HDTV BUYING GUIDE
Throughout this guide dashed links will take you to filtered product lists.
INTRODUCTION TO HIGH-DEFINITION TV (HDTV)
As the prices have come down dramatically, the process of deciding on and buying an HDTV has become a lot more straightforward.
There are still a lot of choices and decisions to make, but some confusions about "near-HDTV" have pretty much gone away. So-called "ED-TV" sets, a stopgap measure to get a slightly better TV picture at a much lower price, are no longer blocking your view of real HDTVs. Good 32-inch flat-panel LCD HDTVs are available for under $1000 in consumer stores.
It may be time to buy yourself and your family a high-definition TV.
What's Great About HDTV
The main advantage of an HDTV is that, when it's showing a high-definition signal, it looks great – much better than a regular TV. This is mainly because there are lots more pixels, or dots of light, on the screen of an HDTV than on a regular TV.
A regular old non-HDTV shows a maximum of 480 lines of resolution (from top to bottom), but you only see that much from a DVD player; from broadcast TV you only see 330 lines of resolution from broadcast TV, or as little as 240 lines from a standard VCR. That's not much; just how lame that 1940s standard technology is can be demonstrated when you get a bigger TV screen, and all you get is a bigger version of the same old blurry picture.
HDTVs show either 720 or 1080 lines of resolution, depending on which of the two standard HD types you buy. The number of pixels from side to side is also much greater: from 1280 to 1920 pixels across, depending on the type of set. And the HDTV pixels are closer together and square instead of round. While standard TVs show some 200,000 pixels in all, HDTVs start at 300,000 pixels and go up as high as 2 million total pixels. The result is a picture with more than four times the visual detail, twice the resolution, and six times the sharpness of standard TV, depending on how you measure.
The high-def picture you get on HDTV is much more clear, crisp, detailed, with more color depth. That's why it's taking over the world. It's like what happened to cassette tape when CD technology arrived; it's like what happened to VCRs when DVD players got affordable.
There is so much resolution that, unlike with standard-def TVs, bigger HDTV screens look better than smaller ones. You know how fuzzy a regular TV is when you get up close? If they show a newspaper, for example, and you can't quite make out the headlines, if you move closer it doesn't get clearer – it just gets blurrier. On an HDTV, if you can't read the headline you can probably see it better if you go closer to the screen – just like in real life.
You can see the numbers on the uniforms of football players – all of them, not just the one in the close-up; you can see oil glistening on the puddle in the street, the hairs on the cat in the background, the leaves on the trees. In many cases, this doesn't jump out at you when you first watch an HD broadcast; rather, it gradually sinks in just how crisp and distinct and clear the picture is.
That's if the signal you're watching is HD, of course. If you're watching a regular non-HD broadcast, it's just as uncrisp and indistinct as ever. But more and more programs are moving to HD – the evening news on the national channels, and many of the prime-time shows are now available in HD.
It also matters when you're looking at it that HDTVs are widescreen, like a movie-theater screen, rather than nearly square, like standard TVs. Trust us, wide is better than square.
Prices Have Come Down – A Lot
A lot of the cost of HDTVs is in the internal electronics, so like personal computers that also have a lot of their cost in their electronics, that means prices drop and drop over time. The other major cost is in the LCD or plasma or DLP screen – and as more production plants have been built and production techniques have improved, prices for those components are dropping too.
HDTVs used to cost at least $2000 and up to $15,000. Now you can get a good-sized LCD HDTV for under $1000 – that's still double what an old-style TV of a similar size costs, but it's no longer out of reach even for budget-minded buyers.
Prices continue to drop, but you no longer have to wait – they have now dropped into reasonable territory.
All-Digital by 2009? The government stepped in years ago to order an all-digital TV world, because digital signals are more efficient than analog in use of broadcast bandwidth, and produces a better picture. All TV sets must have digital tuners, and all TV broadcasting over the air must be done in digital form, in the year 2009.
This only affects you directly if you get your TV signal through an antenna, and even then you will be able to get a cheap digital tuner to put on top of your old analog TV if you're really in love with that dinosaur. If you get your signal from cable or from a satellite dish, you're not affected. But you'll have plenty of reason to move to an all-digital HDTV before the deadline.
