Wow a thread made for me! :lol:
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Originally posted by Zerodash
1) Being a widescreen, if I plug an older system into it (NES, Saturn, etc.) will it crop off the top and bottom of the image? Or will it only display in the center of the screen with blank bars at the sides of the screen?
Most HDTV's have several modes for manipulating the picture. Usually there's a mode to stretch the standard image to widescreen, a mode to zoom (albeit not very well) 2.35:1 to take up the full screen, a mode that shows the picture as normal, cutting off the top and bottom, a 4:3 mode, and a gimmicky mode that tries to stretch the screen the farther away from the center you get.
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2) Are there any consoles that will NOT display on an HDTV?
No. An HDTV is the same as any other TV as far as the inputs it can take (unless there's some new crazy ones :) ). Mine has 2 RF, 5 S-Video, and 3 component.
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3) To get the newer consoles plugged into via RGB, is all I have to do is get Component cables and adjust the system settings?
Yes, all you have to do is buy the components and plug them in. For all systems you'll have to adjust ratio, but for PS2 you'll have to go in and actually change it from RGB to Component in the menu. Try to do this before you plug it in.
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4) Are there better deals for HDTVs than Best Buy?
Absolutely. Most TV's that you buy at Best Buy could be bought at a local high-end home theater store for a bit less. Even though their tags say one thing, most of them actually haggle the price, especially if they think you'll be a repeat customer; a breath of fresh air.
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Originally posted by Tones
Tip: If you are getting a a TV, especially HD-projection, I'd reccomend getting an ISF (imagery science foundation) calibration. I believe Schlep's had it done to his widescreen; it can do wonders for the picture.
Now this is impressive. :) I didn't realize people paid that much attention to me, hehe. Yes, my TV was ISF calibrated by Steve Martin here in Dallas. I had absolutely everything done to it, color temperature adjusted, brightness levels, convergence on both SDTV and HDTV inputs, mechanical focus of lenses, static focus, cabinet lined with duvatyne, red push fix, and a couple other things that I can't remember. All of this cost me $525 and would probably be closer to $600 now. I don't think it'd be quite as much for a tube TV to get everything done. To get just the standard ISF calibration, the price is usually $200-300 depending on the TV, driving distance, etc. I would, however, recommend getting everything done if it's within your budget. Having the convergence set exactly to a grid, for instance, did wonders in cleaning up the overall blurriness of the picture. If I had to give a percentage difference between before and after, I'd say it's about 500% better now. :D
As far as the lesser known things about HDTV:
The bigger your TV, the uglier your games get. In order to display SDTV content on the HDTV, the HDTV uses an internal 'line doubler' which does just what it says (fills in the scanlines by doubling the adjacent line). This results in super ugly 2D games and pretty much only acceptable 3D games. Now, of course, this all depends on the size of the TV and the distance you're sitting from it. I happen to be sitting 7 feet away from a 55" screen (read close), so it looks extremely bad whenever I pop in a 2D fighter; King of Fighters 2000, for example. 3D on the Dreamcast, even though through S-video, looks blurry and undefined, even with the option to blur lines turned off.
You thought PS2 had jaggies before? You ain't seen nothin yet. Pop in Virtua Fighter 4 on a TV like that and while the picture is definitely crisp, the jaggies are nearly cripppling. Now, in your case, the TV you're looking at probably won't make any of this noticeable, but I'm just giving a warning that in general, games on HDTV look worse than their 4:3 TV counterpart. This, of course, excludes any games that have 480p or higher content.
As far as DVDs...the TVs are unreal. I maintain that my system looks clearer than any theater in town except for the DLP Cinemark. :) Important to this, however, is the type of DVD player you're using. Obviously it needs to be progressive, but I can guarantee that if you watch anime, the grey bars on the sides will get old in a hurry. For this reason, I would suggest having a DVD player that has aspect ratio control built into the DVD player (the ability for the DVD player to bend the image as need, 4:3, 2.35:1, etc instead of controlling those on the TV with the different display modes). The players that do this usually have black sidebars, and also, since they're doing the control of the picture, you get a better 4:3 picture than you would on the regular TV that's set in 4:3 mode, or at least that's my experience. Also, some HDTVs lock into full screen mode when you're playing from a progressive source, so you have to have the DVD doing the ratio control...this is a good thing to know about the TV before you buy it.
I know that this is a ton of rambling and I didn't put it together very well. When I start thinking HDTV, my mind kicks into high gear of all the different things that you should know before purchasing and/or maintaining one. :) If I can help anymore, explaining this junk or in general, I'll continue to help.
