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HDTV or Not HDTV: That is the (Big) Question

When buying a television takes weeks of research
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The last time I bought a television it was a simple, straightforward process. I trundled down to Vancouver in the early 1990s, wrangled an oversized shopping cart with a perfunctory wobbly wheel into Costco, took stock of the handful of sets they carried in the size I wanted, chose a mid-priced one and walked out with a medium-size dent in my Visa card.

Back in Whistler, I wrestled it out of its box, set it up, plugged it in, slipped fresh batteries into the remote control and pushed ‘On.’ The screen began to glow, sound came out of the speakers and I settled in to watch the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. The picture was great. The news was grim.

I began to fiddle with some of the buttons on the remote control. A couple of very simple menus tweaked the sound and picture quality and I found the button that toggled between cable and VCR input. There was nothing else to adjust and the whole process — excluding the always painful trip to Vancouver — took less time than driving the empty box down to recycling.

In TV world, that’s what passes for the Good Old Days.

Today’s brave new world of television is a labyrinth of confusing choices. When once all you needed to buy a television was a bit of cash, a bit of time and enough common sense to select a set that’d fit where you intended to put it. Today, it’s advisable to pack along an electronic engineer and a credit card with lots of room left on it.

HDTV, HD-ready, HDMI, DVI, 1080p, 1080i, ATSC, NTSC, KHz and the rest of the alphanumeric soup tossed causally about by TV geeks at big-box stores all mean something. Exactly what isn’t always clear… even after they try explaining it, assuming they do. Toss in the comparative differences between plasma, LCD, rear projection, front projection and Organic LED and it’s enough to feed any predisposition a guy might have towards procrastination.

I’d nursed a jones for a sleek, new, flat-screen TV since the first time I ever saw one. That was about a human generation ago — 7.4 electronic generations — in a high-end toy store I used to visit in Vancouver to torture myself. It hung on the wall(!), looked like a glowing, three-dimensional jewel chest and cost $22 grand.

By today’s standards, it was tiny, but it triggered lust in me that could easily have become felonious were it not for the knowledge the authorities wouldn’t have let me take it to prison with me.

When the curves of desire, price and opportunity finally came together earlier this year, I decided to take the plunge.

Are We Confused Yet

I started by sticking a toe in the water; I ‘helped’ my sister buy a new TV. Helping mostly consisted of hefting the thing into her car because I was helpless at selecting one from the several thousand that all seemed to look alike.

In the harsh glare of big-box florescent lights, a thousand images of Lou Dobbs taunted me like a devilish hall of mirrors. “Make it go away,” I screamed. Not possible since stores hide all the remote controls. Without remotes, of course, you can’t vanquish Lou and, more importantly, you can’t adjust any picture settings. That makes the incredibly difficult almost impossible.

Unlike buying stereo equipment, where you can pretty much trust your ears to tell your brain what to do, you simply can’t believe your eyes when you’re buying a TV. Garish lighting, picture adjustments set at levels that’d start fires in your living room and signals of unknown origin make comparing pictures an apples/oranges thing. It’s kind of like the Closing Time Illusion where, fifteen minutes to closing time in any bar in town, every unattached member of the opposite sex still conscious begins to look pretty good. Tough choice, Grasshopper; best not trust your eyes.

Since what you see may not be what you get, that leaves deciphering the ‘specs’ printed on the little cards in front of each set or asking a helpful sales associate. The former being incomprehensible and the latter being an oxymoron, making a final choice comes down to the personal psychology of desperation — I’m here to buy something and I’m not leaving until I do. Hmmm, that blond Toshiba’s beginning to look pretty good.

While we were milling about, thinking the whole process would be a lot easier if the big-box store served cocktails, I eavesdropped on other confused purchasers. Some found solace in name brands. “I hear Sony’s are good.” Some asked complete strangers who seemed to know what they were doing what they were purchasing and bought the same thing. A few were actually doing eeny, meany, miney, moe. Most just picked a price point they were comfortable with and left mumbling something about learning to love each other.