Who Makes HDTVs?
Major vendors of HDTVs include all the major electronic brands you've heard of: Hitachi, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio, Westinghouse – and a couple you might not have heard of until now, such as Optoma, and Syntax-Brillian.
Follow any of these brand links and Krillion will display the models available from retailers near you.
Types of HDTV and How To Choose
There are three main choices you have to make when buying an HDTV.
First, what kind of screen technology do you find that you like best: LCD or Plasma?
Second, which display method suits your needs, direct-view (like a regular TV), or projection TV?
And third, which of the two main screen resolutions will you choose, 720 or 1080?
Let's look at these three groupings each in turn.
Flat-panel LCD HDTVs use roughly the same technology as your flat-panel PC or Macintosh computer monitor. The pixels on the liquid crystal screen are like little shutters, and under electronic control they let through light that is produced by a layer of tiny colored lights behind them.
The technology doesn't matter; what matters is that LCD HDTVs are thin, wide, lightweight, bright, crisp, increasingly affordable, look good even in a brightly lit room, and are the most popular type of HDTV. The only real complaint some critics make is that the "darks" on an LCD panel aren't as truly black as they are on, say, a plasma-type display; so the dynamic range – how dark the darks are compared to how light the lights are – isn't as great. But most people find them just dandy. Problems with fast-moving objects creating "streaks" when they zip across the screen – a real problem if you're watching a ballgame – are being overcome as new, faster LCD screens have been developed.
LCD HDTVs are becoming very affordable in sizes from about 20 inches to about 40 inches. Once you get bigger than a 40-inch set, LCDs start getting more expensive per inch than plasma. (Now be careful: You will also find some tiny LCD sets, as small as 8 inches – those aren't HDTVs, those are just LCD TVs for showing regular TV signals; you can tell, because the prices are too low to be HDTV.)
Flat-panel plasma displays also light up pixels directly on the screen using electronic controls, but it's gases in the little pixels that give off light directly when stimulated.
The main advantage of plasma technology is that it can be produced cost-effectively in very large formats, where LCDs start to get too expensive. If you're going for a 50-inch screen, plasma will be your first choice.
Plasma technology is improving every year; problems with fixed-image "burn-in" are less a problem, for example.
Whichever technology you choose, you will be wise to buy from among the newest models, because these new technologies are evolving rapidly, and newer models will just perform better. (You could ask the salesperson to look up the manufacturing date of a given model you're considering.)
New Technologies and Old: CRT, DLP, LCoS, and More
Cathode-ray tube, or CRT, TVs, are still available, though manufacturers are moving away from that technology and some have discontinued their glass-tube lines altogether. You can get mid-sized (32-inch, for example) HDTVs in CRT form; they are relatively cheap, reliable, and good for brightly lit rooms. But quality of picture is in decline as manufacturers increasingly position them as entry-level models, and some stores don't even bother carrying them because their sales are swamped by LCD and plasma models.
You'll find brand-new display technologies such as DLP, LCoS, SED, FED, OLED, D-ILA, SXRD, and no doubt new bristling acronyms still to come – all eventually to compete for your attention by offering larger HDTVs with even better displays with fewer compromises. Of these, however, only DLP is currently widely available, for projection TV sets. The rest won't show up on store floors for another year or more, and initially at premium prices, so we would advise you not to wait for them.
720 vs. 1080 Resolution, and "i" vs. "p" Scanning
In addition to deciding between LCD and plasma (for most people), you have to decide between "720" and "1080" lines of resolution. This gets complicated, but fortunately there aren't any really "bad" choices to make here, just more expensive and less expensive. Here's some background, and rules of thumb to make it simpler to choose.
The numbers refer to how many lines are packed into the screen. More lines equals a better picture – usually. But more lines also cost more, so let's think about this first.
Rather than get bogged down in all the technical jargon and all the arguments raging on videophile sites across the Web, let's take this down to a few simple rules of thumb.
First, a smaller screen doesn't need 1080 lines. If you are buying an HDTV smaller than about 40 inches, you will almost certainly be very happy with a 720-line screen. In fact, according to most video experts, you will have a hard time telling the difference unless you really, really concentrate.
