HDTV noob

[shockz]

Alright... were looking into buying a tv to replace our 27 inch 10 year old television.

Were defiantely going the HDTV route... since they are doing that whole conversion too all HDTV signal next year. (right?)

Anyways...

I've got a couple of questions:

1. What does HDTV ready mean? Does it mean you need an external adapter?

2. What does HDTV integrated mean? Everything's ready to go with no adapter?

Then...

3. Since the signal will be all digital... will cable be just as good as sat/dishes?

Or will you still get the fuzzy pics?

Thanks,

shockz

[dduardo]

1. What does HDTV ready mean? Does it mean you need an external adapter?

Yes

2. What does HDTV integrated mean? Everything's ready to go with no adapter?

Yes

3. Since the signal will be all digital... will cable be just as good as sat/dishes?

It depends on how much they compress the data

Or will you still get the fuzzy pics?

In the digital domain you don't get fuzzy pictures, you get blocky pictures. Have you ever seen a poorly compressed JPEG image? That's what it will look like.

[shockz]

Thanks for the info! :)

- shockz

[Fedorpheux]

I was walking around some department store a couple days ago and I saw a fancy LCD HDTV they were advertising to sell for some ludicrous amount of money but the picture on it actually looked worse than our 10+ year old TV at my house. It was really weird.

Are you going with plasma, shockz? Or what?

[bangbang023 Veteran]

shockz dude, hit me up on msn if you need me but to answer your questions:

1. HD ready means you need to have an external tuner if you wish to use an over the air antenna. Cable or satellite wouldn't need this.

2. HDTV built in means it has a tuner built in so you can use an over the air antenna to get any locallly broadcast HDTV content.

3. As far as digital goes, there's a hot debate between satellite and land line. I prefer land line and many people agree that digital cable does look a little better than digital sat.