Product review by user

If you are a TV lover and have spent any time at all walking past the displays of big screen TV’s in your local stores, I can fully understand what happens — your remote control finger starts to twitch, your rear end starts to long for that comfortable spot in your favorite recliner, and you have a sudden urge to take your shoes off. At least that’s what happens to me. I admit it, I am a TV junkie. Not that I spend a lot of time in front of the TV but when I am there, I require quality, and the more quality in video and audio, the happier I am.

But with the technology available today to the consumer, the choices almost boggle the mind. And Joe Average doesn’t follow the technology closely enough to be able to understand which technology is best for his needs. In fact, Joe’s only gauge of quality is the unit’s price tag, which is probably about the LEAST reliable gauge of them all. So let’s take a quick look at the various technologies available for big screen TV so that you better understand what you are looking AT, as well as understanding what you are shopping FOR.

Regular tube TV: Yes, depending on your budget, this needs to be mentioned as a viable option, although unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 50 years, there is little new that you need to know about it. It’s a TV, plain and simple. Tube TV’s are typically limited to about 36 inch pictures, with a couple top-end brands even getting to the 40 inch mark. The picture is good, and most of today’s upper-end sets also allow the viewing of HDTV on the same unit. My only word of caution here is that I cannot recommend a set that has a built-in VCR and/or DVD player. The built-in units are typically not high quality with limited functionality, and for the additional money you would pay for such a combo unit, you can get an external VCR or DVD player for far less money.

Now on to the big stuff. But first, since I already mentioned it, a word about HDTV. HDTV is great, providing an incredible picture quality, provided of course that you have the screen that can display that quality. With HDTV, without getting all techie about it, the digital signal contains much more information, and the picture is created in PROGRESSIVE mode rather than INTERLACED mode, meaning that the ENTIRE picture is refreshed with every scan instead of just every other line as is done with interlaced.

I would also recommend a unit with the wide aspect ratio, like 16:9 or sometimes 16:10. This is the ratio of width versus height of the display, and the wide aspect ratio is the one you see when you go to the movie theatre. You can still watch broadcasts on the wide aspect ratio that are designed for the old traditional 4:3 aspect ratio, but it is much harder to watch something designed for 16:9 on a 4:3 display.

Another word of warning: there are big screen units that cannot do HDTV but they can do EDTV. Be aware that these are not the same. In fact, with the next step (SDTV) right around the corner, I don’t see a long lifespan for EDTV. EDTV provides better quality than standard analog TV, but not as sharp and crisp as HDTV.

The different types of big screen TVs are discussed below.

Plasma TV

Advantages: long life (30,000 to 40,000 hours from brand names, significantly less with noname brands), very bright - up to 4-5 times a standard TV, viewing angle is huge - you can be 75-80 degrees off center and still see a clear picture, instant-on feature - there is virtually no warm-up time required, small footprint - since these units are very thin and could even be wall-mounted.

Disadvantages: possible burn-in or “image retention” if the same image is left displayed on the screen for an extended period of time (although when used as a TV this is probably not a concern), can be very pricey at the largest sizes possible (currently around a 50 inch display), very few have a tuner/amplifier built in so you will be required to get an external tuner, pixel failure - where a single pixel just remains white all the time although this is much more common on noname brands and may (check!) be covered under your warranty.

LCD TV

Advantages: Great brightness levels, also very thin and could be mounted on the wall, long life (about 40,000 hours on brand names, substantially less on noname brands), viewing angle is about 45 to 50 degrees from straight on.

Disadvantages: Ghosting - where there may be “artifacts” left on the display during a fast-action movie scene because the LCD cannot keep up with it that fast, viewing angle is not as good as plasma, very expensive technology today, not as good at reproducing accurate color as plasma.

DLP Rear Projection

Advantages: Low purchase cost although this is typically offset by higher operating costs. At the sizes above 42 inches, the DLP big screen is approximately the same price as plasma.

Disadvantages: high operational cost (the single bulb in the projector can cost upwards of $300 to replace), large footprint - you will need to allocate about 15-18 inches from the wall to accommodate the unit, not wall-mountable, poor viewing angle - not much more than 20-25 degrees from straight on, gradually decreasing bulb brightness over time which means your picture is not as sharp or bright.