We fell into the last category, selecting a mid-priced, mid-performance Samsung which, unfortunately, required the assistance of a salesperson to actually find in an unopened box. “You’ll want a power conditioner with that,” he said.

“What’s a power conditioner?” my sister asked.

“Conditions your electricity,” he responded, unselfconsciously. “A surge could blow this baby up without one,” he added, making a kablooie noise for dramatic effect.

He tossed something that looked like an oversized power bar into the cart. It had an $80 price tag.

“And you’ll want the extended warranty, won’t you?”

“Why?”

“If anything goes wrong for three years, you’re covered,” he said, adding a second kablooie for good measure. “It’s only $170 dollars.”

“If we got the extended warranty why would we need the power conditioner? Wouldn’t the unconditioned power blowing up the TV be your problem then?”

He needed to ask a manager about that.

When we wrestled the thing back to my sister’s house — extended warranty, yes; power conditioner, no — setting it up was pretty straightforward. Cable box in, DVD player in, plug in, 37 pages of warnings in the front of the instruction manual ignored, power on.

The set glowed to life and we spent the next several hours pretending we were Hansel and Gretel, wandering aimlessly lost through the 287 nested menus of arcane adjustments. We ran out of breadcrumbs and patience somewhere near the magenta adjustment, defaulted to Default Settings and salved our lack of perseverance with cocktails.

The day ended in a confusion of discarded cardboard and a nagging hope the high-definition channels my sister didn’t subscribe to would provide the wowie effect that seemed to be missing from the bigger but not spectacular picture.

I was convinced there had to be a better way. Part of the problem was my aversion to choice. Bucking what seems to be the predominant societal trend, I’m more comfortable with less choice. Give me three options, I’ll choose one. Give me 10 and I’ll walk away empty handed.

Coupled with my aversion to driving to Vancouver — too far, too much construction and, ultimately, too much choice — and my preference to shop locally, the solution was clear.

The Challenge

So late in February, I headed down to Whistler Audio-Visual in Function Junction and paid Rob Wilde a visit. I knew I’d find four things there: knowledgeable people, fewer choices, stuff I couldn’t possibly afford but would have very sweet dreams about, and, with luck, just the right collection of components I could afford and that would work together… perfectly.

I told Rob what I was looking for: big TV; HD satellite receiver; and an upconverting DVD player. Oh yeah, and the Holy Grail — a single remote control to make everything work seamlessly. The confusing Dance of Many Remotes, “Which !*%&ing button do I push to watch a DVD?” is just so 20 th century.

I told him I didn’t want what a friend had, a big TV whose picture was so bad I booked an appointment with the optometrist after seeing it, thinking my eyes had suddenly gotten worse.

I also explained my preference to buy local had its limits. He needed to at least come close to matching Vancouver prices. He’d been advertising that over the holidays so it didn’t seem like too much to ask. Besides, coming close definitely factored in the savings of time and expense to travel up and down the Sea-to-Hell highway, the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting local business and the enhanced peace of mind knowing if something went kablooie, there was a concerned local I could call instead of a soulless gorm at a big box store down valley.

“No problem,” he said. “Shall we begin?”

Despite my best efforts to get a yes or no answer on the ever-perplexing question, plasma or LCD, Rob wanted to start at the beginning.

“From a designer’s point of view,” he explained, “If I were designing a system for you from scratch, I’d need to understand the family unit, wall, floor and ceiling material, distance from primary and secondary viewing position, things like that.”

I short-circuited part of this design consultation by telling him I wasn’t going to travel the home theatre route, opting instead to wire in my ancient, wheezing stereo components to handle the job of annoying the neighbours when I slipped in that very loud Pink Floyd concert DVD. But I had measured the distance from where the object of my desire would sit and where I’d sit and while I knew it was theoretically possible to get a TV that was too big, there were mistakes I was prepared to live with.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about size,” he said. “Viewing distance isn’t as critical today as it was in earlier generations of HD monitors. In days past, minimum viewing distance was about one-and-a-half times the monitor’s diagonal measurement. Now it’s one or one-and-a-quarter, so you can actually get closer. And with 1080p content, you can get a lot closer before you start to see individual pixels.”