What does make a difference is this: Get a "720p" or progressive-scan screen, rather than a "720i" or interlaced screen. Here's why.
A 720i screen draws the screen the way old-fashioned TVs do: It interlaces, or draws every other line from top to bottom first, then goes back and draws all the in-between lines second. It does this so incredibly fast that you can't tell. A 720p screen, on the other hand, does progressive-scanning – it draws each line across, from top to bottom, in order.
The original reason for interlacing was that it is simpler to engineer, so it costs less to manufacture, and on standard-def TV there is no discernable quality difference. It is still true that interlaced is cheaper: A 720i model will cost a bit less than a 720p model. But in HD, the difference between interlaced and progressive-scan display matters. For smaller HDTV models, paying extra for 720p will get you a screen that is slightly, but discernibly, smoother, crisper, and with less flicker.
For large HDTVs – 50 inches and up – get a 1080p system. No broadcast, cable, or satellite provider is likely to offer HD shows at 1080p because it requires much more bandwidth than they care to tie up. But you will be able to see images of that resolution on the new HD-capable DVDs when they show up, and you will see the difference in image quality on sets that large.
Bottom line: Pay extra for a 1080p system screen on a 50-inch-or-larger HDTV. Smaller than that, buy a 720p model.
Remember: The difference is only apparent when you are watching shows that are coming in to you at these high resolutions. But over time, more and more of what you watch will be available in a variety of higher-definition signals, so it will matter increasingly over time.
Direct-View HDTVs
There are two main approaches to HDTV screens: Direct-view, which is what most people have in their homes; and projection TVs, which are designed to produce a very large image.
The most common type of TV is direct-view – light is produced right there on the screen you're looking at. Regular TVs, as well as standard LCD and plasma HDTVs, are direct-view. The HDTVs in this class are wide and thin, somewhat light considering how big the screen is, and in theory can even be hung on the wall. The most common direct-view HDTVs run from about 27 inches across to about 50 inches.
This type of TV throws an image up onto a screen, and is designed to produce a very large TV image at a more reasonable cost. We're talking about starting at 50 inches and going up to 85 and even over 200 inches, if you can believe it.
Rear-projection HDTVs have the projection device inside the TV box, behind the screen. Front-projection systems have the image-generating unit in front of the TV screen, often in a separate unit that sits on the floor several feet in front of the TV screen. You can even get projection systems that hang on the ceiling and project onto a screen as if you were in a movie theater: These systems can produce an image the size of your wall – in fact, they can project the image right on your wall.
How they create the image varies from type to type: The original projection units used three CRTs to generate the picture and have it projected onto the screen; newer models use LCD or plasma displays; some of the newest technologies, such as DLP (which uses an improbable system of teeny mirrors embedded on computer chips to reflect an image onto the screen), focus on this area in order to reduce size and weight and create brighter images.
These front-projection systems don't work well in sunlit rooms, so you will want to put them in their own dedicated rooms where you can control the light. Of course, you'll want to invest in a theater-sound system, as long as you're putting together what amounts to a movie theater in your home. Still, if you have the space and are willing to invest in the installation effort, front-projection HDTV can give you an affordable yet truly big-screen experience
So projection TVs take up a lot of space, and the rear-projection models weigh a lot. They need to be adjusted from time to time, and their light bulbs need to be replaced each year. But they are the HDTV to investigate if you want the very biggest HD pictures in your home.
One Thing Is Sure: Bigger Is Definitely Better
It's nice to get a bigger TV. With old-fashioned analog TVs, a bigger TV didn't really give you a better picture, since there are so few lines on the old TVs and you're just making them bigger, not crisper.
With an HDTV, though, in a typical living room or den, a HDTV, with its many times higher resolution and many times more colors, really does look better when it's bigger.
In fact, Consumer Reports says that the most common complaint of HDTV buyers is that they wish they had bought an even bigger model!
Bottom line: Get the biggest screen you can justify spending the money on, and for which you have the space. You'll be happier with a 32-inch HDTV than 27-inch, and happier still with a 37-inch model.
