Originally Posted by :: kna :: Come on guys, whilst Rjcc and myself might have different viewpoints, he's being perfectly reasonable in his conduct.. could you all at least show him the same respect.
Yeah, I'm sorry for that post of mine, it was unnessesarily rude in the face of someone who's being perfectly civil and polite in response, sorry :o
you pay for my new 36"+ HD ready screen, the subscription charges for my cable, all the new sh** ill need to hook it all up, and get me whatever optical media standars there are for HD.... and ill go out and buy a 360 and tell you what i think.
otherwise, im not getting a 360, or any of that other crap. my PS2 will be just as happy as anything else for the next few years hahah.
because not everyone on the freggin planet can splurge on that kind of hardware like the MINORITY you rich *******s are. >:(
Who said you had to splurge? You already own a PS2. I've been gaming in 480p and higher for the last two years, many PS2 games support HDTV's and look much better for it. Play Shadows of the Colossus, God of War, GT4, any 2Ksports games? You've got plenty of content there already. Plus, if your PS2 is was made in the last two years, it probably supports progressive scan DVD playback as well.
Don't want to pay for cable? Cool, hook up an antenna and get all your locals for free. No need for new optical standards, all your DVD's will look better in 480p.
There you go, enhanced playback of the stuff you already have or can get without subscription OTA.
I think maybe, something to note is the difference in prices across the pond(looking from either direction). While Rjcc says you can pick up an HDTV for $800 over in the states, I very much doubt you can get one for £450 here, or if you can, it'll be rock bottom quality.
Since the technology is much less popular over here, and also because us brits get screwed on prices just for being brits, your going to need to spend significantly more to get the same sorta kit.
I had a quick look at circuitcity(US) and Comet(UK). It was impossible to compare exact matches since TV's have different product names in the US and UK, but comparing the cheapest HDTV panasonic 42" Plasmas, the cheapst Circuit City has is $1999, the cheapest Comet has is £2,299. Thats 4047 USD, over $2000 more for what is basicly the same product.
Now I'm not suggesting anyone who wants HDTV would need to buy a 42" Plasma, I'm just illustrating that massively increased cost that people over here incur compared to the states, when buying high end kit in general, but especially when buying HDTV kit.
Theres alot of people in the general public who are very mis-informed on the whole hd-tv thing. People who know a little are worse than those who know nothing IMO. They know that higher resolution is better but dont understand they need the content to view on it.
Hi-Res Screens dont show a better picture with as a Standard ETV screen when both are showing ETV. Oh, and while im having a moan about the un-informed general public, they LOVE to stretch the picure so it fills the screen, we cant have any of those black lines at the top or the bottom. DVD's have a narrower ration than widescreen but they dont half complain when we show it in its standard aspect ratio/res.
sorry if this has gone a bit off topic
oh and rjcc 480p != HDTV
HD Ready isnt HDTV as well, the HD Ready screens only have DVI connection on them. With somethings you will need the content protection which is sent though the HDMI (i think, im not 100% sure on the content protection side, i know you need it both on the source and the tv for it to work, and DVI connecitons on hd ready tvs wont have this)
Originally Posted by Dodge HD Ready isnt HDTV as well, the HD Ready screens only have DVI connection on them. With somethings you will need the content protection which is sent though the HDMI (i think, im not 100% sure on the content protection side, i know you need it both on the source and the tv for it to work, and DVI connecitons on hd ready tvs wont have this)
Any TV which is marked as HDTV ready within the UK has to be able to support HD content through a component YPbPr connection and through DVI or HDMI. It must also support HDCP (the content protection) on the DVI or HDMI input.
and im going to wait for big SED displays before upgrading again or perhaps HDR but i dont think they are coming cheap.
meh, its a personal preference thing
lcd's have CRAP resolution
19" tft = ~1" more viewable space than a 19" crt but 1280x1024 instead of 1600x1200? **** that tbh.
That's all well and good leviathan, but the fundamental problem with an LCD is that its blacks quite frankly suck. Many gamers like seeing real black, rather than the artificial dark grey that you see on an LCD. I'm an LCD user myself, but I prefer gaming on a CRT - the only thing that limits me is the size of my desk.
Also, you're resolution limited, too. If you don't stay at native resolution, it looks blurred and crap. Use a high-quality CRT and you don't get any of that.
HDTV is a funny thing as at the CORRECT viewing distances 90% of people can not tell the difference between an SD and HD screen being fed the same HD source. Move closer to the screen and the difference is apparent. It is also a chicken and egg scenario where people wont buy the screens if there is no content and broadcasters dont want to broadcast HD if there is no screens to view it on.
Lets get some things clear though, DVI CAN and does support HDCP, it just depends on the manufacturers implementation of the hardware. If you look in the products specs it will tell you if it supports HDCP or not. Sky are due to start broadcasting HD in the UK this spring with 4 channels, running parallel to their existing line up, e.g. Sky One HD, Sky Sports HD etc. The BBC had originally planned to start their HD broadcasts in 2010 but they are apparently thinking of bringing this forward to 2008 now to coincide with the switch off of analogue signals.
