HDTV – Tips for buying HDTV and home theater equipment

If you are like most people, you rarely buy an HDTV and related home entertainment equipment, such as surround sound speakers and an audio/video (A/V) receiver. If this describes you, here are some important tips to help you in this complex technology decision.

Like so many things, it is a good idea to start with an equipment budget before even considering what to purchase. If you are equipping a home theater, you will need to buy an HDTV, an A/V receiver and surround sound speakers. The HDTV is the least important of the three. Although some very expensive HDTVs are superior to the rest of the crowd, budget-priced HDTVs perform surprisingly well regardless of the video source.

Research what you might want before you go out to buy. When confronted with a wall of HDTV displays in a store it is hard to understand what differentiates one model or brand from another. Most stores, especially the big box stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, or Costco do not properly calibrate the screens on the display models. Their overworked staff often just unpacks the unit, puts it out and plugs it in. HDTV screens should be calibrated to the environment to optimize the display to the room.

By now you probably are aware that there are three competing types of HDTVs—LCD, plasma, and rear projection. All three are rapidly changing. If you want to get the most flexible display, make certain that what you buy can display at 1080p.

A big change has recently emerged in LCD. Some new models incorporate 120 Hz displays. Older and lower-priced models use a 60 Hz rate. The difference in display quality can be significant, especially in action scenes.

The above underscores one of my maxims about HDTV—they are disposable. If you bought an HDTV as recently as 2 years ago, it is probably obsolete by today’s standards. This implies that spending as little as possible on the HDTV is the way to use your budget dollars. Whereas a decade ago one bought a TV to last for 10 or 20 years, today you are likely to want to replace an HDTV within 5 years or less!

Size matters. We all want a giant-sized screen. However, if the screen is too large for the viewing distance, you may see screen artifacts that will ruin the experience. You can use an online screen size calculator at http://tinyurl.com/2h5zty to figure out the appropriate screen-size-to-viewing-distance or search the web to find other calculators.

A/V receivers are morphing into specialized PCs but we are still several years away from the complete changeover. When buying an A/V receiver, focus on the back panel’s connectors. This is where you will hook up all the other equipment, the HDTV, the DVD player, the satellite receiver, the cable box, the media extender(s), etc. I recommend looking for a receiver with three or more HDMI inputs. You may not need them all today but you will in the future. Also, try not to confuse the inputs with the HDMI output(s) that typically connects your receiver to the HDTV.

I recommend overweighting the speaker system in the budget allocation. The sound in a home theater accounts for about half of the experience. This is why movie theaters have large surround speakers mounted around the room’s four walls. This is why they advertise THX sound technology. Sound really matters. Display and electronics technology are changing rapidly, but this is less true for speakers. People rarely change speakers once they are installed so it is a good idea to buy the best you can the first time.

Finally, consider that HDTV and home theater are only as good as the content and the weakest link in the equipment chain. The quality of content is probably out of your hands, but you decide what equipment on which to display it.