Assuming, that is, you can fit it into the room. No, seriously: Measure that corner, or that TV cabinet, before you buy. Rule of thumb on measuring: A flat-panel HDTV typically is exactly as wide, side-to-side, as the advertised diagonal dimension. So a "32-inch HDTV" is also almost exactly 32 inches from side to side. That's because the bezel, or frame, on flat-panel HDTVs tends to be so thin. The good news is that flat-panel HDTVs are thin – only three to six inches deep – so you don't need much space behind the TV, the way you did with large tube TVs. And of course, the flat-panel HDTVs weigh much less than tube-TVs, and can be mounted on the wall – if you have the wall space, so that's another thing to measure before you buy.
How Will You Get Your HD Signal Into the HDTV?
This will come as big news to many shoppers: Just because you buy an HDTV doesn't mean that whatever shows you watch on it will be displayed in high-definition!
An HDTV is capable of displaying a high-definition show – if it receives a high-def image, it will show it. If it receives a regular standard-definition TV signal, it will show that. The standard-def image won't look better, it will just look like it always does – fuzzy. It might even look slightly worse, since you're showing it on a bigger screen than before. It will just be – well, TV.
So you need to get your hands on high-def shows. Here's how.
If you use an antenna, then you will be relieved to know that many local stations also broadcast their shows in HD. (To find out which HD broadcast channels you will be able to receive in your neighborhood, check out the Web site AntennaWeb.org.)
Important note: If you use an antenna to get your HD, you will have to get an "integrated" HDTV, one that includes a digital tuner. Don't buy an "HD-ready" or "HD-compatible" model, because those don't include tuners, and you need a tuner to dial among the stations. Another tip: If your antenna is working fine now, you don't need a new one, and you especially don't need to buy a pricey new "HDTV-capable" antenna. The one you have now for regular TV will pick up the broadcaster's HD signal just as well.
If you use cable or satellite, you don't need a tuner built into your TV. You can save a little by getting an "HD-ready" system because you will be getting your signal from that set-top box provided by the cable or dish company.
So the first thing you do when you buy your HDTV is call up your satellite or cable company and sign up for one of their HD subscriptions.
They'll have to send out a technician to put a new HD-capable set-top box, and if your satellite dish is an older model, maybe a new dish too. (See if you can get them to make you a deal on the cost of the new box or dish since you're signing up for what is probably a more expensive HDTV package.)
Good news: The technician will plug everything together. Bad news: Some technicians don't know what they're doing. When they're done, but before they leave, turn on your HDTV and go to an HD channel, such as Discovery HD Theater – if it's working, you'll see a spectacular nature scene of some kind that will cause you to go "Whoa!" If it's working, you will also notice that the picture is in widescreen format, not square. You're set. If the preceding is not true, make the tech do it over.
You now have all your old regular-TV shows, plus a lot of HD choices, how many depending on which of the increasingly expensive HD packages you sign up for. Typically, even the basic digital-HD package includes HD versions of your local as well as national news shows (but on different channels – check the cheat sheet they give you; your TV HD news shows will probably be on channels in the 700s). Likewise, you'll get HD versions of quite a few prime-time shows. You'll also get some HD sports channels (ESPN), some HD cable movie channels such as TNT, Discovery HD Theater (worth checking out!), InHD, and UniversalHD.
If you subscribe to premium channels such as HBO, you'll find HD versions of them too, as well as numerous extra-cost sports channels and the like. You may also be pleased to find you get several dozen music channels from your cable or dish feed, to play over your nice Dolby 5.1 speaker system, if you bought one (see below).
As we say, all this costs extra. But that's OK, because you will find yourself spending lots of time in front of your freshly amazing television set.
VCRs and DVD Players – Uh Oh! Try a DVR
Your old VCR will still be able to record and play back most of your standard-def TV shows, but definitely not the HD stuff. Not at all. And your old DVD player will still play through your new HDTV, though not in HD because it's not an HD-capable DVD player.
You have some choices for upgrading your recording to HD. First, you can get a new upconverting DVD player for as little as a hundred dollars, that will "upconvert" the DVDs you play so they look better on your new HDTV. This is an investment worth making, because your DVDs will look noticeably better playing on an HDTV, even if the DVD itself isn't HD.
