TV Shopping
Oh man... who knew shopping for HDTVs would be so complicated!
From a distance, you see all these TVs at Best Buy or Walmart and you just drool over the high quality of some TVs and cringe at the sheer horror at other TVs that are TRYING to be high quality. ...and just when you find something you think might work, it either doesn't have the connectors you want, turns out NOT to be high definition, or is from Sony or some off-brand company you've never heard of.
I'm not buying a PlayStation 3. That much is pretty obvious if you read this site regularly. Sony claims PS3s can operate at what's called 1080p. 1,080 vertical lines of progressive frames, as opposed to interlaced frames. Let me try to explain the difference.
A frame is a single still image that makes up about 1/60th of a second of footage. (At least in the United States. It, of course, differs from country to country, because humanity just can't make universal standards for things that really should be.) If you had the correct tools, you could slow the footage down enough to see each individual frame. You wouldn't actually WANT to do this, but that's the example!
Okay, now... interlaced frames is a sort of window-blinds effect. It's when one frame is further split into two separate images. It, in essense, counts the lines of the frame, from top to bottom, and breaks them apart. Line 1, 3, 5, 7, etc are one image. Line 2, 4, 6, etc is another. The TV then shows the first half-image, and then rapidly shows the second half-image. It was developed for older TVs that couldn't receive signals to display one entire frame. It was sort of a compromise to partly improve picture quality without increasing bandwidth. Nowadays, though, interlaced video isn't so great. TVs have become sensitive and clear enough for people to actually notice interlaced footage now. It usually results in a somewhat blurry image. Here's a Wikipedia article about Interlaced footage. It might help explain a little more, since it has some visuals.
Computer monitors are what's called progressive. Which is where the monitor shows one entire frame per second. It doesn't break it down into two striped frames and put them together again. The result is an incredibly sharper image! Seriously... it's an amazing difference. Especially when you have them side-by-side. Progressive footage is actually bigger than interlaced footage. Bigger, sharper, and just... plain cool.
Most old analog TVs that use antennae for displaying channels are interlaced. These TVs are also "full screen", with an aspect ratio of 4:3 (width:height). Almost a perfect square, but slightly rectangular. Nowadays, with the introduction of HDTVs, this old technology is referred to as 480i. (480 vertical interlaced lines.) Pretty horrible quality in the present day. If you buy a new TV today, you DON'T want this. (Unless you just don't care... but I do.)
With the introduction of HDTVs, a new resolution was introduced. 720 verticle lines, interlaced and progressive capable. (Interlaced purely for backwards compatibility.) Commonly referred to as 720i and 720p. Can you tell me which one you'd actually want to use? You'd want to use 720p. 720 verticle progressive lines. 720i/p is also widescreen, with an aspect ratio of 16:10. Not quite as wide as 16:9, like widescreen computer monitors, but it's good enough. 720i/p allows you to watch widescreen DVD movies with an unprecedented amount of clarity.
Of course, technology marches on. TVs are (or... were) far behind computer monitor technology. Computers were up to 1200 verticle progressive lines, at a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. Some were even bigger, but... yeah... incredibly expensive. So, TVs still needed a massive upgrade. So, enter 1080i/p! 1,080 verticle lines of both interlaced and progressive frames! (Interlaced, as always, included solely for backwards compatibility.) Widescreen, of course, at a ratio of 16:10.
1080i/p is still very new and very expensive (over $5000 for the low quality TVs, several thousand for the good ones). Naturally, the PlayStation 3 supports 1080p, which is the latest and greatest in sharpness and clarity, yet also costs nearly as much as most peoples' annual income. The price is always coming down, though, the longer they're out and the easier it gets to make these dudes.
Okay, so here's my plight, after attempting to explain (and thusly losing you at where I was explaining what frames were) what all these silly new TV sizes are... I want a Nintendo Wii. Duh. But I want a new widescreen TV to play it on. What can I say? I'm a spoiled brat. I love my technology. Right now, I use my desktop computer monitor as a TV screen. It uses something called S-Video, and runs at an odd 576i. Slightly higher quality than regular TVs, but still rather dumpy looking... and the flicker! Ouy! I can barely play for more than a half hour before going cross-eyed. It simply won't due for the Wii.
