leekohler said:
I have the same TV you just ordered, but mine has a built in tuner. I LOVE IT! I live in Chicago and just use an amplified TV-top antenna. The picture is perfect. Most of our stations already broadcast digitally and the quality is unbelievable. I'll never have cable- EVER. That is how perfect the reception is. You'll love this TV.
Unless you're a huge cable fanatic and have to have HBO, Showtime, etc., skip the cable if your area's local stations are broadcasting digitally.
Cool, glad to hear that... I have heard really good things about the quality of the tube in the 30" widescreen Philips CRTs, so when I had the chance to buy one for $400 I took it. Since it does 480p and 1080i as it's two native resolutions (you can argue all day about 720p vs. 1080i all day, but in the end, it's a wash to me) it's perfect for me.
I mostly watch DVDs (widescreen and 480p) and we only have BASIC cable (it's like 13 channels, and of those 8 are either public access or home shopping) and we're fine with that. I hope that one of my sources for a sub-$100 HD tuner pans out, though, then I can have 1080i on more channels than Comcast offers for free.
We'll keep the cable tho, since we have cable internet we end up saving about $7 a month having basic cable over having nothing at all (discount for the package), and I can keep the cable plugged into the TiVo for "guaranteed" reception and recording other shows while we watch HD live, etc.
Anyways, enough of that boring stuff about ME... any of you guys use the Avia or Video Essentials DVD to calibrate your set? Was it worth the $30? Any idea if those are rentable somewhere? What about "opensource" or creative commons type licensed downloadable disc image/video file?
I'd ideally like to get some calibration images that I can feed to the TV over DVI from my mini at 1080i type resolutions (1920x1080 at 60hz I think - does OS X have video settings for connecting to HDTVs so it sends the signal in an interlaced format?) and calibrate from that.
Sounds like most of you have way more cash to put into home theatres than I do (or my wife will let me spend, anyway). Sadly HDMI selectors are so crazy expensive right now that I'm limited to using just the one HDMI device and hand switching them when needed. Fortunately, since I really only have one true HD input (well, none technically, but one in the immediate future: an OTA HD tuner) it works out OK for me. DVD on the component, TiVo on the SVideo, and my GC on the side composite input and I've filled up all my ports, but have also run out of stuff to plug into a TV.
I'm hoping in 3 years or so getting an HDMI selector that also takes non HD signals, upconverts them to HD, and outputs whichever one you have selected to the HDMI port will become like progressive DVD players are now: $35-50.
In the meantime, I hope Apple starts selling HD movies through iTunes along with a wireless device to dump them to your HDTV...