Understanding the various display technologies available should help you, but keep in mind that this is not the whole story. Also know that as technology advances, prices will continue to fall and there may be more options in the future. There are many other factors to be considered which are discussed at my web sites below. But at least now you have a good feel for the type of technology that will work with both your desires and your budget.

Jon Arnold is an author and computer engineer who maintains various web sites to provide tips and information on a variety of topics. More info on this topic can be found at his Home Theatre Web Site site at http://jag-info-resources.com/home-theatre/

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Many home theater enthusiasts prefer a big screen TV to the bulky projection systems. They sacrifice screen size for picture quality and space requirements. There are many types of televisions to choose from but we will cover the Plasma vs. LCD TV debate first.

Plasma TV is by far the coolest and most expensive. They are extra thin, (only a few inches) and very lightweight. They’re great for small rooms or apartments since they can be hung on the wall like a picture. The superior contrast, brightness and wide viewing angle of color plasma TV’s, have made them an excellent choice for viewing HDTV programming. The price of Plasma TV’s has been dropping recently with prices starting at around a thousand dollars all the way up to 20K for a top of line huge plasma TV.

LCD (liquid crystal display) TV’s are very similar to LCD computer monitors and offer video reproduction quality approaching that of plasma displays. LCD models generally cost less than comparable plasma models. They are extremely lightweight and thin and come in sizes from 7 inches to about 32 inches and more.

Of course as the big screen TV debate continues, we must not forget the standard CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) TV’s. These deliver great picture quality and are the most affordable by screen size. The negative is that they are very heavy and bulky. That is why they are losing ground to the slimmer, lightweight Plasma and LCD TV’s.

High Definition TV is becoming the new standard for TV’s. The current format for television broadcasting in America, as well as much of the world, is the NTSC format. While analog NTSC may have been the format of choice for nearly 50 years, digital broadcasting is revolutionizing the broadcast industry. High definition digital television broadcasting (HDTV) provides a much higher image resolution than NTSC. While NTSC could only provide around 650 lines of information per image, HDTV offers up to 1080 lines. This allows for much more detail and clarity.

Terry Burns is a home theater enthusiast and has a website at

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If you are in the market for a new television set, there just hasn’t been a better time to get high quality equipment that will last for years at low prices. Of course, TV technology continues to improve and as the new HDTV broadcasting format becomes more standardized the prices will continue to fall, but not the precipitous drops that we have seen in the past few years though.

So what about these LCD HDTVs? What makes them so special, and what should you look for when buying one?

Well, LCD monitors have been used in computers for several years now, and they are known for their bright, exquisite color rendition, so it was a natural leap to adapt that technology to the HDTV format. LCD screens are much thinner and lighter than projection TVs and older CRT screens too, so they can be very useful in smaller rooms that just could not support a larger screen before LCD or plasma screens came along. Many people even mount LCD screens to the wall using special brackets that hold them securely in place, and this is perhaps the ultimate in space saving design.

If you have such a great, eye-pleasing monitor you now need to have programming that takes full advantage of the screen’s viewing capability, and that’s where HDTV comes in. It is two technologies that were meant for each other. HDTV allows television broadcasting to be sent in a signal that is very dense with digital information about both the video and sound. It is a huge leap over the older analog TV broadcasts that most TV stations have been using for years.

In fact, the HDTV signal can carry screen resolution information up to ten times that of the old analog signals. So when you marry that much sharper and rich resolution with a LCD screen that is capable of displaying the signal in all it’s intended glory, you have a combination that is hard to beat for sheer viewing pleasure.

Just make sure that the LCD TV that you buy either has a HDTV tuner already in it or is labeled as “HDTV Ready” which means that it can be hooked up to a HDTV tuner like those used by satellite and cable companies who feature HDTV programming.

Once you view television programming with the combined technologies of HDTV and a LCD monitor, you will wonder how you managed without it all this time.

Jim Johnson is a successful author and publisher on consumer related matters. You can find out more about a sharp lcd tv and lcd tv reviews by visiting our HDTV website.

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