So far so VERY good!

The Toshiba arrived before the High Def cable. As it turned out, the pictures looked great anyway. Apparently this set "upconverts all video signals to 1080iHD." That claim sounded ok in the store, but it turned out even better. Just about anything we watched looked great, even without the HD cable feed!
The HD cable folks did finally show, and added the new HD motorola box (with DVR). The new HD channels are up in the 700's. As it turns out, however, I have rarely tuned up there for long because everything looks great anyway. I'm very happy without the Fuzz of my old Zenith, and can now read the CNN news ticker and the CNBC financial info from across the room. Of course, I now have two new, slightly intimidating remotes to deal with, with lots of new features, but I'm getting the hang of using them.

Gotcha!

I went out determined to buy my HDTV, and with a good idea of what I wanted. I planned on getting the Panasonic 34 inch direct view, and planned to buy at Circuit City. I went there at an off-hour. The store was quiet. It soon became obvious, however, that their top sales people were not working at the time. When I asked a salesman for a rundown of the features of the Panasonic, his response was "What do you want to know?" Not very helpful. Nor did he seem enthusiastic about that set or any other. As for price, forget negotiation or discount. He insisted on delivery fees as well. All in all, I found the experience a real downer, and left without buying.
So I set out to Best Buy. There, I did find a saleman who worked with me. They didn't carry the Panasonic, but he offered me a good deal on a similar Sony. However, when we got down to the actual purchase, he discovered it was not in stock and would take a month or so to order. Again, I left.
It looked like another near-miss for HDTV. But on the way home I passed a store called Video Only. Not as fancy as the others, but they had a good stock of sets. There was the Panasonic I was looking for. The saleman who approached was the most knowledgable I had ever met, running through all the features in detail for me. But right next to this set was a 34-inch Toshiba, for just a bit more, and he was able to rattle off a comparison of the two sets. The Toshiba seemed to have some technical advantages, and he also pointed out that the speaker arrangement in the Toshiba was better for the smallish area I had available, something I had not considered. He also offered free delivery, and free pick-up of my old set.
What more could I ask???
So...I finally bought the Toshiba 34HFX84!!!

A Dim View

At my last visit to Best Buy I found myself looking at some of the larger, older- style rear projection sets. One of them, a Mitsubishi I believe, looked like quite a good deal for a very large screen. After watching for a while, I realized that the overhead lights were off only in this part of the store. Across the way, in an adjacent, lighted area, I could see the newer, slimmer rear projection sets. They were amazingly brighter than what I was watching. I asked a salesman to adjust the brightness on this set. I have to give them credit...the Best Buy salesman was right upfront about the limits of this type of set. "Only good for a darkened room," he told me. "Try to make it brighter and you wash out the colors." Looking across the store again, I just could not see spending the $1500 for a dim view.

Extended Service Contracts

The cost of an HDTV, it turns out, is more than what is advertised in the newspapers. At least, it is higher if you buy one of those "highly recommended" Extended Service Contracts. These can run from $200 to $500 or more. When I find a low price offered on a set, it generally turns out that the company has raised the price on the service contract. I found contracts on the direct-view sets were at the low end, but they went up sharply for the newer technologies. And with a major purchase involved, who is confident enough to reject the contract?

Good News

I called Comcast, and their web site was wrong. The salesman told me that the HiDef Box is available to me, and not only that, but it is available with DVR! Great!

Back to square one

So it turns out that the Comcast Digital Box I already have will not deliver HDTV. "Not a problem," say the salespeople, who are willing and even anxious to initiate the upgrade to a HiDef Box. However, when I check with Comcast online they tell me that the HiDef service is "not yet available" in my area. Hmmm. Were those sales folks wrong, or do they have some priority way of getting me the HiDef service???

Direct-View HDTV

So I went looking at some 34-inch "direct-view" HDTV sets today at Circuit City. You know, sets using those old fashioned "picture tubes" (CRTs). The Sony, I was told, at $1499 was the best technology, although the Panasonic, some $200 less, looked pretty good to me as well. I had also seen the Philips 34-inch model at Best Buy, and on sale it was only $999. I can't help but wonder whether that SONY technology is worth the extra $500. Sure would like some opinions on this.

