I realize this is an overly dramatic if not vague introduction for a how-to guide, but there is some truth to it. For those of us (which included me not too long ago) who have not been keeping tabs on the network television industry, there is a very important date to mark on the calendar: 17 February 2009. D-Day. Thanks to numerous corporate lobbyists and US Congress, all network television stations will stop broadcasting their analog signal on this date and complete the transition to digital broadcast. This will be the first time in US history that television broadcasting has established a change which is not backwards compatible. Analog television will be a relic of the past, and the digital age will complete its global presence.
In anticipation, some of the major networks have already made the switch to digital broadcast. Even today, several over-the-air (OTA), cable, and satellite broadcasts can be received in HDTV with the qualified antenna and tuner. Analog television sets receiving over-the-air programming will still work after that date, but will require converter boxes to change new digital broadcasts into the older analog format. Cable and satellite subscribers with analog television sets will most likely add yet another box from their service providers which converts signal for the DTV transition.
How will you place yourself, your family, and loved ones? What you do to prepare for the future will depend solely on what you know about it. This guide will infuse months of research into a very easy to understand how-to article, all for the purpose of preparing you for D-Day.
Over the past three months of 2007, I have personally researched the subject of HDTV to great lengths. I went and read what everyone else on the Web had to say on the subject; but it doesn’t take long to realize that old technology news often spoils overnight. Many of the guides out there talked about the upcoming digital transition as if it were wishful thinking, and others discussed how you would need an additional HDTV tuner to receive programming. Simply achieve, if the article, guide, or scrap of news pertaining to HDTV shopping was written prior to 1 March 2007, then it probably is outdated. You will learn why later in rule #1 below.
At first it was for the simple purpose of improving my lift of the technology so I could make an informed purchase, but it soon developed into a full fledged obsession to score the best product possible for my money. I found myself interjecting HDTV techno-quips at business lunches, if for nothing more than to take everyone else up a level from which I was once a portion of. But tranquil, what does all this have to do with a guide? Simply put, it’s all relevant to the HDTV industry as a whole. It’s the difference between buying obsolete from cutting edge.
This guide will educate you on the most relevant and essential terms used in HDTV today. Using this guide will ultimately save you days of confusing research, and will better prepare you to determine your HDTV and home theater equipment needs. But most importantly it will arm you with the necessary knowledge to make an educated purchase on a budget. If you are even remotely considering an HDTV purchase, please do yourself a huge favor and read through this article.Determine your needs
In the last section you learned of the upcoming transition to network broadcast. In this section, we move on to the start of the decision making process: settle what you need. Before we get into the meat of the matter, it’s important to note that this guide is not going to help you select the next gaming LCD for your computer or a broad plasma exhibit for your cruise ship. Cruise ship advice will be given only after a complete site survey and world tour. The focus of this guide is on the principal household HDTV television set. What are you using now?
The best way to start deciding on the size of your new HDTV is to look at what you presently use to watch movies and programming. The first step is to measure the present screen diagonally, since this is how television and monitors are measured, and then measure the distance from your seat to the front of the picture display. Since it applies to most people making the switch from analog to digital, I will use myself as the most common example for this guide.
Assume first that your old cathode ray tube television site used the 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning that for every 4 units of width there are 3 units of height. That was then, and this is now. Say goodbye to your full screen VHS cassettes, and get ready for the widescreen world of 16:9 picture ratio. I was perfectly happy with my 36″ full screen CRT, but my new Sharp 52″ LCD has pleasantly made me a widescreen believer. In terms of older CRT technology, larger screens cost more and that often determined the size of your set.
More important than picture size is where you sit relative to the describe screen. So if your small apartment forces you to sit terminate to a exiguous TV, you won’t have to spend as much on a big screen. In most cases, it feels more comfortable sitting away from a 4:3 television set at a distance that’s between three and six times the width of the shroud. The chart below gives a rough estimate for minimum and maximum viewing distances on 4:3 televisions. Use this in conjunction with your current environment to choose if your viewing habits need to be changed.
