HDTV, a waste of money??

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gamer2
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HDTV, a waste of money??

Post by gamer2 » Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:23 pm

Ok, I was at walmart this afternoon getting the brakes on my moms truck fixed and I was looking at HDTVs. I did not see any real visual difference to HDTVs compared to LDTVs.

Has anyone noticed this? The only real difference between HDTVs and LDTVs is the price (I know size).

Your thoughts?
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Post by Reaperman@home » Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:45 pm

I'm not a fan of today's televisions. Thanks to funny aspect ratios and high prices what we would have paid $100 for, now tends to cost $600. funny how a 40" 16:9 seems to have about the same usable area as a 30" 4:3 at less than half the price. (I suppose I should check my math on that) And oddly everybody seems to love widescreen. Then everybody tries to use the useless portion of their wide televisions by putting everything into 'fat mode'--HD is the only "upgrade" that lowered the average joe's picture quality.

The flip side of that is that I do run a 4:3 HD projector at home, and there is a noticable quality improvement when signal source is HD. I don't do it very often, since the converter box to do it is a bit of a pain, and I'd rather just run vga.
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Post by ganonbanned » Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:52 pm

the only reason I will get one is because everything goes HD in 2009.

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Post by bicostp » Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:56 pm

No, there is a difference, especially when you're using an HD video source. (I'm not sure about yours but my Wal-Mart just pipes their SDTV Wal-Mart TV Network to all the TVs.)

I think saying there's no difference between SD and HD is like saying there's no difference between running your computer at 800x600 vs 1280x1024.

The only thing i really hate is when Circuit City has two identical TVs set up, running identical videos, but one has an HD signal and the other has exaggerated SD. (That is, the HDTV has a Blu-Ray disc but the SDTV has a video that looks like it came off YouTube. <img src="http://www.skytroniks.com/images/databa ... es/wtf.gif">)

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Post by vskid » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:06 pm

We have a 48" HDTV, the most high-def device we have is our DVD player that outputs 480p, but I think it looks far better than SDTVs. We even have our satellite going to it through the antenna input, and I think it looks far superior to other TVs (theres the color bleed still, I need an s-video cable). And the 4:3 stretched to 16:9 doesn't look bad at all, I don't even notice it, circles still appear to be circles, people don't look fat, and it doesn't even cut anything off (at least not that I've noticed).
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Post by Reaperman@home » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:09 pm

ganonbanned wrote:the only reason I will get one is because everything goes HD in 2009.
if by 'everything' you mean the 5-6 local broadcast television stations you pick up with tinfoil covered rabbit ears...

My guess is that cable and satellite will be dragging their feet on many of their stations. Not to mention movies and video games--which is all I use mine for anyway.
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Post by gamer2 » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:10 pm

Looks like I am going to have to get one sometime. Maybe me and my room mates can pool our money together and get one at college. BIG SCREEN!
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Post by Krepticor » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:19 pm

you should be able to get one now, the government is pouring countless subsidies to companies to make energy star compatible HD LCD TV's (yes HD and LCD are 2 different things, wiki it)

I think and affordable 36" LCD Has the 720p resolution and I think you can find one as cheap as $300, just keep looking, and if you state has a tax, free weekend, even better
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Post by Felino » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:36 pm

Just buy a cheap computer screen, a hd stb, and off you go :D Or use your current one with a switcher.
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Post by daguuy » Sun Aug 26, 2007 11:15 pm

HDTV is definitely much better than SDTV. I have HD rabbit ears for TV reception and it looks a whole lot better than normal TV. What really takes advantage of it though is using a computer or X360 on the TV for big screen high res gaming or DVR.
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Post by typamc95 » Mon Aug 27, 2007 12:09 am

No wai!
I got a 36" in my HDTV living room.
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Post by sammy » Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:01 am

Yes there definantly is a big difference. I hooked up my laptop to an extra tv and it looks way better with a HDMI cable, altough it's a lot more expensive as well.

