‘Tis the season for a lot of things, including marketing aimed at luring you into buying expensive gear. This year, there may be no product area that fits that description better than HDTVs (high-definition television sets).
Thanks to a lethal combination of technical jargon and too many choices, the HDTV market is complex and not at all user-friendly. It’s a mess, but hopefully we can help with your next purchase.
The best abbreviated pieces of advice this holiday shopping season for HDTV buyers: Buy an HDTV rated for 720p/1080i, particularly rear-projection HDTVs, as long as they have connections for HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) cables; go for cheap HDMI cables — US$25 versus the $100 ones — and forgo buying an HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc player for now.
The main caveat is to know what you want from the HDTV. What will you use it for? HDTVs rated “Full HD” are 1080p (as opposed to 1080i, the first of our confusing technical terms) and are the perfect gift for Steven Spielberg and others in the film or multimedia business, as well as for computer gamers who intend to hook up their PlayStation 3s or Xbox 360s to their HDTVs via HDMI cables.
Just about anyone else will do fine with 1080i for the next several years and can put off buying 1080p — or whatever the next generation is — until prices come down.
The difference in quality between an HDTV rated for 1080i and one rated for 1080p is very delicate, a difference only someone working in multimedia or film might notice. And 1080i is about half the price of 1080p in a range of gadgets, including HDTVs and HD disc players. You can save more than $1000 buying an HDTV rated 1080i instead of 1080p, depending on the size of the set.
“Most broadcasts today are in 720p. If a consumer is buying a 50-inch or smaller screen and is going to view it from more than 5 feet away, a 720p/1080i set works the best,” says Riddhi Patel, principal TV systems analyst at market researcher iSuppli.
“For larger than 50-inch size, it may make sense to get a 1080p set,” he adds. “Having said this, the content is not there today – (1080p) would just be getting yourself prepared for a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player in two-three years’ time.”
Now we’ll pause the flow for a jargon break. The “i” in 1080i stands for interlaced, while the “p” is for progressive scan. The 1080 figure refers to the number of lines shown on the screen that create the picture. A 1080i HDTV shows its 1080 lines in an interlaced fashion, meaning that half the lines (they’re split into even- and odd-numbered lines) are shown first, and then the 540 odd lines are shown during the next display update, interlaced with the even lines.
“The human eye doesn’t generally see the flicker,” says Jake Richter, a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research. But he warns that high-action content, especially in games, will be affected by the difference. He recommends that gamers buy 1080p and make sure the games they buy are rated for 1080p. Not all games are.
With 1080p, progressive scan, all 1080 lines are displayed in one pass, providing crisper motion on bigger display screens. The other number, 720p, is 720 lines of vertical resolution, progressive scan.
A key distinction on 1080i for users in Europe to make versus those in the U.S. is that the frame rate is different, and means 1080i can produce a slightly more obvious flicker during action sequences for European systems than U.S. systems, Richter warns. U.S.-style systems are 1080i/30, meaning that the screen is updated 30 times a second, but European-style systems are 1080i/25, meaning the screen is updated 25 times a second. The lower frame rate causes the flicker. This warning also goes out to those who share the European system, including Australia and much of Asia and Africa. The U.S.-style system is prevalent in North America and Japan.
The next hurdle is what kind of screen, LCD (liquid crystal display), PDP (plasma display panel) or rear-projection. If you have the space for it in your house, a rear-projection screen may be your best choice, we hear from PC World, and agree that’s an excellent suggestion. The picture quality is fantastic and prices are lower than a comparable-size LCD or PDP TV. The main difference is that you can’t mount a rear-projection TV on a wall, and it takes up more space because it’s much larger.
For those without the space, PDP TV picture quality is much better than LCD in larger sizes, but in anything up to about 42 inches, LCD is fine. Consider that PDP normally sells at a premium over LCD TVs before making a choice.
One caveat: If you plan to play a lot of games, plasma is a bad choice because static images can “burn” a permanent mark into the screen. This can also happen if you watch a lot of channels that have “tickers” running on them, such as CNN or ESPN. Some in the industry recommend that computer games should never be played on plasma TVs.
Having said all of this, it’s important to buy a set from a quality brand. Sony and Sharp have put out some great HDTVs and Vizio has won popularity in the U.S. Philips, Samsung and LG also put out nice HDTVs, and sometimes at a lower price simply because their brands don’t command the premium that a Sony might. The point is, once you decide on the right kind of HDTV, the choice of brand is also important. Here’s a link to another PC World site that might be helpful. It includes prices and reviews.
Another choice to make is between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc as the HD replacement for DVDs. Do yourself a favor and stay out of the fray for now, and even for the next two or three years.
Instead, consider a new DVD player that will “upconvert” existing DVD movies. DVD players that upconvert come in a range of sizes and functions, but you can generally get a good-quality player from Philips, Samsung or Sony for under $100.
Ignoring HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc for now will save you time and money. The first problem with the technology is how confusing the difference between the two is. It mainly boils down to storage capacity of the discs. But companies backing the technologies have made choosing one over the other even more maddening by putting out certain movies in only one format, as if users want to buy both players just so they can watch a movie. It’s like these companies have never heard of HD broadcasts on cable or pay-per-view.
Thank goodness users who want to watch and keep HD movies can do so on TV for a lot cheaper than on an HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc. The Bourne Ultimatum, which is available only on HD DVD, costs $30 at Wal-Mart. But HD movies on pay-per-view run as little as $5. You’d be better off buying a TiVo HD DVR (digital video recorder) or another DVR rated for HD.
Good luck and happy hunting.
