Candleblog

Warning: what follows are ruminations on my home A/V set-up. This post will really only interest the A/V gearheads among you.

We here in the Stoneking/Simmon household have had an HDTV for a little over three years, when my brother got us a 32″ Samsung 720p (16:9) CRT (cathode ray tube) as a wedding present, upgrading us from a standard def 27″ (4:3) Sony Wega CRT.

I quite like our Sammy CRT. LCDs and plasmas (and LEDs) are all the rage now, but for rich blacks and the best contrast, CRTs still kick their butts. The problem is that CRTs are expensive to make and incredibly heavy and there’s a limit to how big a screen you can get with picture tube technology.

And honestly, I’ve been hesitant to jump into the plasma world because so much of what we watch is still standard definition TV. We have a series 2 TiVo, which only records in SD, and we only recently got a Blu-Ray player (PS3) and even now that we have one, the vast majority of our disks are still SD DVDs. The thing is, SD video just looks better on a CRT than on any of the flat panel sets — even the really expensive amazing ones.

Still, we can feel this tide turning. We have an XBOX360 and a PS3, both of which feature 1080p HD gaming, and the PS3, as I mentioned, has a Blu-Ray player. We also recently hooked up a Mac Mini to the TV so we can enjoy some good online content on something other than our laptops (as well as manage our shared iTunes library and growing media center, etc.). It’s with these peripherals where I’m starting to notice that my HD experience isn’t all it can be. The games and Blu-Ray disks look good — but not jaw droppingly so — like I have seen on some of the HD displays at Best Buy and at friends’ homes — but where I really notice the difference is on the Mac. The 720p CRT just doesn’t render the Mac interface well at all. The words are fuzzy on the screen and the underscan cuts into the image. I know there are better options available, but there are so many, how do I go about choosing the right set?

Fortunately for me, my pal AlexW just went through a major A/V upgrade and did all of the research for me! Alex recently got a 12th generation Panasonic plasma set — the G10 — and he told me all about it, in great detail, as he was feeling his way through the decision process. I won’t belabor the pros and cons of plasma vs. LCD or bore you with details about the G10 vs. the V10 or other competing sets. Simply know that for its price range, there isn’t a a better set on the market. In fact, the price has come down enough on this puppy that I actually opted for the 50″ model instead of the 42″ I was all set to buy.

Great, except now, because SD video looks worse on plasma sets than CRTs, and because we still watch a great deal of SD content, I’m spending a lot of money for a downgrade in image quality for the majority of the stuff we watch. Sure, the Mac interface will be lovely and the HD content will be stellar, but 80% of what we watch will actually take a hit…

…Unless I get a DVR that records HD. Aha! We need a series 3 TiVo! That will significantly increase the amount of HD content we get to see. Sure, Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart will still be in SD (until MSNBC and Comedy Central get HD channels), but Dollhouse and FlashForward and SGU and Mad Men will be in beautiful HD video.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like it’s a pain to upgrade my TiVo for various reasons, one of which is having to make an appointment with a Comcastic “Cable Card Specialist” to install the cable cards in the new DVR. sigh.

And of course because we live in a modestly sized place, I need to mount the new TV to the wall to save living room real estate, so I need the fancy tilt mount unit, and then there are all the HDMI and component video cables, and all of a sudden this upgrade project is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.

I guess I better upgrade my home theater sound system so it’s worth the effort…