Your VCR, unfortunately, is getting obsolete right there in front of you, and can't be dragged into the new world of HD (the VCR technology can't be made to handle the huge increase in data required by HD). Fortunately, you can still record your favorite shows by getting what's called a DVR, or digital video recorder – the first and still best-known being the Tivo. You can rent a DVR from your cable or satellite company and pay them a monthly fee (about $12-$15) to use their "guide" so you can record programs easily. Or you can buy your own DVR from a company like Tivo or Motorola, hook it up yourself, and then pay Tivo that monthly fee (about the same) to use their channel guide service (which some people claim is easier to use than its cable-TV rivals). The guide in these cases is a channel on the TV that shows listings of all upcoming shows. You can search and sort the listings, and with a few simple point-and-clicks, tell the DVR what to record. It's much easier than trying to get your VCR to record something. There are bonus features such as the ability to stop live TV (while you go to the bathroom or take a call) or rewind live TV, or play it in slow motion. Be sure you order the HD version of the DVR, such as the Tivo Series 3, so you will be able to record the HD shows too.
As to HD on a DVD player, you might want to wait until the battle between two technologies – Blue-Ray and HD-DVD – is resolved. For now, both types are still very expensive and only a limited number of movies are available in either format. When things get sorted out, maybe in a year or two, you will be able to watch high-def DVDs that have six times the resolution of your old-style DVD player – and with three times the bandwidth of your typical cable connection, movies will look even better than the HD movies on your cable feed.
Sound for Your HDTV
In most cases, your new HDTV will come with stereo speakers built in (but do check before you buy!). This will give you very good stereo sound from your high-def TV programs.
But HD offers you, in addition to a much-improved picture, a sound signal better than your CD player produces. In fact, HDTVs have built-in Dolby 5.1 surround-sound capabilities. This gives you the golden opportunity to spend money – on a much-improved TV sound system.
If you're that kind of person, you can buy various audio components and cobble together a terrific "home-theater" sound system to get the most out of your new HDTV's capabilities. Or you could hook the HDTV to your existing Dolby 5.1 component audio system.
Or if you're like most of us, who don't know much about audio equipment, you can instead get a "home-theater-in-a-box" system, from the same store you're buying the HDTV from, if you like.
It will include a number of speakers – this isn't just stereo, folks, this is surround sound! You'll get two speakers in the front for stereo, two or more speakers in the back to create that "roundness" effect, a little speaker above the TV for voices, and a big fat bass speaker so your Independence Day DVD really rumbles. You also get a receiver that processes the signal from the cable or satellite system, processes the Dolby features, and sends it to the speakers. Many systems come with that upconverting DVD player we mentioned earlier, as well.
The entry-level versions of these systems can be quite inexpensive – how does a hundred dollars sound? Or you can spend lots more of course. Some models have wireless speakers so you don't have to run wiring across the room to the back speakers. Some don't use rear speakers at all – they simulate the sound somehow. Getting a new sound system is strictly optional; yet even the entry-level systems will give you noticeably better sound from your HD programs than even the pretty-good stereo built into the HDTV. And don't forget that most HD packages from cable and satellite providers include dozens of commercial-free music-only (no video) channels that will sound even more wonderful coming out of a standalone sound system.
It's Time To Talk About Cables and Connectors
Of course, your new HDTV will connect with other devices using cables, but you will be thrilled to know that for these new TVs, new kinds of connectors and cables are in vogue. That's because the huge amount of data involved in HD requires cabling systems that can handle it.
The main thing to remember is that you want your HDTV to have something called an "HDMI" connector, so it can get the best possible picture and sound when hooked up to your cable or satellite system. Most HDTVs come with at least one HDMI connector; two is nice to have.
An alternative to HDMI is something called DVI. Your HDTV will probably also have connectors for component video cables, and for S-Video, and possibly for composite video. Note that neither S-Video nor composite video are able to handle HD signals; for that, you need HDMI, or DVI, or at least component video. (Composite – component – it's easy to get confused!) Nor, by the way, will an RF connector from your roof antenna handle HD; you'll need to upgrade your antenna connector as well. Talk to your store salesperson.
