A warning before buying an HDTV

I’ve personally had a dislike of HDTV’s before I even knew what they were. I’ve visited various family members with slim, wide TV’s for years and always asked myself : “Why would they want those?”. Of course eventually I learned the difference between a standard TV, a widescreen TV, and an HDTV (and other types of TV’s) as I grew even more. However my dislike of the HDTV’s persevered throughout my teenage years.

Why?

Because the image always looked blurry.

My uncles love technology (even though they know nothing of it) and of course had to buy the latest TV’s. Some bought them years ago before Blu-ray, HD DVD, or free HD channels even existed. And they were happy! It was as if they couldn’t notice that the channels they were watching looked worse on their new TV’s. It was as if having an expensive slim TV mattered more than the quality of the image. Thankfully my parents, brother ,and I still used only standard TV’s.

Until now.

My father’s TV broke upon imploding. After deciding that it was irreparable, my father went to our local Best Buy to buy a new TV. He originally wanted to buy a standard TV, but the only ones that were available were too small for the living room. So he figured it was time to take a step in technology and bought an HDTV. It was the wave of the future right? And the image looked really good at the store.

So my father brought it home, giddy as a 4-year old, but as soon as I noticed it was HDTV my heart sunk. Although my father is practically a specialist when it comes to computers, his knowledge of TV workings wasn’t quite up to date. I knew he’d end up disappointed.

So he set it up, and hooked our TV service and our DVD player to the TV. As soon as the set up was wrong he went to a channel and gave an odd look. He must have spent over 20 minutes playing around with video settings and video modes in hopes of a clearer picture. While he did eventually get a decent picture, it was nowhere near as clear as our now dead standard TV. Then he said something like “I’m trying to get it to stop being blurry, I know the image can be better.” That’s when I told him:

HDTV’s only look good with HD material. This is a regular channel, and that’s just a DVD, they’ll never look good on this TV.

On the bright side I told him about how TV providers give free HD channels – though we have to call to get them. I also reminded him that our Xbox 360 is compatible with HD, though its disc player isn’t the favored Blu-ray but the dead HD DVD player.

While many people get adjusted to the (lack of) quality of standard TV on HDTV’s, I probably won’t for a while. I still have my standard TV in my room, and plan to do all of my DVD watching on it. Everytime I watch a TV show on DVD, then go and watch it on the HDTV on a regular channel I notice the difference and it screams “go back to your room”.

So here are a few words of wisdom if you’re considering buying an HDTV:

1. Check your TV service’s to find out which of your usual channels are available in HD and if any or all are free.
2. If you own a lot of DVD’s or VHS’s, keep at least one standard TV in your house. They’ll look better on them.
3. Be prepared to spend more money to buy a Blu-ray player (or PS3) if you want to be able to watch discs in a clear picture.
4. Always try out different video modes for different material. For example: On our HDTV, regular channels look best on mode “wide”. However DVD’s look best on mode “zoom”. There is a mode “normal” but it still looks blurry and it’s just plain weird to have an image not cover the whole screen.