Thalzon Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Canadian here. Black Friday does not exist up north. Instead we have Boxing Day (December 26th), but I doubt my grandma would be too happy with me for buying an HDTV over the holidays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JCvgluvr Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Canadian here. Black Friday does not exist up north. Instead we have Boxing Day (December 26th), but I doubt my grandma would be too happy with me for buying an HDTV over the holidays. Stick it to the man! (Even if the man is a old woman.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerol Oplan Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 It could be an over-the-air HD signal; broadcast stations can't yet use the full bandwidth of their digital channels (until the switchover) especially in VHF bands where there's still analog overlap. Therefore they have to compress the stream a lot more (it's a modified version of mpeg2, if you re-encode a DVD at a lower bitrate it'll look similar). I'm still not yet getting high-bandwidth SDTV in digital, and the digital signals are flaky at best this far out from the station, so I'm going to be watching the analog stations until they go off the air. Hopefully after that happens they'll boost the digital signal power enough for me to get a continuous image. Right now the signal cuts out on average 5 to 6 times a minute for 2-3 seconds at a time, which is the main problem with digital - there's no such thing as a "partial" signal, it's all or nothing. My analog stations are a little fuzzy but at least they come in continously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 FACT:The only good reason to get an HD tv is to read Capcom's and Rare's in-game text.There is no good reason to get Blu-ray...No really, there isn't a big difference between it and standard. Really, there is. Again, if you can't tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 720x480, yeah, there's not much difference. But that also means it's time for a new prescription. You can make the good old-fashioned Wii fanboy argument that it's "just higher numbers," but in that case, may as well watch movies in 16x16 monochromatic grid of nearly-indecipherable bliss, with a THX-quality stream of monophonic 11khz audio. Don't get me wrong, I don't like audiophiles that SWEAR they can tell the difference between 96khz and 192khz audio, etc., but in this case it's a pretty obvious difference that the lay person really CAN detect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thalzon Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Stick it to the man! (Even if the man is a old woman.) Yeah... she paid for my college, so no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 There's a big difference in 1080p and 720p if you use your TV as a computer monitor, like I do I'd regret getting a smaller TV [23" samsung with a 1360x768 resolution max] but it's just such a goddamn nice TV, small resolution notwithstanding. Plus I have a 19" LCD to my right if I just need extra space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hale-Bopp Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 We bought this hdtv (46" Samsung) last week and I have to say the difference between it and our old sdtv is HUGE. I now swear by the powers of hdtv. It also creates a nice glow throughout our entire home. We have a tiny home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigfoot Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I just got the Panasonic 50PZ800U at work, and it's amaaaaaazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bahamut Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I personally bought this HDTV back in September: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-HL50A650-50-Inch-1080p-Slim/dp/B001413EJ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1222024449&sr=1-1 I don't regret it at all, such an amazing TV for my gaming & watching Illini football sucking ass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1337 1 Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I cringed when my parents went out and bought a HDTV; they never use HD anything That said, whenever I'm at the house with friends/relatives, we do use it to play consoles in Hi-def...but that's only very rare. So to remedy this, I'm buying them a blu-ray player for Christmas. I swear I heard something about blu-ray players upscaling the quality of normal DVDs, or something...anyone have any idea what I'm talking, or if I'm just going crazy again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JCvgluvr Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Really, there is. Again, if you can't tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 720x480, yeah, there's not much difference. But that also means it's time for a new prescription. You can make the good old-fashioned Wii fanboy argument that it's "just higher numbers," but in that case, may as well watch movies in 16x16 monochromatic grid of nearly-indecipherable bliss, with a THX-quality stream of monophonic 11khz audio.Don't get me wrong, I don't like audiophiles that SWEAR they can tell the difference between 96khz and 192khz audio, etc., but in this case it's a pretty obvious difference that the lay person really CAN detect. Actually, you're probably right. I was being somewhat satirical in that post, so what you're saying is most likely true. But I still have a hard time telling the difference. Yeah... she paid for my college, so no. LOL, I know what that's like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Majin GeoDooD Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I was instantly hooked as soon as I hooked up my 32" Westinghouse HDTV. Being able to watch hockey in HD alone makes it worth it, the wider field of view and better definitely is amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brushfire Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Team Fortress 2 is so much easier to snipe in when you have a 40" 1080p screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLyGeN Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 Nekofrog, I asked a tech buddy of mine the same question about the HDTV's on display at places like Wal-Mart. They look like shit, and they're grainy. What's happening is they're splitting the signal amongst all of their 20 or whatever TV's, and the TV is doing some of its own upconverting to compensate for signal noise... or something like that. So yeah, you're right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigfoot Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 That, and people usually don't adjust the TVs settings. So if you're at a store, don't judge a TV by how bright/dim it looks. I always find a model I'm interested in, and I look for reviews for it online anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ajax Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I managed to pick up a 22 inch lcd monitor, that also has component inputs that handles up to 1080p, a while back for like... $220 which handles all my HD needs. It doesn't have a TV tuner though, but I don't watch TV anyway. A pity my only current gen console is a Wii... I don't think I have even used those component inputs yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgx Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 We bought this hdtv (46" Samsung) last week and I have to say the difference between it and our old sdtv is HUGE. I now swear by the powers of hdtv. It also creates a nice glow throughout our entire home. We have a tiny home. I got the 40 inch version of that a couple months ago. Yummy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avatar of Justice Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 I cringed when my parents went out and bought a HDTV; they never use HD anything That said, whenever I'm at the house with friends/relatives, we do use it to play consoles in Hi-def...but that's only very rare.So to remedy this, I'm buying them a blu-ray player for Christmas. I swear I heard something about blu-ray players upscaling the quality of normal DVDs, or something...anyone have any idea what I'm talking, or if I'm just going crazy again? The PS3 does DVD upscaling. But only if you're connected with HDMI. I guess Sony wants you to only output the upscaled video to "trusted" devices (HDMI can do security handshaking analog crap can't) so that you can't put it up on Bittorrent. So make sure you read in the Blu-Ray player's owner's manual or whatever about whether you need HDMI cables for upscaling. My parents were in the same situation and I just bought them some component cables for their DVD player and it looked just fine. No Blu-Ray necessary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorDevice Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 there are several reasons why the HD display looks lousy. if the issue is big blocky artifacting and choppy video, that tends to indicate reception issues (a lot of big-box stores get their TV via satellite). if it is general fuzziness and smaller artifacting, it is more likely signal degredation during splitting (because big box stores don't run the signal digitally from end to end. if you look at the back of the TV, they are almost always using the component connectors) and, of course, if two almost identical TVs are playing the same thing side by side, and one looks awful while the other is gorgeous, then the store is trying to convince you that monster cables are worth the obscene markup (or that you need to get your HDTV calibrated) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calpis Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 HD's benefit can be negligible for movies (although it DOES look better) I think it also depends (in the case of DVD) on the disc. I bought a 42" Samsung and it looked great for just about everything, but when I put in my old Amadeus DVD in, it looked terrible, and I honestly still don't really know why, but it's got a lot of dull browns and dark scenes, so maybe that's got a lot to do with it, but I bought the new 2-disc director's cut and it looks a lot better, but still worse than other titles in my DVD library. Although, I do definitely notice the difference between DVD and a movie on an HD channel or an HD movie On Demand, although I don't have a Blu-Ray player so I don't know if there's a large difference between Blu-Ray and (what I'm guessing is) a compressed HD movie from Comcast. Anyone have anything to comment on that? I will say though, I was resistant to HD in the beginning, but ever since I switched over, everything on an SDTV looks a little fuzzy in comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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