IMO DVI is not the final word. Certainly when receivers and dvd players start having DVI you are going to need another inpput on your TV. I thought I had read that HDCP was actually smaller than DVI, and that there would be some kind of adapter. Anyway if there is one thing you can be certain of is that there will always be change. I say buy your TV now and enjoy it. If you wait for the next best thing you will never have anything.

Sometimes I still feel confused about the whole thing. Everybody says we sell HDTVs yet very few are actually capable of displaying true 1920x1080 lines of resolution. They either have 1280x720 or 840x600 or whatever. I feel that a true HDTV should be a TV that has 1920x1080 lines of resolution. Not a tv that is able to take that signal and scale it down to whatever their native resolution is. I still feel I am losing out. Very few tv manufacturers have really explained this or have satisfied our HDTV needs. Certainly the technology has not come out yet for LCDs and DLPs. Although I thought I heard that the sharp 24" display can do 1920x1080.

Anyway the bottom line is if you can wait a year better for you. Prices are only going to get cheaper. It also allows for the bugs to get worked out on newer products. It is amazing how many nightmare stories you here from people on forums like this one. They spent anywhere from 3 to 8 thousand on their display units and they have burn-in, dead pixels, dust blobs. Or with the recent release of the Samsung DLP-TVs, the PQ is bad on 480i sources.

If you are really anxious about getting a TV now at least wait for the reports at cedia, and then make a choice. Enjoy your TV and when something really extraordinary comes out you can sell it, or give it to the folks, or put it in the bedroom, or stick it in the basement, or and this is the best one, give it to your old pal Jeff.

Happy Shopping



[This message has been edited by JeffreyMercado (edited September 19, 2002).]

In my experience, manufacturers have been labelling as "HDTV" anything whose native resolution is higher than 480p. I would expect, however, that a proper HDTV set should scale everything it receives up to 1920x1080. It's a pain, though, that there's no easy scaling to convert 1280x720 to 1920x1080... why couldn't they have set the standards as integer multiples of each other? It seems as though they chose 1.5 multiples which makes things harier for scalers.

Another thing that confuses me. We've had computer monitors for years that can display resolutions higher than 1920x1080, and prices on those have fallen through the floor lately; especially CRTs. Why, then, is it so hard and so expensive to produce TVs with higher than 640x480 resolution? Why not just slap a TV tuner on a 19" monitor and call it a TV?



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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Already done here! I actually have a 17" now, but the idea is still there. Can't wait to get something like a 21" Sony CPD-G520.

Standard TV signals don't look quite as good on monitors as they are very blocky. I don't know if HDTV will be able to go into one. I vaguely remember something about how this was possible. DVDs still look fantastic though, even on my 3 year old Trinitron.

Yeah, I love to play DVDs on my PowerMac. They look sharp and beautiful; it's like having a 1200p TV (yeah I know there is no such thing) hooked up to a high-quality video scalar/deinterlacer. The downside is, it's in a different room from my HT and therefore not connected to it; so all sound is in stereo. Pretty nice speakers, but still not towers and not 5.1.

I never put a TV tuner card in it. Are there HDTV tuner cards available? If there were such a thing, and you could use it to capture to the HDD, it would be like having a HDTV DVR. I might just have to move the mac into the HT room and make it a HTMac.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

I don't know what there is for a mac, but for a PC there's the AccessDTV Digital Media Receiver

http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1110-404-6742800.html?tag=pdtl-list

How do you make a link anyway? How do you get smiley faces and other fun stuff in there too?

This thread has gotten me following HDTV developments - so last night read about Rep Tauzin pushing a bill to push up the deadline to turn off the analog broadcast signal. This morning I read that a while ago the FTC passed a ruling that as of '04 all 35"+ sets have to include a HDTV tuner. That's only 1 1/2 years away!! How can we still be discussing connectivity compatibility issues with time lines like that approaching? This has the feel of a train wreck approaching.

Ben, apparently you figured out how to make a link because it is there! I'll follow it as soon as I finish typing this. To make smileys type colon-right parenthesis. There are other variations available; see the "Smilies Legend" to the left of the text box.

TunerF, yes I can also see how this could be a Bad Thing.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

I don't see anything on their site about Mac so I've sent them an e-mail... we'll see what they say. This thing could be great, if it will work for me.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Oh there's the smilies! I never saw that before.

Anyway, I think I just lucked out with that link as I typed the entire thing in (copied it really). I was wondering how to attach the link to words, like what Gonk does with "follow the link 'here'" so much.

[This message has been edited by BenjaminRigby (edited September 20, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by BenjaminRigby (edited September 20, 2002).]

You mean like this?

put [ url ] and [ /url ] around the link (without the spaces inside the brackets -- like [ url ]www.yahoo.com[ /url ] to get www.yahoo.com ) or put the link in the first brackets (like [ url=http://www.yahoo.com/ ]this[ /url ] without the spaces inside the brackets to get this ).



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