But here's the thing. The Wii only supports widscreen 480p. Which, if you remember your math and terminology, is 480 verticle progressive lines at a 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio. It's has the same verticle lines as old TVs, but it's progressive, AND widescreen, so it's definately lots better. Not as good as 720p and not NEARLY as good as 1080p, but, as we've heard so many times, Nintendo is interested in cheap fun! Adding HDTV support of higher numbers would drive the cost up and nobody wants that.
So... to play the Wii, I need a widescreen 480p TV. Preferrably LCD, which gets rid of any flicker and eye strain. Those TVs will be fairly cheap these days. Probably no more than about $500 or so. Maybe even less, depending on what you want exactly. I don't want anything too big. I want it wall mountable. No larger than 30 diagonal inches, most likely. (Hey! Can't get TOO small, now!)
Okay, so the Wii is pretty low end on the HDTV spectrum, but it does support the low end, which is nice. Widescreen for the win, man! But I also want an Xbox 360. Guess what? It supports 1080i! (Okay, clarification. Here's the list of common TV resolutions: 480i (old TVs), 480p, 720i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. The lower the number, the smaller and less clear the image is. Interlaced is always worse than progressive.) It's designed to play things at 720p, but can stretch itself to 1080i if you TV supports that. Which is not always the best thing to do... stretch images to something bigger than it's meant to be. But, hey, some people don't care, and some games do that.
In a nutshell. The Nintendo Wii supports widescreen 480p. The Xbox 360 supports widescreen 1080i. The PlayStation 3 supports widescreen 1080p. Now, the question is... which TV do I want to buy? The 1080i TVs have been out for a while now, and are very affordable for me. The 1080p TVs are incredibly expensive... and BIG! Really big! We're talking 52 diagonal inches big. 180 pounds big. Very, very big. Get the picture? Heheh. But, see... being the technological geek I am, and being the perfectionist I am, and being the type of guy who likes to spend a lot of money so I don't have to upgrade in the future... I'm wondering what TV I should invest in.
Should I get the 1080p TV? Continue to hunt for a smaller sized TV? Even though I probably won't buy anything that even supports 1080p? I'm not going to get a PlayStation 3... I'll probably not buy any of these new fangled HD movies coming out, either, if they even natively support 1080p without stretching themselves and looking ugly. Or should I settle for a 1080i TV? It'll run the Xbox 360 at a native resolution, and of course support the Wii. It's cheaper, smaller, lighter, yet it will probably have to be replaced sooner rather than later, to keep up with current technology.
On the other hand, if this TV is only used for gaming and the occasional DVD movie or football game (Go, Indianapolis Colts!), I probably won't ever need to upgrade it, since the consoles probably won't ever start to support something better that what they already support. Hmm...
You know what? I think, after writing this page for an hour, I've decided that I don't need the 1080p mondo-expensivo TV, and I can settle for "just good enough" and not ever notice a difference if I use it for what I intend to use it for. (I'm just worried that I'll try to expand the use of the TV in later years, and it'll turn out that I should have gotten the 1080p uber-pricey TV instead.)
Nah. I'm not a real TV-type of guy. I'll probably only be using this thing for gaming consoles and the occasional DVD or something. If a new console comes out that supports a newer TV, I'll probably just keep using mine until nothing connects to it anymore. See, the reason I'm even looking into a TV right now is because I, personally, don't have one to use. If I already had one, I would keep using it until it broke. Contrary to what people may think, I don't buy things off the cuff and then discard them after a while. I seem to be buying a lot of stuff lately... but you have to realize that I've been waiting for these things for literally years. They're all coming out at the same time, and I have the money! (It's WHY I have money, even. I'm saving up for all this!)
Anyway... I'm gonna turn in now. By the way, here's the TV I'm currently looking into getting: Samsung LN-S3251D. Still kind of expensive for what I want, but maybe I can find it cheap on eBay or something. It natively supports 720p/1080i, which is all I need, and it isn't gargantuan. I'm not sure if it's wall mountable, but oh well. It's black, too. It'll match my other equipment. It's got the best reviews on PCWorld.com, too, and I trust them wholeheartedly. They've never failed me on their reviews.
What do you think I should do? Does that TV seem like it would suit my needs?