In time for this Sunday's Superbowl (Go Giants!), David Pogue has posted a helpful CNBC/New York Times interview with a Best Buy salesman on HDTV shopping in order to clear up some HDTV confusion. I've posted parts of the transcript with the answers. 720P or 1080? LCD, Plasma or DLP? Read on to find out.
Clearing Up Some of the Confusion Over HDTV By DAVID POGUE
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, this Sunday's Super
Bowl will inspire the sales of 2.4 million high-definition TV sets.
That's a lot of plasma. (And L.C.D., and projection sets.)
"In my weekly CNBC/Times video today, I pulled what I thought would be
a brilliant stunt: I'd interview a TV salesman at Best Buy, firing a
lot of typical confused-consumer questions at him. Then, during
playback of that interview, I'd keep pausing the tape to correct him
or interject little asides.
Continue reading...
Well, the "correcting him" bit didn't work at all. Steve at the
Best Buy in Norwalk, Conn., was amazing, easily one of the most
fluent HDTV experts I'd ever met. He was unstumpable.
So here's a paraphrased version of what I learned or confirmed from
him. If you're among the HDTV shoppers who have yet to buy your set
for the big game, maybe the advice here will help you out."
Q: Is there a lot of consumer confusion about HDTV?
A: Oh, man, you have no idea. People come in here absolutely
clueless. Or furious, because they bought an HDTV set, got it home,
and discovered that the picture doesn't look anything like it did here
in the store. Because they don't realize they need a high-def *signal*
to feed that set. For example, they need to replace their cable boxes
with digital ones, or put a high-def antenna on the roof.
[D.P. adds: According to a study by the Leichtman Research Group, 50
percent of HDTV owners aren't actually watching any high-def shows on
them... but 25 percent of them *think* they are.]
Q: Isn't it true, in fact, that standard-def broadcasts actually look
*worse* on a high-def TV?
A: Unfortunately, yes.
Q: Don't you guys deliberately put the store-display screens in
"torch mode," cranking the brightness and contrast all the way up to
catch shoppers' eyes?
A: We don't adjust the sets to look that way; that's the way most
sets come from the factory. It actually makes the set look a lot worse
than it will when you get it home and get it properly calibrated.
Q: Oh, you have to pay someone to come over and tweak the set?
A: You really should. We offer that service as part of installation.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, this Sunday's Super
Bowl will inspire the sales of 2.4 million high-definition TV sets.
That's a lot of plasma. (And L.C.D., and projection sets.)
"In my weekly CNBC/Times video today, I pulled what I thought would be
a brilliant stunt: I'd interview a TV salesman at Best Buy, firing a
lot of typical confused-consumer questions at him. Then, during
playback of that interview, I'd keep pausing the tape to correct him
or interject little asides.
Continue reading...
Well, the "correcting him" bit didn't work at all. Steve at the
Best Buy in Norwalk, Conn., was amazing, easily one of the most
fluent HDTV experts I'd ever met. He was unstumpable.
So here's a paraphrased version of what I learned or confirmed from
him. If you're among the HDTV shoppers who have yet to buy your set
for the big game, maybe the advice here will help you out."
Q: Is there a lot of consumer confusion about HDTV?
A: Oh, man, you have no idea. People come in here absolutely
clueless. Or furious, because they bought an HDTV set, got it home,
and discovered that the picture doesn't look anything like it did here
in the store. Because they don't realize they need a high-def *signal*
to feed that set. For example, they need to replace their cable boxes
with digital ones, or put a high-def antenna on the roof.
[D.P. adds: According to a study by the Leichtman Research Group, 50
percent of HDTV owners aren't actually watching any high-def shows on
them... but 25 percent of them *think* they are.]
Q: Isn't it true, in fact, that standard-def broadcasts actually look
*worse* on a high-def TV?
A: Unfortunately, yes.
Q: Don't you guys deliberately put the store-display screens in
"torch mode," cranking the brightness and contrast all the way up to
catch shoppers' eyes?
A: We don't adjust the sets to look that way; that's the way most
sets come from the factory. It actually makes the set look a lot worse
than it will when you get it home and get it properly calibrated.
Q: Oh, you have to pay someone to come over and tweak the set?
A: You really should. We offer that service as part of installation.
[D.P. adds: How did I know he was going to say that?]
Q: O.K., here we go. One-word answer: plasma or LCD?
A: They both offer an amazing picture these days. In the better sets,
the traditional flaws of plasma (like burn-in) and LCD (limited
viewing angle, not very deep blacks, weak fast motion) have been
largely eliminated.
The plasma screens still have glossy surfaces, though, and LCD sets
are still brighter. So as a rough guideline, plasma has truer color
and does better in darker rooms, and LCD has more vivid color and does
better in bright rooms. (LCD is also lighter and more
energy-efficient, but usually costs more for the same-size set.)
Q: OK, how about this one: 720p or 1080p?
A: These are measurements of how many fine lines make up the picture.
You'd think that 1080p is obviously better than 720p. Trouble is, you
won't get a 1080p image unless you feed it a 1080p signal — and that's
hard to come by. There's no such thing as a 1080p TV broadcast (cable,
satellite, anything), and won't be for years. Even most games, like
Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, generally send out 720p (or less).
So the *only* way to get a 1080p picture on a 1080p set is to buy a
high-def DVD player (Blu-ray or HD DVD). That's the only way. ***
Xbox????
[D.P. adds: Even then, you won't see any difference between 720p and
1080p unless you sit closer than 10 feet from the TV and it's bigger
than 55 inches or so.
And even then, you're not getting any additional sharpness or detail.
Instead, as CNET notes, you're just gaining the ability to move closer
without seeing individual pixels: "In other words, you can sit closer
to a 1080p television and not notice any pixel structure, such as
stair-stepping along diagonal lines, or the screen door effect (where
you can actually see the space between the pixels)."]
Q: But a 1080p set costs a lot more than an identical 720p set, doesn't it?
A: Yeah.
[D.P. adds: At this point, he showed me two plasmas, same brand, same
size, same model line, mounted one above the other: one 720p, the
other 1080p. The fancier set cost $2,000 more — and the image quality
was pixel-for-pixel identical.]
Q: What's the best-selling size?
A: It used to be 42 inches. Nowadays, 50-inchers are more common, and
even larger, because prices have dropped so much.
Q: Is a bigger screen always better?
A: Depends on whether you ask the husband or the wife.
If you sit 8 to 10 feet back, a 50- or 60-incher is not too big. But
you don't want to overpower the room. If the screen dominates the
room, it almost discourages relaxing, because it just towers over the
space.
Q: What about rear-projection sets?
A: They're great. And they're often overlooked, because flat panels
are all the rage. But the truth is, once you mount a flat-panel TV,
it's just as thick as today's rear-projection sets (several inches
from the wall).
Meanwhile, the quality of the rear-projection sets is amazing; it's
been improving every year. The downside is that you can't sit as far
off-angle as you can with a flat panel. But rear-projection sets offer
the biggest size at the best price. And they weigh almost nothing. One
person can lift one.
[DP adds: Except you do have to replace the bulb every few years,
which can cost several hundred dollars.]
Q: How come you guys don't have the remote controls on display?
A: We don't like to put them on display, because every time I turn
around, somebody's turned a bunch of the TVs off.
Q: So of all the sets here, which is the very best one to buy for the
Super Bowl?
A: Well, all of them will give you an absolutely great picture. But
there's one thing that none of these sets can do: they can't make the
Giants look good.
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