HDTV buyers guide for gamers

[doobiwan]

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/200..._an_hdtv_.html

Yes, I've posted this elsewhere, but it's a good link darn it!

[stoke]

Lets see:
Standard TV =
480 Lines that are interlaced [refreshes all the odd rows, then all the even rows]

HDTV =
720 Lines Progressively scanned [line 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 .... berry fast]. Better then interlaced, but not neccesarily faster.

TV's marked as HD Ready require the purchase of a HDTV reciever.
TV's marked as HD built-in already contain the HDTV reciever.

Plasma VS LCD:
Plasmas look better in a dark room, while LCDs fare better in any light. Plasma advocates claim better colors and sharp moving images. You get darker blacks, which is good for scenes where it's really dark and you should see something faint in the dark. The feature is captured in a contrast ratio number. The higher, the better. This is why they say that when you shop for a TV, try to find a store with a darker room, not one that is brightly lit. Otherwise, you'll be handicapping the plasma.

Resolution:
720p = 1280 pixels wide x 720 pixels high.
1080P = 1920 pixels wide x 1080 pixels high.
1080i = 1920 pixels wide x 1080 pixels high INTERLACED.
So .. a 1080P screen has 2x as many pixels.

Xbox 360 games = 720p. Microsoft upgraded the console so that it can display games at 1080P, but current games don't exploit it yet.
The PlayStation 3 = "natively'' displaying games in 1080p. But, again, only about half the games now support 1080p.
Nintendo Wii = best resolution is 480p.
Standard DVD Player = 480p

Power:
A LCD uses about 1/2 the power of a Plasma. 42" Plasma = 400Watts, 42" LCD = 180Watts.
So ... if electricity cost is an issue .. be careful.

BURN IN:
Be exxtremely careful of burn-in on Plasma's, playing a game of BF2 or BF2142 on a plasma for 4 hours straight will result in the dashboard being burnt into the screen of some plasma's. This burn-in will fade after like 6 months. Manufacturers do claim to have sorted this problem out to a great extent, but nobody seems to want to commit to saying that their plasma's are free of burn-in.

Personally ... if my TV blows up, i'll buy a CRT HDTV and sacrifice the space.

[TG]

Nice summary - thanks Stoke

[Ruslan74]

Forgot to add a minor detail that the X360 upscales current DVD movies to either 720p or 1080i whenever available if viewed via a VGA HD cable.

If anybody wants to know more of the HD-DVD add-on for the X360 read more Eurogamer.

In terms of the key features of HD DVD itself, central to the whole experience is obviously the enormous improvement to picture quality. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray are capable of rendering an enormous 1920x1080 resolution - approximately six times that of the DVD format. But the amount of pixels alone only tells half the story. The advanced HD codecs have the potential to practically eliminate macroblocking in the hands of a skilled compressionist. Take a look at some of the 1080p shots we've taken of King Kong in the screenshots section. Picture quality truly is a generational leap over DVD.

The 360 add-on allows for HD DVD playback over component and VGA, with the latter connection offering the advantage of 'proper' 1080p playback, with component offering 1080i as its optimal resolution. In truth, on a good display, there's not much in it. The biggest difference between the component and VGA outputs appears to be in the colour balance with the component output offering higher saturation. As to which is better - I preferred VGA, but not for any reason I could really quantify. It just looked 'nicer' to my eyes