I Can See Clearly Now

Oops. There’s one of those mysterious numbers. 1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc., are measures of the number of horizontal lines of information high-definition monitors can display, “can” being the operative word. A 1080p monitor displays 1080 lines per ‘frame’ of data, while 1080i interlaces that data and displays lines alternately in every other frame. 720 means fewer horizontal lines, but still more than conventional TV… you get the picture.

The more lines of information, the sharper, crisper and clearer the picture and, if you want to test your mama’s admonition, the closer you can be to the screen. But, as Rob was quick to point out, “This is one of the few applications where hardware is leading software.”

“Huh?” I responded.

“Unless you’re watching an HD-DVD, you’re not getting 1080p content. Even the HD channels you can pull in with the Star Choice HD tuner are 1080i.”

So why, I hear you ask, would you buy more technology than you’re likely to use very often? Obviously you’ve never driven a car with 400 horsepower or lusted after a camera with a couple more megapixels than the one you’ve been using. The march of technology is relentless and I suspect by the time I’m ready to retire whatever I wind up buying, over-the-air television signals will have caught and surpassed the best hardware I can buy today. I’d already made my mind up on the 1080p standard.

“Now can we discuss plasma versus LCD?” I asked.

In the world of high-definition TV, this distinction is either potāto-potăto or communism-capitalism, depending on who you ask. It’s hard to talk to two people or read two stories without coming away with two opposing opinions about which technology is best. Everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who’s had a nightmarish experience with each. Knowing I’d be overjoyed with either just made it seem that much more intractable.

“There are two or three features that separate the two,” Rob explained. “Plasma is not as energy efficient; it consumes more power. Plasma historically has a glass face versus a film face on LCDs. Therefore, it is highly reflective, kind of like having your photos printed on glossy paper versus matte. Because of that, not everybody’s home environment can deal with plasma. Windows with direct sun play havoc with them. It’s like looking into a mirror.

“In a controlled environment, plasma is a superior monitor. It has enjoyed an historical edge in having a faster refresh rate but LCDs are catching up. There’s been a lot of investment by the big LCD makers and, as a rule of thumb, if you’re going plasma, don’t buy cheap. You can get away with cheap in LCD but not plasma.”

I’d stopped listening after hearing LCDs were more energy efficient. Not being a sports junkie or gamer, refresh rate — the number of times per second screens redraw their picture — wasn’t my deciding factor. Already feeling pangs of guilt knowing whatever I brought home would suck more juice than what it was replacing, going with the less sucking option and watching TV in the dark was more than enough to offset my guilt.

It was now time for the discussion I so desperately wanted to avoid: peripherals. Avoiding that discussion though is what leads to the Big Set Blues, that sinking feeling people get when they hook their new hi-def TV to their old signals and watch in disgusted dejection as the fuzzy, bigger picture makes them think they just wasted their time and money.

The first choice was simple — an HD monitor needs an HD signal. I’ve been married to Star Choice since the cable guy sued me a dozen years ago. Star Choice only has two HD receivers, one with a built-in digital recorder and one without. Not being able to remember a broadcast show I’d been tempted to record in recent memory, the choice was simple.

To afford the new monitor every chance to knock my sox off, I wanted a better DVD player. I didn’t want to gamble on who was going to win the HD-DVD race — it was decided about 12 nanoseconds after I bought everything — so Rob steered me toward a $100 Toshiba player that magically upconverts standard DVD output to 1080i, 720p or 480i depending on what you have it hooked up to.

“You can see most of what Blue-Ray and HD are recreating with one of these boxes and save a few hundred bucks,” said Rob. Good enough for a guy who gets most of his DVDs from the library.

Power To Da People

“Okay, I hate to ask but what the hell are power conditioners and why do I want one?” I hated to ask.

Ironically, as I asked this, the power went out in Function Junction. When it did, Rob ran around turning things off. “You never know what kind of surge you’re going to get when the power comes back on,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Power conditioners will get rid of spikes and surges. Better ones will also clean up some of the noise carried through the power line. Because of that, it’ll refine your video content. It’s probably one of the best things you can buy today, especially considering the total dollar value of the components you’re going to have connected to it,” he said.