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Post by Reaperman@home » Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:22 am

I guess my problem is less with the comming of higher quality television image, which I believe was designed to raise the minimum cost of a dorm television from $100 to $300. My problem is more with the aspect ratio change associated with it.

Who decided on 16:9 and why did they pick it?
was there a problem with 4:3, or was it just that if they stuck with it people would not buy the new stuff as quickly?
(granted there are a very few 4:3 screens that will do HD, I have one)

I've noticed a new and strange computer occurance these days. Buddies calling me up to brag about monitors. yay, it's an awesome 21" LCD but it's a widescreen... I have to try not to laugh, it's got the vertical height of a 16" 4:3, and he's actually calling me because he's still trying to sell himself on a monitor which is smaller than his last one vertically and cost a lot more for some mysterous reason.

And why weren't 4:3 computer resolutions chosen for the new standard? oh right, we'd just go to goodwill and buy a $15 svga CRT and a channel box and actually be happy.

no this whole process was designed simply to extract money out of us when other more reasonalble methods exist--and it was approved by US law. Now whenever I play I take a retrosystem to a friend's house, I'm going to have to put up with 'fatmode' because these retards don't understand that their tv has space which is useless for quite a few things.

And once broadcast switches to HD do you think fatmode will go away? no, it will be worse, since most cable/satelite stations will be behind, or on another aspect ratio.

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Post by vskid » Mon Aug 27, 2007 11:55 am

Reaperman@home wrote:Who decided on 16:9 and why did they pick it?
was there a problem with 4:3, or was it just that if they stuck with it people would not buy the new stuff as quickly?
Its because movies are made in widescreen. My guess is that it was too hard to make widescreen CRTs back then and so they chose the widest screen ration they could still manufacture, 4:3. For TV, I like widescreen, but I have to agree with you on computer monitors, the stuff I do doesn't usually require a wide screen. Like web pages look like crap if they're stretched so wide, reading lines that long is murder. Unless you use your computer as a media center (which I think is stupid, a 24" screen does not make a media center) or maybe games, I think 4:3 is best.

The reason for your friend's HDTV's "fatmode" problem might be that its an LCD. Because their resolution is fixed, anything that isn't its resolution has to be changed by the controller, so most LCD TVs probably don't look that great anyways because of that. Our HDTV is a rear projection and the picture is made by 3 CRTs, so it would adapt a lot better than an LCD to different resolutions.
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Post by bicostp » Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:18 pm

I agree, wide screens always feel cramped compared to real screens. (1280x768? Come on now that's not worth $300!) Movies are okay in widescreen, but computers? No. I have a fairly new HP laptop with a wide shiny screen (shiny... another LCD "feature" I hate :evil:), and it feels smaller than my old Satellite Pro 4000's normal screen. (Same vertical resolution, but the HP's actually a few inches wider.)

I think widescreen computer monitors are just a marketing gimmick, made so they can sell 22" LCDs with less viewable area than my 5+ year old 18" Viewsonic. (It's 1280x1024 native. :D) People will rush to them because "holycrapits22inches!".

As for me, I'll stick with normal computer screens. I want those 327,680 extra pixels. :P
vskid wrote:The reason for your friend's HDTV's "fatmode" problem might be that its an LCD. Because their resolution is fixed, anything that isn't its resolution has to be changed by the controller, so most LCD TVs probably don't look that great anyways because of that. Our HDTV is a rear projection and the picture is made by 3 CRTs, so it would adapt a lot better than an LCD to different resolutions.
The LCD could easily letterbox the 4:3 picture, the same way widescreen DVDs get letterboxed on 4:3 TVs (except on some really cheap players). Why doesn't it? Because then idiots would think their TV is broken, or they'd complain because the picture doesn't fill the screen. :lol:

Just think, in a couple decades when widescreen becomes the standard and all videos and broadcasts are in 16:9, we'll have "Shaggy mode", where everybody on a normal screen looks tall and skinny!

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