HDTV/TV info

Hi all

Latley I have been kiddling around to find an appropiate tv to put it into a large room for home cinema purposes. I don't really know what HDTV means, perhaps what I can confirm is that Plasma & LCD are considered as hdtv's. I would like to get some feedback from you all to find all types of tv sets both hdtv and normal tv's and perhps compare them to find the right one for me. URL's are greatly appreciated.

I am not interested on projectors since I don't consider them very good to produce a hq image.
Last one i've seen was a sim2, qute expensive but nothing impressive, lacked from sharpness and had some distortion in the picture. Still I would like some info on these aswell.

I also would like to ask you if a widescreen tv is considered as an HDTV.


Hmm... My budget $700 - $1500

Thanks

 

I'm not an expert but have done lots of research and will attempt to answer your questions. HDTV stands for High definition TV. Basically it means you get really good resolution. A TV screen is made of of tiny dots or pixels. The more of these pixels you have the better the picture will look. A standard TV has around 300,000 pixels. A HDTV has around 3 million pixels. There are also what is know as EDTVs. These are enhanced definition TVs. Better than a standard TV but not quite as good as HDTV. They have around 2 million pixels I believe. Anyway, I recently bought a 27" LCD HDTV for $1000 at Circuit City. Not a well known name (Apex) but the picture is awesome. Espcially if you watch DVD or have High a HD signal. Its only 4" deep. If you don't care for having a TV on the wall and want something bigger then I would recommend a Sony WEGA Flat screen. You can get a 32 or 36" for around $1000. Wide screen is not necessarily HDTV. It just means the aspect ration is different than standard....I little shorter and a little wider. Too much too write so if you have any further questions please post a reply and if I have stated anything incorrect please let me know guys.

 

Thanks alot for you information.

1.Right now i'm a little bit worried, because I heard that a dvd espacially a backup may not look as sharp and clear as supposed since its an hdtv using high resolutuion like most lcds.

On the other hand normal tvs deliver good picture quality no matter the source since they deliver a normal resolution on a convemtional tube.

Therfore an HDTV designed to deliver the best image
quality having alot of pixels and special features like 100hz, pixel plus I and II etc.
Beacuse of this I think that sources which have been compressed for backups may result in image quality loss whilst playback.

2.What is the main difference between plasma and Lcd?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

OK, appears I have given you some wrong info. From afterdawn's own definition of HDTV it appears most HDTVs are widescreen. I don't know what the main difference between plasma and LCD are but I would guess that its the technology they physically use on the screen. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. Both are capable of producing high resolution. Actually from what I understand and LCD can display a higher quality picture than High Definition unlike Plasma but no cable or satelite companys are even supplying signal with that much resolution yet. Also LCDs are not vulnerable to screen burn in and have a longer life span than Plasmas. You can also replace a bulb in an LCD if damaged but not a plasma. As for backups, yeah if they are compressed you are going to lose quality depending on compression ratio, but all of my backups (even compressed ones) look good. Then again I just got my TV and have not had a chance to really compare originals and backups on my LCD. Hope this helps.

 

Oh, by the way I am getting most of my info from a great article I read about 2 or 3 weeks ago in the thursday "Circuits" section of the NY Times.

 

Again thanks.

You mean that you haven't seen any difference in quality when you played a backedup dvd on your lcd.

I would think that it would look worse on an lcd then on a normal tv. An lcd has more pixels higher res thus more detail.

 

Nope I haven't. But I have not done a side by side comparison. I watched a backup version of The Day After Tomorrow and I did not notice anything that would make me say "Hey, thats a backup". I will try to find sometime to do side by side comparisons of LCD vs. standard tv and post my findings.