Holiday Buying Guide: TVs

In response to Uncle Gary’s request for information on the television set, here’s some scoop on it.

First off, the link to the television set in question:
Click here!
At the time of purchase, it was down to $699.

As for the whole 1080p vs. 780 business…here’s what I know and I am definitely not well versed in this subject matter so I’m sure there will be a few of you piping in with your comments.

1080 vs. 780.  It’s all about resolution baby.  Think of your computer and how you can change the resolution size.  Well, you can buy the best of the best and have up to 1080 or you can get the second best which is 780.  I saw both of them side by side and I saw a slight difference.  But if you had one on its own in my living room, they would still be both awesome.

So…what can take advantage of this high resolution?  Can you simply plug your TV cable into it and have an amazing picture?

In a word…no.  The only thing that the Best Buy guy said could take advantage of the 1080 output is a Blu-Ray player.  Even if you subscribe to a High-Definition TV or Satellite package, they currently only output at 780.  As for video games/computer hook-ups, I have no idea.  Maybe they do take advantage of it.  I guess this HD box that Uncle Gary mentioned that you can hook up to your computer to playback HD movies would probably take advantage of it.  Wow, I can only imagine the size of an HD movie that you would download!  What would that be?  30GB?  That’s insane!  Better off borrowing someone’s Blu-Ray disc of The Dark Knight and making a copy! (if that’s even possible.  I’m sure it is.)

So we asked Krista the following:
“Will you be buying HD TV anytime soon?”  No.
“Will you be buying a Blu-Ray player anytime soon?”  No.

So really, it’s kind of useless to spend the extra hundreds of dollars to get yourself a 1080 TV at this point in the game if you aren’t even going to take advantage of it.  Sure, there’s the future to think about, but by the time you want to get a new TV in the future, I’m sure 1080 will be a thing of the past anyhow!  Buy for the now people!

So that’s that.  A last note for people looking into buying a TV over the holidays.  Krista just called Rogers to see if they could upgrade her current digital cable box to a HD cable box.  Not only did they say yes, but they asked if she wanted to sign up for a VIP package which gave her a discount over the next six months (which equals to $20 less on her cable bill each month!) and after the six months is up, there will only be an additional $5 on her cable bill.  How the heck did she manage to pull that off?!  She said it got her an additional 200 channels and a few of them would be in HD (as well as a bunch of others that are starting to be shown in HD anyhow…)

In the end, it looks like a great time to pick up a HD big-ass TV in the near future if you’ve been looking for one.  I really enjoy her 40″ TV and I can only imagine how playing Rad Racer would be on it.  There is also a sweet hookup in the back of the TV to plug in your computer so I guess that’s another way to play HD movies directly from your computer.  I’m not sure what this ‘box’ that Uncle Gary speaks about is all about.  I’m sure he can post a link in the comments section.

iplaying: Betterman – Pearl Jam (Vitalogy)