HDTV Primer:
Back in the early 80's, I attended the local Vocational-Technical electronics school in Idaho Falls, ID where they used TV repair as an instructional methodology for basic electronics. Most every type of electronic circuitry that exists (at the time) was used in TVs. I became pretty darn good at TV repair but had zero intentions of working in a TV repair shop.
CRT (Cathode Ray Tube - the picture tube on standard TVs) has an aspect ratio of 4:3 - the picture tube is 4x inches in width by 3x inches tall and uses what is called "interlacing" to build or "draw" the picture on the screen.
Interlaced scan is a way to describe how some video signals and displays form an image. America's NTSC (National Television System Committee) analog television system uses 525 scanning lines to create each complete picture (frame). The frame/picture is made up of two fields: The first field has 262.5 odd lines (1,3,5...) and the second field has 262.5 even lines (2,4,6...). The odd lines are scanned (drawn on the screen) in 1/60th of a second, and the even lines follow in the next 1/60th of a second. This presents a complete frame/picture of 525 lines in 1/30th of a second.
Progressive scan:
Some digital television broadcast formats (720p, 480p), and most DVD players, use a type of video signal known as progressive scan. Instead of splitting each video frame into two sequential fields like analog interlaced NTSC video, progressive-scan video displays the entire frame in a single sweep. For example, where standard NTSC video displays 30 frames (60 fields) per second, progressive scan displays 60 complete frames per second.
Another way to look at it is that progressive-scan video has twice as much picture information as the equivalent interlaced video format. Progressive-scan picture quality is more film like, with more fine detail and less flicker. Virtually all of today's digital TVs are progressive-scan displays, with screen resolutions of 720p, 768p or 1080p.
720P is on its way out. At today's low priced it would be a disadvantage not to buy 1080i at a minimum.
Today's HDTV's have an aspect ratio of 16:9. (Widescreen)
I now use Dish and their HDTV DVR box is great! I started with DirecTV in 1995 and installed it myself. I now have Dish because their new HDTV DVR boxes can record two different channels, or record one and watch another AND, drive two TV's, one HDTV and one standard TV independently at the same time! They use one coax cable from the dish to the box which has two independent tuners in the box.
The HDTV package costs $10.00 per month and they just keep adding more and more HDTV channels without increasing the cost.
I would visit your grandmother's local Sam's Club or Costco and check out their HDTV selection. Visio, while not the BEST HDTV flat panel TV's, offer some very good bang for the buck. Buying local makes warranty returns much easier than shipping a TV back to the retailer or manufacturer.
The plasma TV's offer a "smoother" more fluid and brighter picture over their LCD counterparts. If you got the cash and buy an LCD TV make sure it uses the new 240Hz LED models or you will be viewing motion artifacts with fast moving scenes on the TV. If you do buy a new HDTV, the FIRST thing you should do is access the TV's settings and reduce the Brightness and Contrast or Picture levels to at least 50% of their manufacture out of the box settings. Since the majority of TV's are sold out of big-box retailers, whom use harsh fluorescent or mercury-vapor lighting, the TV's brightness and contrast are set to full blast or what we call "Flame Mode". This makes the resulting picture have more "pop" when viewed under those lighting conditions which are the very WORST lighting conditions to view and evaluate TV picture quality.
You can read more
here.
The first plasma I bought in 2004, a Panasonic 1080i model:
Oh, and here is my Home Automation closet - controls the home. I am in the process of re-wiring and removing stuff:
BTW, the guy that invented the TV, Mr Farnsworth, lived in Rigby, ID about 20 miles from where I grew up. "Grew up" being used in a relative context of course.
So take that you potato bashers.
