Is now the right time to buy an HD TV?

[DavidBrendon]

I am in my 70s and my wife died a few months ago so I live alone.

I find the pros & cons regarding HD which you knowledgeable guys post, rather confusing. For instance is now the time to for me buy a new HD TV with Sky HD, or is it wiser for me to wait for a major development which is coming soon? (Will there not always be major developments about to come on stream, and I am not getting any younger!)

I have an Hitachi 42PD 5200E with a Pioneer DVR 520H and find that a pretty good combination, but if HD is going to make viewing (Sport, news & documentaries) significantly more satisfying, I will make the change.

Any suggestions about the best combination of plasma HD and DVD currently available for say £3000 will be greatly appreciated?

[Hi-Def]

even though i wont eve try starting recommending a screen

i will say 1 thing there will always be something slightly better next mont, next year etc

but if you keep waiting you wont be able to enjoy all that HD content and a brand new telly

HD wont make any diff to news as theres no HD news yet but it will deffo make watching Sport and Documentaries much better

[Steve.J.Davies]

If you are going to put up a dish that can receive HD or subscribe to $sky then why not go for it ? Couldn'l tell you which kit would work out best for you but there are lot of 'happy threads' here. make a note of the most raved about and go and have a look at 'em. Its your eyes that will be watching not mine or anyone else's. Of course finding a place that can demo a set worth a darn is a task !
If I had the room (and budget !) I would have two set ups - one something like yours for SD and the 'good stuff' for HD. that way would not be lumbered with massive but crappy picture when its a 'below par' picture. I believe that to get the beniefit of HD you have to have a BIG (no I mean BBIIGG) screen and sit surprisingly close to it to get the actual benefit of seeing all those extra pixels. But thats what my eyes tell me. Lots of stuff about that here too.

Sorry about the circumstances.

[arfster]

Originally Posted by DavidBrendon

(Will there not always be major developments about to come on stream, and I am not getting any younger!)

There will always be developments, however at present two massive ones are happening. First, sets capable of 1080p rather than 720p are becoming affordable, at least for 50" to 55" LCD and RPTV (plasma 1080ps are still crazy expensive). I think probably it's worth going for a 1080p set if you plan to get Sky HD or Bluray/HDDVD, as any 720p set can only display 44% of the total pixels coming from a 1080p source. 1080p is a big leap, it's going to be the standard resolution for 10+ years, and there's nothing extra over the horizon on that front.

Second thing is that nextgen HD formats are appearing. HD-DVD and Bluray are your choices, unfortunately not compatible with each other because the idiot companies insist on fighting another silly format war. At present, HD-DVD players go for £350-£450ish, and the Bluray players are much more expensive. Possibly what might be smart here is just to get a normal DVD player, and get a HD player later, when prices drop and the bugs are ironed out. Alternatively, the Toshiba HD-DVD players can play standard DVDs very well already, so you wouldn't need to buy a separate and expensive DVD player.

Personally, I'd get the SXRD and the Tosh HD-DVD, for pretty much bang on £2000. Nice big 55" 1080p screen, the best quality HD source, and you're set for Sky/Telewest HD if you want that as well.

Oh, and I'd second what was said above - don't think 50"+ is too big. Once you get used to it, no HDTV is too big - the more screen space the better the movie experience. Wildlife documentaries are also a speciality of HD, they can look absolutely stunning when you can see every hair on some animal's body, but you need the big screen to reveal all the detail :-)

[NicolasB]

Lots of good points from arfster, there.

Another significant change going on at the moment is that entirely new display technologies are coming onto the market. LCOS is a prime example: it's been at the fringes of things for a couple of years, but it wasn't until the launch of the Sony Ruby that it made any serious impact on the market. Now we have the Pearl as well, and affordable LCOS rear-projection devices from both Sony and JVC.

There are other technologies on the way: SED will likely be with us some time in 2008, and should be a real killer in terms of image quality. (Whether they can get the price down enough to make it good value for money is still unknown!). I don't know if OLED displays will ever really make it onto the market, but they might. LCD is also going in some interesting directions: I'm looking forward to seeing LCD with scanning LED backlights, and the whole "High dynamic range" LCD concept is intriguing - they're promising 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios. DLP devices driven with diode-lasers sound rather interesting, too.

I can't help feeling that none of the existing display technologies have quite made it, yet. LCOS, for example, hasn't quite cracked the colour-and-brightness-uniformity problem (although it's getting there) and can have allignment problems; LCD still suffers from poor blacks, questionable colour accuracy, and (sometimes) motion artefacts; DLP devices (or at least the ones anyone can actually afford) suffer from rainbows; plasma, while not a bad compromise, still can't provide a high enough resolution at a low enough price.

By contrast, something like SED has the potential to finally combine the kind of contrast ratios, response times and colour accuracy one gets from CRT with perfect image geometry and finally produce a display with no signficant downside (except possibly the price ).

As a rule it's not a good idea to say "Oh, I'll wait two years, things will be better by then" because otherwise you never buy anything. But, IMO, with the current lack of HD source material, there's really no compelling reason to upgrade to HD at all just yet. And, display-wise, better is on the way.