Anyone here experience the wonders of HD-DVD or HDTV?
 

I recently managed to scrounge up enough cash to finally by the widescreen tv that I've always wanted. Of course my "old" equipment that consisted of a $400.00 dvd player had to be sacrificed to make way for the new era of HD technology.

Now, let me give you a breakdown of what to expect when watching a widescreen tv with analogue components such as coax for TV and RCA cables for your various digital devices. Naturally if your just running analogue cable then the picture is going to look like shit. Now, depending on the quality of the stations equipment used to send the picture signals, you could get a picture that looks very similar to a standard CRT television or you could get a picture that looks like a friggin mosaic painting.

Luckily, with digital cable you can get a much better picture, but it doesn't stop there. With HighDef you get beautiful resolution and colors, with little noise and distortion. This is due to the TV's ability to receive high resolution signals in the formats such as 720p and 1080i. But you probably know this already, so I'm not going to go into detail on why you should or shouldn't buy a certain TV or cable box (granted I have the DVR box coming on Friday for my digital cable hookup)

The area I want to cover in this already wordy thread is watching your DVD's in High Definition. You see, when I bought my TV I figured I would buy the expensive Monster Component Cables and I would be able to watch my DVD's in beautiful 540P resolution (progressive scan). Part of the reason I would do this is because my TV only has one HDMI port (many tv's only have one) and the cable box would take this port, thus my dvd player would be demoted to progressive scan.

That all changed when I bought my new dvd player, which is able to display picture in uncompressed HDMI 720p/1080i. I hooked the DVD player up to the TV, and popped in Star Wars Episode II. It took me a while to get used to the features, but I used the HDMI cable and set the resolution to the highest my TV would support, which is 1080i. BOOM, the opening graphics from the menu filled the screen and I was looking at an absolute perfect picture that filled up my entire 51" screen. I blown away, the colors were so rich and the fact that the contrast was up had no negative effects whatsoever (which if you watch regular tv you will know that having the tv too bright will make any signal look like shit).

I knew what I had to do, and it is what I feared in the first place. I would have to buy and HDMI switcher to switch from the two different sources, which would run me another $250.00. But this did not deter me, once I saw the quality of that picture I was hooked.

I popped in Toy Story II to see how the digital animation would look (you will notice if you buy a HighDef tv that digital film and animation look much better due tot he richness of the colors).

Yes this cost me a pretty penny, but damnit it was worth it. Of course, it does help to have a relative work at Best Buy who can give you that 60% discount on expensive cables.

Bottom line, if you are going to get a widescreen tv take into consideration how much it's going to cost you to get the best picture possible. Because using crappy rca cables and watching movies in 480i is for the birds, especially when it's as enlarged as it is on a big screen.

Ask Zoner he knows biggrin:

I know he has the TV, but I have no idea what kind of setup he has and if he has a HD DVD player/HD cable service.

Re: Anyone here experience the wonders of HD-DVD or HDTV?
 

mE KNOW ENGRISH TOO.

satallite > digital cable

Signal Lost
Signal Lost
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Signal Lost
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reruns of the golden girls
Signal Lost
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Signal Lost

happy:

The first two months was like that...for the past year and a half I haven't seen my signal been lost once. But i was refering to picture quality...and all satallite channels are digital, while only a few are for digital tv.

I have the HDTV, but don't have the HD receiver for my BellExpressvu satellite yet. Them submitches are $400 right now.

The whole home theater project for me is a work in progress. The TV was phase one (duh), the home theater sound system was phase 2. Eventually, I'll get all those bells and whistles that Holly has.

For now, DVDs on my progressive scan DVD player are still pretty damn good.

What TV did you go with Holly?

I got a Hitachi 57" bigscreen. In the works on home theater sound

I saved money on the TV and went with the 51" Toshiba rear projection. I ended up getting it for half the price of the DLP TV and it just wasn't worth it for me to spend that much money to save some space. I was never a fan of LCD or Plasma tv's, the quality just isn't there yet to spend that much money for me. With all of the bells and whistles the TV is incredible.

