old analog screen. If they did not reformat, you will be seeing those annoying black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The screen size is figured in the same way it has always been. It is really the distance between one upper corner and the opposite lower corner of the screen. EDTV is an acronym that will disappear as HDTV takes over. It means extended definition television. It's better than analog, but not enough better to bother with. Don't get conned into buying one of these. Cable ready is a nonsense term. All HDTV sets are cable ready. Some of them have a cable card built in. That means, if you have cable, you will not need the set top box. There is one piece of misinformation I encountered twice in my research. This is the nonsense that you will need a special HD antenna to receive the new HD broadcast signal. Don't fall for it. The good old antenna that receives analog signals will work just fine. There is no difference so far as the antenna is concerned. Other than the above, you will have a choice of several different technologies. These are Plasma, Front projection, Rear projection, and LCD. Plasma is most expensive and it has a limited life. The half life of a plasma screen is around 10,000 hours. For most people, that will not be a problem. Front projection is kind of like those old slide show gadgets. They work best in a dark room. Rear projection technology is completely internal to the TV. The devices used are usually either DLP or LCD. DLP means digital light processing. LCD is a liquid crystal display. In both cases the picture is created and projected from inside the TV onto the screen that you see. These are thinner that regular tube sets, but deeper than plasma or LCD. LCD displays can also be full panel sets just like plasma. This allows for a very thin set that can be mounted on a wall like a picture. These are still very expensive in larger sizes. So what do you want? Look at all of them and make a choice.
Look at the picture quality and ignore the salesman who will
be leaning over your shoulder. Make sure the picture quality
is what you want to see. Finally, the important things are to
make sure the tuner is a built in HDTV tuner, and the sound is
built in. Also make sure what you buy will fit in the space you
have for it. Take a tape measure with you and measure it. Good
luck!
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