I wasn’t necessarily convinced — especially since the unit he was recommending was going to tack $300 onto the bill — so I did a bit of research. What convinced me to take Rob’s advice was a problem I’d been having since we moved into our new place a year ago: intermittent fine lines dancing across the TV screen. It turns out electromagnetic interference and radio-frequency interference, from power lines and home appliances, can cause snow and dancing lines, as well as reduce resolution and life expectancy. Gee, you don’t suppose the big powerlines right next to my house, the ones that crackle like falling rain at night could be the problem?

I opted for the power conditioner. It seems to have worked. The TV lines are g one; the power lines are still crackling. I still sometimes wear the foil hat.

Finally, more out of idle curiosity than anything else, I said, “What about the one remote control dream?”

“Harmony,” said Rob.

“Okay, I’ll take the melody, you add the harmony.”

“Not that kind of harmony. Reaching around behind him, he brought out a box, “This kind of Harmony.”

Manufactured by Logitech, a company that makes very satisfying computer peripherals, this Harmony is an all-in-one, programmable remote control. The manufacturer boasts a database of 175,000 different devices the slick, ergonomic, peanut-shaped device will control.

“Nice,” I said. “Do they make an RF model?”

“As a matter of fact, they do,” he said, flashing the grin of a man who knew he’d upsold me with no effort whatsoever.

Most remote controls work on IR, infrared signals. You need a clear path between remote and device for them to work and you have to point them at whatever it is they’re going to control. RF is radio frequency. RF doesn’t care where you point it, what room you’re in, or whether the dog ate the clicker, just as long as you press the right spot on his tummy. This was appealing because all the components except the monitor live behind cabinet doors I’d rather not have open to avoid being asked, “When are you going to clean up that rat’s nest of wires.”

Outta sight, outta mind, Grasshopper. As an added bonus, the damn thing actually operates my 20-year-old stereo, the one I never even had a remote control for.

But the very best thing about it is this: it’s foolproof. There being one, sometimes two fools who live at my house, that’s an important consideration. Now neither of us has to remember which keys on which remote in what order we have to tickle to bring everything to life. The Harmony’s LCD display greets us when we pick it up with simple options: Watch TV; Watch a DVD; Listen to Music, Annoy the Neighbours, the latter running everything through the now remote-controlled stereo. Push one button and, like magic, everything that’s supposed to be turned on gets turned on… and tuned in to the right input. It’s enough to make a grown man cry and a grown woman stop asking, “Which buttons do I push?”

After we’d discussed all the options — mercifully few — and made the hard decisions Rob stunned me.

“What about extended warranties?” I asked.

“We don’t sell them,” he said. “Never believed in them. They’re a good revenue stream for most retailers but they’re not a fact-based product. Two-thirds of monitor failures will happen in the first two months. The remaining failures will happen a month or two out of warranty. Boutique stores like ourselves will take manufacturers to task on those, generally successfully. Try that at a big box.”

Music to my ears, especially since my new Visa card doubles manufacturers’ warranties.

By the end of my Big TV sojourn, I ended up with everything I wanted. Rob’s prices on the Sharp monitor I finally chose — out of three options — were identical to what Future Shop wanted in Vancouver. Ditto on the Toshiba DVD. More importantly, after ignoring his advice and wiring the thing up myself, I found info on the Internet to optimize the 287 picture and sound menus. The upside of doing it myself is some nascent understanding of how it goes together should I ever need to disassemble and reassemble the whole complicated mess. The picture is astounding, especially the HD channels — who knew commercials could be so fascinating — and my only complaint is it keeps me up too late watching old movies. I’ve even found myself inexplicably drawn to hockey playoffs, even though I still don’t understand the game.

The final payoff came just recently when my Perfect Partner picked up the remote, punched a button and exclaimed as the DVD, stereo and monitor came to life, “I love this remote control.”

Talk about your ultimate test.



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