HDTV: How One Reporter Bought the Big Picture

by Jeff Richgels

For all the hype surrounding high-definition television, only 26% of U.S. households have an HD-capable TV, the Consumer Electronics Association reported this year.

Key factors holding back HD have included high TV prices and the scarcity of HD programming. But TV prices have dropped precipitously and continue to decline, while HD programming is growing steadily, particularly in sports, which benefits most from HD's stunningly clear pictures.

Still, while CEA predicts that sales of HD sets will double by 2010, it's difficult to find anyone who will predict that HD is close to becoming a ubiquitous part of the American family room.

The Madison, Wis., market has been buying HD service at a faster rate than any of cable-provider Charter Communications' markets, "but it's still relatively moderate to slow," said Tim Vowell, Charter director of government relations for southern Wisconsin. "The amount of HD content that's available is not at a level yet where folks who are on the fence are ready to jump off" and buy an HDTV.

Many in the industry say a key factor holding back HD is technological confusion: The days of going to the store, buying a TV, taking it home, hooking up an antenna or cable line and turning it on are long gone.

Consumers now face myriad choices: LCD (liquid crystal display), plasma or rear projection; 720 or 1080 lines of resolution; interlacing or progressive scanning; screen size; accompanying components; and programming source.

I first wrote about HD more than a decade ago, and have been considering buying an HDTV for a few years, but price and programming scarcity held me back. While writing a story about TV technology, I realized those factors were changing but also saw how complex my buying decision would be. Knowing that many other people were in a similar situation, I conceived of using my experience as a primer.

I turned to American TV, [a regional Midwest big-box technology and furniture retailer], not as an endorsement of the Madison-based chain, but because I knew I could save money buying my equipment during one of its special employee pricing weekends for repeat customers, because I felt comfortable working with them, and because they were willing to serve as a source for the story.

Ask the right questions

I worked with AV Design, American's customized design department that handles high-end home theater systems. The questions AV Design went through with me are the same questions their sales staff is trained to ask store customers, since that's the only way to ensure customers make the right choices for their needs, said Tom Spinoso, who heads the AV Design unit.

"You have to ask good questions," Spinoso said. "What are you going to watch? Where are you going to put the TV? How far away will you sit?"

My aim was to buy as large and nice an HDTV system as I could afford for my family room, and a smaller HDTV for my master bedroom. I had a budget of about $8,000, but ended up spending about $12,000 once preparatory electrical work, DirecTV products and installation were added in.

But even if you're spending only a few hundred dollars for just an HDTV and no additional components, you will face many of the same issues.

The existing system in my family room was state-of-the-art in 1993, featuring a hulking 36-inch Mitsubishi tube TV and several other components in a large wood entertainment center. That center ended up in my bedroom housing the smaller HDTV and my old system's receiver, cassette player, VCR and DVD player.

AV Design consultant Kris Hodgkins said some people have their entertainment centers modified for today's large, flat panel HDTVs, but they're made to hang on a wall, or, at the least, stand on a much smaller cabinet.

"People like the nice clean look and it's amazing how much bigger a room gets when it's hung on the wall," Hodgkins said.

The TV I chose for my family room was hung on wall brackets, along with five speakers—a center, two side, and two rear. The components, including HD DVR, receiver, DVD player, VCR, and CD player, were tucked in a closet, with wiring going down through my basement and up the wall the TV is mounted on. One programmable remote runs the entire system.

My couch is about 10 feet from the wall, making a 46- or 52-inch TV the correct size, Hodgkins said.

One warning from Hodgkins that I found absolutely true is that the larger the TV, the worse standard definition programming is going to look. Since I planned to use the main TV mostly for watching sports in HD, that wasn't a concern. But I did find myself moving to my smaller HDTV upstairs when watching Milwaukee Brewers games in SD (standard definition) on Fox Sports Net Wisconsin to avoid the pronounced blurriness of the large TV.

Plasma vs. LCD

I was expecting to buy a plasma TV for the family room because a year ago plasma clearly was the best choice in larger TVs. But Hodgkins and Spinoso said LCD technology has been advancing rapidly, moving into larger sizes with comparable picture quality and competitive prices with plasma. (I had no interest in rear projection, which has value mostly in giant screens at reasonable prices.)

"(LCD) prices have fallen faster than any consumer electronics item in years, with the exception of DVD players," Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group told the Associated Press.

With improving technology and falling prices, the iSuppli Group predicts that LCD sets will rise from 22% of the market to 51% in 2009.

I also liked that LCD TVs have been found to use less electricity than plasmas or rear projection units.

And, said Spinoso and Hodgkins, LCD was best for my family room due to the large number of windows in my main level.

"LCD is less prone to having reflections than plasma," Spinoso said.

Even with the blinds pulled, enough light comes in to make LCD a better choice for me.