Direct-view is not the latest or the thinest, but it still looked pretty good for the money!

Another close call!

While browsing at a local store, I came across a 42-inch Panasonic plasma HDTV for only $2500. The salesman showed off some very cool features and assured me this was a new model, the latest technology. The sign said HDTV, and the price looked incredible. Fortunately, I looked a bit closer. Turns out it said HDTV "compatible." Which, it turns out, means EDTV.

A nice TV set, but not what I was looking for.

Another close call!

On the plus side, the Wall Street Journal today predicted some significant price drops in HDTVs over the next several weeks. All right!!!

Wide Screen Looking Good.

- Leaning toward the wide screen. It seems that you can "zoom" and "stretch" non-HDTV shows to pretty much fit the wide screen. Maybe not the perfect solution, but with more and more TV content going to the new format, it seems the better road to take – to say nothing of looking much sexier than the traditional shaped sets. And I'm told that movies look really great on the wider screen.

The Shape of Things

-The shape of the screens was a puzzle at first. The traditional TV screen turns out to be not quite square, but rather a 4:3 ratio, meaning the picture is slightly wider than it is high. The sales people call this the 4:3 "aspect ratio," a word designed to generate terror in the average consumer. The new HDTV sets I looked at came in this shape as well — but also in a W-I-D-E screen version, called a 16:9 aspect ratio. What to do??? Some of the sites I checked out on this issue wanted to know if I would be watching lots of movies or mostly regular shows. Hell, I don't know...I want to be able to watch everything. And at these prices, I want it all to look pretty damned good! Some shows, I was warned, might not fill out the wider screen, leaving nasty black bars at both ends of the picture. But the traditional screen would not show me all the action in a wide-screen movie, cutting off both ends of the scene. Hmmm.

What? No tuner???

-So I started with the basics. I already had a subscription to a cable service and received digital programming. The HDTV signal was available via the cable box already in my house. Cool. That meant I could look for an HDTV "monitor" instead of a fully integrated system. Monitor means no "tuner," which seemed worrisome at first. In fact, I was really down on this idea. But hell, I'm not going to go without cable or satellite service down the road, limiting myself to only a few over-the-air channels, so why shell out all the extra money for the tuner I will not need?

Ooops!

-Sales people, even the good ones, have their own needs and agendas. I'm not about to depend on them for information. But, I also need to be careful about impulse buying. For example, one of the things I saw on my first shopping trip was a very low price on a good-looking, large screen TV that put my old Zenith to shame. So maybe this was going to be an easy call after all! But I was a bit puzzled about what exactly EDTV meant. The set sat right next to a lot of others that said HDTV, and looked pretty cool, so what could be wrong? Well, it’s a good thing I kept my credit card in my pocket. Enhanced-definition TV (EDTV) looked nice, but it would not have displayed the new HDTV signals. I could have bought obsolete technology. Ooops.

Lets Keep it Simple (if possible)

-I am no electronics engineer, and I don’t pretend expertise, so I would like to keep the discussion fairly readable to ordinary folks. Seems like you should not need an engineering degree to buy a TV set!

Techno-overload

-My initial visit to a local Best Buy was a humbling experience. Talk about techno-overload! There were TOO MANY choices, TOO MANY high tech terms I did not understand. And I began to get the feeling I could too easily get taken in on a very expensive purchase. So I started doing some research. And that’s what this BLOG is all about – the process of learning about, shopping for, and living with a HDTV. Hopefully I will get input from readers, whether they are just starting their research, or are much more knowledgeable, or are already enjoying (or regretting) their new HDTVs.

The First Step

-So I've decided to think seriously about going HDTV. Not that the old 27-inch Zenith has melted down, but it is definitely showing its age. It's still good enough for re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but try watching a foreign movie with subtitles. No way. Or try reading the stock market info at the bottom of the screen on the financial channels. Fuzz-city. The "sharpness" control stopped working some time ago, so there's not much I can do. Oh, maybe I could get it repaired...but then I might lose my excuse to shop for an HDTV.