The purpose of all these cables is to handle the incoming HD signal from cable or satellite dish or antenna, plus output to your sound system if you have one, plus more input from your DVR or DVD or VCR and so on.
Your HDTV and other devices may already come with the cables you need. If not, you will have to buy them, and they can be a bit expensive – or very, very expensive, depending.
Good-quality cables from your HDTV store will cost about $30 for a component-video cable, up to $60 for an HDMI cable, and $20 or so each for an S-Video, composite video, and audio cables, if you need them. (Note: Keep the cables fairly short; six feet should be plenty.)
There is some controversy over how important super-premium cables might be. With older analog systems, the quality of the insulation wrapper, gold connectors, and special manufacturing care could make a big difference in sound and video quality. But because HDTV is digital in both video and sound, experts say fancy cables – which can cost $100 or even $200 each – are unnecessary; any decent cable that works will work as well as any other cable.
Our advice is, when the salespeople sing the praises of pricey cabling, you just stick to basic, inexpensive, name-brand cables, and leave the pricier brands for the audio-video-philes with super-vision and trained ears.
OTHER FEATURES
Mount It On A Wall? LCD and plasma HDTVs are thin and (relatively) light enough that you can mount them on your wall, just like in the TV commercials. The HDTV store will sell you the appropriate mounting equipment. It's just a matter of making sure you find that wall stud, because these things are lighter than tube TVs, but they still weigh a bit. Or you can pay the store to send somebody out to mount it for you.
Cable Cards are a substitute for those bulky set-top boxes. They do the processing work of the set-top box but are only as big as a thick credit card, and fit into a slot on the side of the HDTV. Unfortunately, cable companies are battling with legislators over cable-card standards, and existing cable cards can't handle interactive features such as on-demand programming. Our advice is to skip this feature for the time being, unless you plan to mount the TV on the wall and want to avoid the set-top box.
VISITING THE STORE
Shopping and buying your HDTV from a local store has several advantages over buying it online.
First, you can get answers to your many nagging little questions, right on the spot. Second, you can get advice about what peripherals and add-ons you need or might want, such as which cables this model needs, how a wall mount works or what kinds of stands there are for various-size models. You can also buy a real "surge suppressor" to plug all your components into, so your wonderful and expensive new system doesn't get fried in the next electrical storm.
You can take a look at some sound systems that might work well with the model you plan to buy.
You can also look at knickknacks such as HDTV spray cleaner – because you do not want to use regular blue window cleaner on your HDTV screen, it will remove the antiglare coating!
And perhaps a set of wireless headphones so you can listen with good stereo sound late into the night.
You can also arrange for delivery, and maybe even setup if you're not comfortable deciphering the directions for consumer electronics. If you are doing anything complicated, like wall mounting, installation could be an especially good idea. An installer could even take those four new clickers that came with all the components, and figure out how to consolidate everything down to one remote control – and then show you how to use it. (Installation costs extra, though you can get a break on the cost depending on how much stuff you buy from the store that sends out the installer.)
HOW HARD IS THIS?
The next TV you buy is almost certainly going to be a digital HDTV of some kind, simply because most of TV makers have stopped manufacturing the old-style plain models.
A couple of years ago, when HDTVs were new to the market and manufacturers were still figuring things out, it was easy to get confused about which type of HDTV was which, or even whether something that seemed to be a high-definition TV really was one.
Now that HDTVs are by far the majority of all TVs sold, and with several years experience under their belts, manufacturers have almost figured out how to market these things to the general public. It's a far less confusing world than it used to be.
And the cable and dish techs are getting much better at making sure the high-def signal gets from point A to point B so everything works as it should.
So you should be able to have a good shopping experience when buying your HDTV.
And even if you get confused, you can almost just throw a dart and buy whatever it hits, because you won't go too far wrong – you will at least get a good, solid, functional, reliable, and real high-def HDTV. And you'll be glad you did.
Resources
If you need to overwhelm yourself with research, here are two groups of information resources: Links to the major manufacturers of HD systems; and links to popular buyers’ guides for HD.
They will each pop up in a separate browser window so you don't lose track; when you're ready to shop for specific models and want to find which stores in your area have them and at what price, come back to Krillion. |
