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While investigating things for an upcoming list of most wanted things by most people, I stumbled upon a couple of lists having to do with the upcoming holidays. It seems that everyone becomes a religious person when presents are mentioned!

It surprised me that HDTV was at the top of both of the lists. I truly expected something with a fruit logo to be topping at least one of the lists. This tells me that market penetration of HDTV is still small, and possibly many are thinking about the upcoming deadline for analog television transmission in these United States.

while we would all like to have a projection room, with seating for 20 close friends, it just isn’t possible for most of us.

So, because many still have not made the jump, there might be some trepidation in the act of choosing what type of television, the size (both for the room and the wallet), and the capabilities of the unit chosen.

The things to know can be summed rather quickly, so without further hesitation…

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When going to buy that new television, forewarned is forearmed. It is important to know at least as much as the salesman you’ll be dealing with. 

Resolution - since coming out, several resolutions are specified by a ‘nickname’ which indicates the number of  vertical lines on the screen. 720p means a 1280 by 720 pixel screen, for true 16 x 9 ratio. It also means that the lines are drawn in one pass, or progressively, which is the opposite of the ‘i’ designator, which would mean interlaced, or that the screen is drawn in 2 passes.  The other screen size is 1080, which can be used with a ‘p’ or an ‘i’, meaning 1920 x 1080 pixels.

There are also other sizes, used less, but still counted as HD, such as 1024 x 768 and 1366 x 768. (Note that these are not true 16 x 9 ratios, so movies with standard ratios will either not completely display, or have bands of black at top and bottom of the screen).

If you choose the screen resolution based on the recommendations of ‘talking heads’ you might be disappointed. The ‘heads’ recommend that not much difference will be seen on sets of less than 40″ between 720p and 1080i. In my opinion, these are the same people who used to say they were not bothered by the Invar shadow mask support wires used by Sony in the Trinitron series of televisions. My suggestion is look at both formats on the television you will be buying. If you are happy that you don’t need 1080i, don’t worry about it. On sets above 40″, you will get it, so no decision is necessary.

Non-interlaced 1080 resolution is something you won’t see much content for right now, but if this is, to you, a large purchase that you won’t be putting in the kid’s room in a couple of years, it would be worth considering. It can add $200 to $500 dollars to the purchase, but that’s not that much over a number of years.

You don’t have to be like Inspector Clouseau, it only takes a little knowledge to make a good choice.

HDMI - this is more than a new connection method or a pain in the butt, it is also a standard that is evolving as I write this. It is not well understood by many, especially computer manufacturers. (More on that another time.) If you expect to get the full resolution of all your source materials, and don’t want to make switching the television off and on a ritual when switching inputs, make sure that the television you select has HDMI 1.3 ports.

a sports event in HD, using a moving ball, will let you know much about the quality of the picture.

Last, and most important - choose by viewing. Use a variety of material to investigate the prospective purchase. Watch a sporting event, with a ball! If you can see the ball clearly, in motion, on an HD broadcast, that is a good start. If your children will be hooking a game console up to the television, check that out - using the best quality interconnection method possible. This will be a real workout for any television, so don’t immediately disqualify a candidate if it doesn’t do well with the console. Simply remember which one of your last couple of candidates did best here, and possibly use it as a tie breaker. If you can audition at home, or have a dealer with known return policy that includes complete customer satisfaction, proceed - otherwise, ask lots of questions, and don’t hesitate to ask others where they purchased, how they felt about the purchase, and how their television has made them feel.

Class dismissed.

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