And I have digital cable with HD Pyro, you wanker.

Cool. I was looking at that exact model before I bought mine.

So you got rear projection CRT? Nothing wrong with it. I found the Hitachi LCD I bought to be brighter and crisper than the CRT models I looked at, however. I have absolutely no beefs with the picture quality on the 50v500.

Plus the fact that a 51" CRT would NEVER get down my basement steps. The LCD just barely did. ed:

Re: Anyone here experience the wonders of HD-DVD or HDTV?
 

[quote="Short Hand":13d60]
mE KNOW ENGRISH TOO.[/quote:13d60]

hahaha

Ok this may sond stupid, but I heard that in like 4 years all analog signals will be sold, hence no more anaolg tv, So you will have to have a digital tv or a converter. any one know more about this? or can explain it better? I dont see how the usa can sell the airwaves. what about other countrys, will they have to go digital to0? is this all bullshit?

Haha you don't want to know how much trouble it was to get that tv into my apartment, I ended up breaking the wooden panel on the side and scratching some of the plastic, but it's all good now. The thing is never leaving that place though, I'm not moving it again.

And LCD is brighter and crisper, which is the upside for those tv's. But the downside is the signal tends to look pixelated without HD and there is no true black color. I used the money I saved and bought the cables and dvd player.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... pe=product

That's the switch I have to get^

WOW, I guess im not the only one that got a big screen T.V.

my tv will be delivered on friday so i will make a thread about it with pics on saturday biggrin:

got a new plasma tv (about half price) about a month ago and everything looks like a cartoon its so clear.

you have obviously never had them both in your home. i had direct tv for about a year and a half, and probably recieved a blue screen lost signal just about once a night....lasting anywhere for a few minutes, to hours. if the wind blew hard, the screen would become all pixilated. if there was heavy cloud cover (just overcast, no storm) the signal wouldnt pass through and hello blue screen. if it barely drizzled, ya no tv. it was absolutely the WORST product/technology investment i have ever made. i now have comcast digital high definition cable. had for almost 3 years now. the only time i have ever lost the picture is when they do the weekly test at some random hour in the morning.

but please pyro, i want to hear all your first hand accounts about the two.

nag:

What we need here are pics. Yes folks, lotsa pics of your setup. As for now, Arkan has nothing to write home to mom about but.....everything is in place. Have all the wires in place and just waiting to finish this room and going out and spending big $$$ for my shite !!

Blah only got a Sony WEGA high 30's low 40's inches cant remember exact size..gets the job done though.

Thats me too, but substitute dish for bell. I am also moving inthe next few weeks and wont bother with any upgrade until then. Got a 57' hitachi rear projection. Crappy signlas look terrible, but the high def stuff is bad to the bone. The worst is football on local channels over satelite. Sure its digital, but digitizing a crappy picture only insures that you get a perfect reproduction of a crappy picture.

DVDs look good, but I dont have the HD dvd player. I think I have plenty of inputs though. When i move, I will be working on the perm install.

I dont get what all the HDTV hype is about...

...spending $4,000 bucks to see a shade of purple regular TV's can produce doesnt excite me all too much.

[quote="Sgt. Duffy":7f438]I dont get what all the HDTV hype is about...

...spending $4,000 bucks to see a shade of purple regular TV's can produce doesnt excite me all too much.[/quote:7f438]If you live for tv theres nothing better than seeing the most detail possible, sometimes better than being at the game.

[quote="[DAS REICH] Blitz":4819d][quote="Sgt. Duffy":4819d]I dont get what all the HDTV hype is about...

...spending $4,000 bucks to see a shade of purple regular TV's can produce doesnt excite me all too much.[/quote:4819d]If you live for tv theres nothing better than seeing the most detail possible, sometimes better than being at the game.[/quote:4819d]

Yeah, I hardly watch TV. I dont even have cable.

i have a 55 inch sony HDTV with the HD satellite reciever and surrond sound. i dont really notice the different though