4:3 Screen Size (in inches)
Min Viewing Distance
(in feet)
Max Viewing Distance
(in feet)
13
2.6
5.2
19
3.8
7.6
20
4
8
24
4.8
9.6
27
5.4
10.8
32
6.4
12.8
36
7.2
14.8
40
8
16
You may not understand the purpose of all this measuring just yet, so I will explain. Widescreen televisions showing high-resolution DVD and HDTV always peer better than content displayed on full camouflage televisions. This dramatic improvement allows you to sit much closer to the picture screen and experience a more immersive theater like picture. For widescreen 16:9 televisions displaying HDTV or DVD content, you can comfortably sit as close as 1.5 times the screen’s diagonal measurement and never notice a loss in quality. However, sitting farther away than three times the screen size means you’re likely to miss out on the theater like feeling. Exercise the chart below to reference minimum and maximum viewing distances to the recommended widescreen screen size.
16:9 Screen Size (in inches)
Min Viewing Distance
(in feet)
Max Viewing Distance
(in feet)
26
3.3
6.5
30
3.8
7.6
34
4.3
8.5
42
5.3
10.5
47
5.9
11.8
50
6.3
12.5
55
6.9
12.8
60
7.5
15
65
8.1
16.2
So lets say you are like me, and have a 36″ fat conceal 4:3 CRT television. The most comfortable viewing distance for my old television set was between 7-15 feet. Essentially, this is really step one in this whole process. I now know that the same viewing distance would require a 60″ widescreen HDTV space to get the same experience. Fortunately there are two factors which made the 52″ HDTV a perfect replacement:
If you plan on mounting the set on a wall, make sure to take the distance from the front of the viewing screen in your estimated viewing distance planning. Because both LCD and plasma televisions generate a remarkable amount of heat. you should plan to leave at least two or three inches on all sides so that the TV has enough ventilation. This is notable if you plan on placing the unit inside an entertainment center. In most cases the HDTV will come with it own add-on stand, which means it could possibly sit in the same spot as your old analog television. Peripheral Equipment Requirements
My old television set offered many connection interfaces with my home theater equipment. Component video used RCA cables from the DVD player into the A/V receiver, and then to the back of the television region. My DVD player offered digital audio output using another RCA cable, or if I wanted I could spend a hard to find fiber optic cable if I was concerned about electrical noise reducing sound quality. I would often ask myself how it could gain any better. HDMI, that’s how. The High Definition Multimedia Interface offers a completely digital, totally uncompressed audio and video solution all in one sigle cable.
But before we jump into the benefits (and pitfalls) of stepping up to HDMI, let’s examine what kind of equipment you will connect into your HDTV. This is really a list which is subject to change, especially since the Sony Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 have revealed future releases with HDMI connections, and the HD-DVD vs Blue-ray war is far from over. There are more than a few things to consider here, and they play an important role in the overall selection of your HDTV.
Source material is important, whether VHS, DVD, or HDTV, a display will always convert (scale) to fit its native resolution. If the incoming source has more pixels than the display’s native resolution (ie. HD-DVD or blue-ray on a 720p HDTV), you will lose some visible detail and sharpness, though often what you’re left with still looks astronomical. If the incoming source has fewer pixels than the native resolution (ie. VHS, DVD, and some high-definition broadcasts on a 1080p HDTV), you will not get any extra sharpness from the television’s pixels; in fact, it will look worse.
So what do you do? You want great portray image quality, but you don’t want to sacrifice resolution. Here are some simple question to help guide you in selecting the best native resolution for your needs:
For most people who are buying for their present day needs, and plan to upgrade in the 2-3 year future, then a 720p HDTV is perfect. The widespread availability of 1080p HDTV’s has made the 1080i alternative not really a technology worth having. With that said, those of us who want to make our best attempt at a future-proof HDTV win should begin looking towards 1080p solutions.
But before we move on, let’s address the subject of HDMI and it’s relationship to your HDTV purchase.
Without going into the boring details describing the many ongoing revisions to the HDMI standard and what they might mean to you, this portion of the article will focus on the more important question: will you need HDMI in your HDTV? The objective answer is yes. If for nothing more than the fact that HDMI allows uncompressed audio and video to travel in digital format over just one cable. Technically, HDMI is the replacement for many older cables, such as coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, component video and VGA D-Sub. Additionally, some industry critics claim that Intel’s High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) will soon be the standard DRM protection for most all movies published. So if you plan on watching DVD-quality or better digital content, you had better begin planning a home theater system which involves HDMI.
