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What Gamers Need To Know About Buying an HD TV
The excellent games coverage at the San Jose Mercury News site offers up a gamers buying guide for HD TVs. Dean Takahashi discusses the basics every HD purchaser should know, some technical issues with recent plasma and LCD advances in mind, and addresses the specific problems that gamers will face with their new purchases. From the article: "If you accidentally set your PS 3 for 1080p resolution, when the TV can only support 720p, you get a black screen. The Westinghouse TV I used displayed a message that said 'invalid format.' To reset the PS3 to the standard AV format, you shut the PS3 off. Then you hold the PS3's power button down for about 10 seconds. It will reset to standard video. If you have the Nintendo Wii, you won't have to upgrade your standard/enhanced definition TV as the Wii's best resolution is 480p. It's thankfully simple, but you get a sixth of the pixels on screen as you do with a full HDTV with a PS3."
This article totally neglects to mention any of the issues with HDTV lag. From my understanding, it occurs when the TV has to convert a signal to its native resolution, resulting in a several millisecond delay.
This can be frustrating in action or rhythm games (Which is why Guitar Hero 2 has an option to compensate for it). I don't have an HDTV, so I'm not sure how bad it is but some google-fu should find plenty more on the subject.
After researching dozens of websites, a dozen stores, and going back and forth between different models, I finally bought an LCD HDTV last month. I decided on the LVM-42W2 from Westinghouse. It has 1080p resolution, tons of inputs (including two DVIs and HDMI for hooking up your laptop) and works flawlessly. I couldn't be happier with the picture and it's by far the best price for a 40"+ 1080p screen.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
As the article off-handedly suggests, plasma still has some burn-in issues. If you play a lot of FPS games, you suddenly might see a movie one day and notice items from your HUD as ghostly images still appearing on the screen. Some newer plasma TVs have "burn-in reduction" or "protection" but it's not very good. Basically, what the TV does is burn every single element/pixel on the screen. Now the entire image is less bright. You won't see a difference but if you ever plug in another TV next to yours, you might notice how much it has faded.
From what I understand, if your source is 1080P (a PS3, an Xbox 360 playing 1080P WMV content, an HD DVD player) and your display is 1080i, the image still retains all its details and it looks exactly as it would on a 1080P set. If your display is 720P, it won't display all that information and downconvert it. For PC geeks, it's pretty easy to figure out. With full HD being 1920 x 1080 pixels, a 1080P set is like a PC running on a massively powerful graphics card. A 720P set has a slightly smaller resolution, and a 1080i set has two graphics cards that are half the power of the 1080P one. Honestly, on any TV in the sub-$2000 category, it's going to be extremely difficult to tell the difference.
If you're in the market, my suggestion is to go cheap as whatever is over $2000 nowadays is going to be half that price in a year or so. For the money, a properly configured rear-projection CRT HDTV is still going to give you the best display as it can deliver real blacks: i.e., no light and the nice bright whites of an LCD -- and at half the price of a comparable LCD/DLP/Plasma set. But of course, CRT HDTVs aren't flat so you don't look like that rapper on TV, so many people don't consider them. Their loss.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I use a mitsubishi 54" DLP for gaming and there is absolutely no lag. This is true for every input, device, and game system I have tried with it. In some of the first generation TVs you had change the settings for the inputs that required lagless operation, but this hasn't been a problem in any modern HDTV that I have seen. And by modern I mean the last 3 years.
Don't let fud like this scare you out of getting a great looking and much cheaper DLP screen. If it has lag, which is very unlikely then take it back and get a different model.
Regards.
----- 70% of all statistics are completely made up.
I ran into this very same dilemma (Future Shop in Canada, akin to Best Buy - and I believe owned by them). Here' s what I did - I took a Powerbook to the store with a DVD in it, along with the various video cables.
I knew that any HDTV I bought would have to hook up thru at least VGA and preferably DVI (the right DVI, not 'analog' DVI - still shake my head at that), and I also knew that their in-store video system would not show me a damn thing other than how crappy their distribution amplifier is.
Most sales drones won't throw a fit when you say you want to hook up the laptop, and you have a consistent source reference that is better for direct comparisons. Only problem with this is, you can't do side-by-side, but its still a lot better than the alternative.
If I were to offer advice, having just bought the Samsung model mentioned in the article (LCD) for exactly this primary purpose (gaming), here's what I would say:
make damn sure there isn't a sync issue
1080p is nice but hardly necessary; that rez is basically science fiction (content wise) for the next 4 years
viewing angle is key
make sure your inputs don't screw you; DVI is great, VGA is great, HDMI is nice in theory but a little ahead of the curve (mine has 2 HDMI and 1 component. Of course everything I have right now wants to talk component)
forget the speakers, they make no difference
the signal processor quality in the unit (upconverting, noise reduction) is VERY important. Samsung's DNIe is pretty impressive in this regard
If you are buying a flatscreen just for a Wii - and only that - you could go for a much cheaper EDTV. Its only 480p but thats all you're ever going to get out of the Nintendo anyhow. Probably make a nice bedroom wall tv later on. I wouldn't buy a 1080p TV right now unless the money really meant nothing to me. 720p basically IS 'HD' for the foreseeable future (for a lot of reasons).
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Three options as far as external tuners are concerned:
1. Set top box
Provided by your cable or sattelite tv provider, decodes HD and SD signals.
Pros: Very easy to hook up, available with DVR, can be "free" if you sign a contract
Cons: takes up space and adds another component to your system (although most come with a [simple] programmable remote)
2. Cablecard
Provided by some (not all) cable and sattelite tv providers, decodes HD and SD signals
Pros: fits inside your HD tv, you can use your TV remote to change channels, can be "free" if you sign a contract
Cons: you need a TV that has a cablecard slot, no DVR, not available from all signal providers
3. External HDTV tuner
Available at many electronics stores, decodes over-the-air (local) HD signals, might do SD signals, too.
Pros: No need to pay a provider for HD content
Cons: Limited HD selection (local channels only), adds component to your setup, probably requries antenna, costs around $150 to $200
If your parents watch a lot of television, option 1 is probably their best bet. The remote for my primitive digital cable box can be programmed to turn on the TV at the same as the decoder, so there's no need for multiple remotes.