Spinoso cautioned that while LCD has closed the gap on plasma, it's impossible to make a blanket statement that one technology is better.

"Each client's individual preferences and needs come into play," he said.

LCDs used to have problems with blurred images when, for example, athletes ran across the screen, but new 120Hz frame rate conversion refreshing technology—double the old 60Hz—has dramatically lessened that.

Plasmas also have improved, with less susceptibility to "burn-in" of images on the screen from, for example, kids playing video games over and over.

Consumer Reports noted these advancements in its latest TV reviews in its just-released November issue.

"Bigger, better, cheaper—those three words sum up the major trends in LCD and plasma TVs this year," the magazine said.

Picture quality

Two other technological choices are 720 or 1080 lines of resolution and interlacing (i) or progressive (p) scanning.

More lines of resolution are better, so 1080 is superior to 720, although it costs quite a bit more. Progressive scanning is superior to interlacing because it handles fast motion better.

In fact, for things such as sports, which feature lots of moving action, a 720p may be better than a 1080i, although 1080p is the best, Spinoso said.

For TVs above 42 inches, 1080 dominates, with 720 "being relegated to the entry level segment," Spinoso said. "Within a year, I would guess 1080 will be the standard."

One thing to keep in mind is that since 1080p is a "bandwidth hog," the highest level TV programming currently reaches is 1080i, Hodgkins said, although a very good TV like the one I chose will "upconvert" the signal to approximate 1080p.

"TV technology is far superior to broadcast technology right now," Hodgkins said.

The main available source of 1080p programming is HD DVD or Blu-Ray players, or a computer gaming system like Xbox.

My selections

AV's proposal for my home featured a 46-inch 1080p with 120Hz for my family room, and a 32-inch 720p with 120Hz for my bedroom.

I ended up going with a 52-inch 1080p with 120Hz for my family room with a different brand that was only a couple of hundred dollars more, and a 37-inch 720p with just 60Hz for my bedroom that was virtually the same price—and fit perfectly in my old entertainment center.

I (and my friends who have been spending weekends watching football at my house) could not be more happy with my choices and I don't feel as if I sacrificed anything to get the bigger sizes.

The 120Hz definitely is a key for watching sports events. American's West Beltline store has a display with 37-, 46- and 52-inch Sharp Aquos TVs stacked on top of each other, with the top two featuring 120Hz and the bottom one 60Hz. The difference with a mountain snowboarding video running on all three was striking.

But the extra size was more valuable in my bedroom since I can go downstairs to watch something like sports where the 120Hz is key.

I'm thankful Spinoso and Hodgkins convinced me not to skimp on sound for the family room system.

I did go with slightly smaller speakers than they proposed but I stayed with their recommended high-end digital receiver with Dolby TrueHD, video upscaling to 1080p, and even iPod compatibility, although I don't own an iPod.

It is impossible to describe the sound experience, from the thundering cacophony of a chase scene in an Indiana Jones movie to the you-are-there action, crowd and band noise during a Wisconsin Badgers football game.

"It's the main hub in your system and all sources connect to it," Hodgkins said of the receiver. "To not have the audio to go along with the video is kind of a disconnect. Every time you turn the TV on it becomes a part of your experience."

And I have not even experienced HD DVD or Blu-Ray, since I declined to buy either format while the two formats fight it out to see which one will prevail. Instead, I bought a decent but inexpensive DVD player that upconverts to 1080p.

That stems from my decision about 25 years ago to buy a Betamax VCR because it was considered the superior format, while VHS eventually prevailed as the VCR standard.

My other technological choice was the programming source, which ended up being DirecTV.

On the recommendation of Spinoso and Hodgkins, I also bought a traditional antenna to directly capture HD signals from the local network affiliates.

"Cable and satellite are more compressed, not offering the bandwidth of terrestrial signals," Spinoso said.

That compression can mean more pixilation in images, especially sports, he said.

Comparing HD signals from the antenna and satellite, you can notice a difference, although it is not extreme. If adding the antenna had cost hundreds of dollars, it wouldn't have been worth it. The antenna also is a benefit during heavy rain when the DirecTV signal may be blocked. The antenna will enable me to watch local channels for weather information and programming.

One other invaluable piece of advice Hodgkins and Spinoso provided was to use a picture-optimizing DVD such as a THX Optimizer. When TVs are delivered to a store they are set to provide a very bright picture for a large showroom, and those settings aren't necessarily optimal for a home. A set-up DVD walks you through settings such as brightness, contrast, color, and the like.

Using it on my HDTVs greatly improved the picture quality on both.

Following the advice of Consumer Reports, I did not buy an extended warranty, since the magazine said the HDTVs are turning out to be very reliable.

This article originally appeared on Oct. 4, 2007 in The Capital Times, Madison, Wis.; reprinted with permission.

Published February 18, 2008

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