In my particular case, this project meant not only replacing my 36″ CRT television with a 52″ LCD HDTV, but the DVD player and A/V receiver were also replaced with versions supporting HDMI. None of these items were inexpensive, and knowing your budget for a project like this is valuable to putting all of the pieces together.
Know your budget
In the last section you should have figured out the size and resolution for the HDTV you plan on purchasing. Now we move on to the most important section of the decision making process: the budget. Since we all make different incomes, the rest of this article will concentrate on how to best go about investing a sizable portion of that income towards a primary television set. It could be argued that knowing your budget should come before you know what you want, but lets face it: nobody is going to walk away with an unheard of bargain in the Internet age.
PriceGrabber has made sure that you and everyone else can collect the absolute lowest price on everything available to consumers. To this same end, using a price comparison tool such as PriceGrabber can save you hundreds of dollars. It saved me over $1100 by purchasing my Sharp AQUOS LC-52D62U 52″ LCD 1080p HDTV from an online retailer instead of my local retail outlet. Although saving this remarkable money allowed me to get an HDTV that would normally be out of my price range, the consume did not go without incident.
By purchasing online, you put your trust into a freight company to affirm your HDTV. In my first attempt, the online merchant and their contracted freight company had a breakdown in communication which left me sitting at home waiting for a delivery that was scheduled to happen but never did. Two weeks later, I was taking a chance with a different online merchant (who ironically used the same freight company), and my new HDTV was delivered (albeit considerable later then initially scheduled). Even despite the perils of a freight shipment and botched delivery, I would do it all again to save that much money.
So the most important demand is how much you have got budgeted to spend. Sure, the 60+ rush 1080p HDTV paired with a PS3 sounds real nice, but unless you can safely handle the increased financial burden, you are better off either waiting to make your purchase, or getting something more in line with your income. On a related note, because the first HDTV set I purchased was essentially lost with the freight carrier, I kept shopping the same item and two weeks later it had dropped a full $100. Technology is getting better by the minute, just like yesterdays technology is getting cheaper.
There are a few very basic items which should be considered a “given” in shopping for HDTV technology. These are the basic rules, which I learned and ultimately employed to effect my (overly) informed decision to purchase the Sharp AQUOS LC-52D62U 52″ LCD 1080p HDTV. Basic shopping rules for HDTV:
Go window shopping
In the last section, Benchmark Reviews offered a few general rules to help make your shopping search a little more efficient. Now it’s time for a diminutive footwork.
Read everything you can about the product of your choice, and compose obvious to read just as much about the competing models. But no amount of colorful magazine pictures or high-resolution web page images can recreate the accurate appearance and performance of any HDTV. Contemplate this a fact, and don’t make a purchase without first seeing the real thing in person. Even though you may not have any intention on purchasing from a local retail outlet, you should use their showroom display to your advantage.
Local retail stores offer you with the opportunity to see the same product you plan on buying as you would see it in your own living room. But don’t be taken with the special lighting and over-extentded screen brightness which display floor salespeople employ to impress uninformed buyers. Without being too intrusive, you can request to skip though some channels or change room lighting, which will help you see which models offer the best contrast ratio (the incompatibility between the brightest and darkest colors produced). Because of showroom parlor tricks, you may not have a comely chance at comparing contrast ratio between products; and in the end it may recall a leap of faith to trust the manufacturers technical specifications.
Before you compose any major purchase, make sure you allow at least a full day to reflect on the transaction. In other words, don’t resolve what you want after reading this and then jump right into the checkout stand. There are still a few checklist items remaining to ensure that you get the most out of your money; or at a bare minimum, you get what you pay for. Here is my final list of suggestions prior to making the big purchase:
So that’s it. Without totally losing you with technical banter, this article should help you select and purchase your first HDTV. If there anything you would like to add, or simply comment on this article, please post a comment in the Benchmark Reviews Discussion Forum.
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