Black Friday – HDTV COMMON SENSE!

Wives, S/O’s and Girlfriends ideas about sports are in play Friday – The 2007 Shopping Superbowl – Round 1, also known as Black Friday. The News & Record Bargain Blog has found a good bargain for High Definition Television Set.

Having working in television for over 30 years, people have been asking me about High Definition TV for several years now. Let me throw out some quick info to keep you from spending too much money this season.

1. Analog TV ends February 17, 2007. This means NOTHING – NOTHING – NOTHING to you if you have cable or satellite. If you use rabbit ears or still have an outside antenna, you aren’t interested in sports anyway.
2. Very Little High Definition programming is actually watched. Unless PAY for the High Definition service, you are watching a digital version of the analog 4×3 picture.
3. If you don’t see the HD Bars on the left and right side of ESPN every so often you are NOT watching ESPN in HD. Many program channels use the same video for High Definition and analog, so they will say “Available in HD” to confuse the viewer.
4. Channels 2, 8, 12 and 45 all pass their Network’s High Definition signal to the viewer – you can watch them via Over-The-Air on Channels 51, 35, 31 and 29 or on Cable. They are not available on any satellite service.
5. Satellite offers more High Definition Channels; but that does not necessarily mean there is more HD content. A lot of these channels stretch their video to fill the screen, especially the older re-runs.
6. These HDTV are expensive – what’s even more expensive is their repairs. Look at the repair and return policies. What might be a deal today, could cost you as much to repair a year from now.

Look at HDTV’s when you visit restaurants and bars – most are hooked to regular cable and look fine. The bigger the HDTV set, the worse an analog picture will look. Analog TV is like a 300K pixel camera, Full High Definition is only 2M pixel camera. Even a HD has it’s limits.