I was in a discussion with a representative from Philips at a trade show and in his opinion the main factor preventing HD adoption in the UK was Sky TV's monopoly of satelite TV. Their prices are already as high as the UK public is willing to pay and they will not pay more for HD. He also voiced the opinion that in the industry the next gen consoles where the great unknown and it was felt that they would be the main driving force for HD in europe. Gamers tend to have a lot of disposable income and as shown with PC gamers are preapred to spend large amounts of cash on things like graphics cards. Decent sized HD screens are now availalble for the same price as high end graphics cards.
It is also worth asking how many of the people saying HD is a technology not worth adopting now are running 64bit or dual core CPUs or even SLI? All of which are either not fully supported yet or offer little improvement for a high expenditure.
Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon Decent sized HD screens are now availalble for the same price as high end graphics cards.
You can buy a decent HDTV for £400 in the UK?
Quote:
It is also worth asking how many of the people saying HD is a technology not worth adopting now are running 64bit or dual core CPUs or even SLI? All of which are either not fully supported yet or offer little improvement for a high expenditure.
You're comparing something with content to something with no content (in the UK). There are applications that benefit from dual core (including multi-tasking with two or more single threaded applications running simultaneously), there are games that benefit from SLI and the CPUs are not 64-bit, they're 32-bit with 64-bit extensions.
There is no High Definition Television broadcast available in the UK yet. There are no DVDs, either. The only thing that could benefit from HDTV is an Xbox 360 - they're not hugely available at the moment either. All of the computer components that you've mentioned are widely available and there is content available to support them.
Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon Gamers tend to have a lot of disposable income and as shown with PC gamers are preapred to spend large amounts of cash on things like graphics cards. Decent sized HD screens are now availalble for the same price as high end graphics cards.
PC Gamers != Console gamers.
Were you talking about PC gamers I would agree with that statement, theres a large hardcore, who want the best, and desire the fastest. Gaming, and PC's overall, are hugely important to many of our lives. Console gamers, people who only play on consoles, often have very different outlooks, and with respect, they ain't hardcore gamers, they're just people who play games. You're not used to spending huge ammouts of money on a console, you buy it, its there, it never needs upgrading, never needs "that extra £50" for a slightly better graphics card, or another stick of ram.
So I doubt console gamers are going to be so willing, for the most part, to rush out and buy £800 TV's right after they've bought £200 consoles, or whatever the 360're are costing.
Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon HDTV is a funny thing as at the CORRECT viewing distances 90% of people can not tell the difference between an SD and HD screen being fed the same HD source. Move closer to the screen and the difference is apparent.
Yeah but surely the 10% that can tell the difference are not the 'average joe' anyway? What I mean by this is that only a small percentage of consumers are likely to adopt a new technology, irrelevant of the actual leap in quality. The 90% are only concerned that they receive the programme that they want to watch, not how they watch it. Widescreen television was an excellent example of this.
@ Bigz, I get your point but i would still argue that most people using dual core or 64 bit chips are using WindowsXP which does not make the most of them. Until Vista comes along or you switch OS the 64 bits extensions etc are pretty redundant. Also i said decent sized HD screen not decent quality and i was thinking £500 not £400. :o Not used to looking at the prices of high end cards. Anyways 20" Toshiba HD LCD TV with decent contrast ratio for an LCD and 10ms response time. £412
Broadcast content will be available in a matter of weeks, with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD set to follow later in the year. The xbox360 is here and the PS3 will soon follow. At the moment however i can play HD on a standard xbox with an HD kit, i belive you can play the latest Gran Turismo at 720p on a PSTwo. I could view dvds in HD resoloution using an upscaling dvd player or cinema amp or i could get an external scaler and watch everything at HD resoloutions. There is a valid argument for an HD screen if you look beyond mearly plugging in a TV aerial and expecting something miraculous to happen.
I find it very odd that a PC enthusiast community is so quick to rubbish early adopters to HD when this forum is filled with people who will snap up the latest bit of expensive PC hardware and proudly put pictures of it up for everyone to see.
@ specofdust. A lot of console gamers have more than one console and dont forget console games are considerably more expensive than PC games. Also its a bit insulting to say the only hardcore gamers are PC gamers.
@ rupbert. i agree but during the festive period the electrical retailers where full of people buying HD screens all of which where showing HD content. I wonder how many of them take it home and plug it in and womder why it does not look as good as it did in the shop.
@ rupbert. i agree but during the festive period the electrical retailers where full of people buying HD screens all of which where showing HD content. I wonder how many of them take it home and plug it in and womder why it does not look as good as it did in the shop.
Are they buying it purely because they want to watch HDTV though?
I would suggest that they were merely going to purchase a lcd/plasma, and were lead down the path of HDTV by the salesperson. Logically anyone would spend a few £ more on a TV that was more 'future proof' than the one beside it, even if the technicalities wern't immediately apparent.
1st: This again is a text written exactly how I feel about this. There is no need to go HDTV if you have SDTV at home. As I mentioned here it looks awesome! And I did play on a normal 19" PC monitor.
2nd:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skutbag Hee hee, apple is SO burned...
Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon @ Bigz, I get your point but i would still argue that most people using dual core or 64 bit chips are using WindowsXP which does not make the most of them. Until Vista comes along or you switch OS the 64 bits extensions etc are pretty redundant. Also i said decent sized HD screen not decent quality and i was thinking £500 not £400. :o Not used to looking at the prices of high end cards. Anyways 20" Toshiba HD LCD TV with decent contrast ratio for an LCD and 10ms response time. £412
Thanks for the link, but 20"? It'd look rather small and useless in the corner of my living room! ;)
Quote:
Broadcast content will be available in a matter of weeks, with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD set to follow later in the year. The xbox360 is here and the PS3 will soon follow. At the moment however i can play HD on a standard xbox with an HD kit, i belive you can play the latest Gran Turismo at 720p on a PSTwo. I could view dvds in HD resoloution using an upscaling dvd player or cinema amp or i could get an external scaler and watch everything at HD resoloutions. There is a valid argument for an HD screen if you look beyond mearly plugging in a TV aerial and expecting something miraculous to happen.
I find it very odd that a PC enthusiast community is so quick to rubbish early adopters to HD when this forum is filled with people who will snap up the latest bit of expensive PC hardware and proudly put pictures of it up for everyone to see.
I'm not rubbishing early adopters - hell, I'm one of those too. It just seems like there's little point in spending money on something with virtually no appreciable benefit at the moment. I know there are things that can look much better on an HDTV now, but a TV isn't something you buy every year. I play virtually all of my games on the PC - the only exceptions are MicroMachines on the Mega Drive and GT4 on the PS2. I upgrade my PC so I can play the games I want to play.
I'll upgrade my TV when I can't watch the programs I want to watch anymore, or when there is significant improvements in the availability of true High Definition content (not upscaled content), either in the form of Blu-Ray, HD DVD or television broadcasts.
I can't explain why, but I don't see a TV in quite the same way as a computer. I must admit that my latest TV set is a good deal better than the last TV I had - the colours are much better, the sound is much better and the picture is much better too. However, the benefits of me buying a new TV right now are minimal.
A lot of early adopters buy hardware the day it comes out. In that respect, I'd consider myself a different type of early adopter - I buy the hardware when the content is there for me to use that purchase. Of course, I'm in a bit of a different boat because I get a lot of computer parts for nothing - if I wasn't getting that kit, I'd still be the same - my purchases would be determined by the content. That's the way I've always been, really speaking.
Originally Posted by rupbert HDTV in my opinion is not a simple 'upgrade', it's the biggest thing to happen since colour was introduced, it will change how we view television.
Personally I think the launch of Sky HD will be a huge success, not the niche 'enthusiast beta' that some people seem to suggest.
I hope it is, I was an early DVB-T adopter and I'll have to see what's happening when it comes around. I'm not going to splash money on a TV that's any smaller than my current 42" rear projection, though.
Originally Posted by bigz Thanks for the link, but 20"? It'd look rather small and useless in the corner of my living room! ;)
It would be a nice bedroom TV though and does demonstrate nicely that HD doesn't have to be expensive. You can get bigger but its not brands i would go for. You can get big name 32" HD LCD's for under £1000 now which is alsmost a 50% price drop in 12 months.
You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss upscaled content. If you have a large screen TV it makes a HUGE difference to low quality broad casts, i.e. Sky and its low bitrate channels.
Now I can see why someone with a large screen(32" plus) in rear projection and even CRT would not need to upgrade. However as CRT tv's last for ages as stated in the column, there are now lots of people with small screen non widescreen tvs that are looking to upgrade, these are the people who have had there tvs for 6ish years and are looking for something new. The big advantage I can see to LCD screens and plasma for myself is that a 32" plus screen is still very thin and does not dominate my quite small lounge. I saw a wounderful 42" Rear projection at the weekend but a) I would be unable to get it up the stairs of my flat and B) unable to get to the couch without crawling on the floor. now its the wounderful space saveiness that appeals to me for a LCD TV. and if I am going to buy an LCD tv I belive I am better of spending the extra £100 quid and getting HDTV for 2 reasons a)I then don't have to upgrade my TV for quite some time, and 2 the HDTV ready screens tend to be the newer LCD panels (last 6to 12 months)with a quicker reponse time. now I'm looking at spending less than a grand for my screen so I think it will be quite some time till a HDR screen hits my price bracket and I want a Widescreen tv now.
a 27" 4:3 CRT HDTV. Yes, that's right. 4:3 and CRT. Why, you may ask? Because CRTs last for bloody ever, they've got better color than LCDs currently (aside from the Brightside ones), and they're not going to die in a short time for a huge price tag like plasmas. 4:3 because REGULAR TV IS NOT SHOT IN WIDESCREEN. :) As much as I do love the look of widescreen, it's kind of silly when 90% of what you watch is distributed in 4:3 format and not 16:9. And I wouldn't have even wanted it if it weren't that my 10 year old (yes, 10 years) 27" TV was finally showing the purple blotches of death.
As Chris said, if you're going to buy this year because you actually need to, it would be silly NOT to buy HDTV. But if you have a perfectly nice SDTV sitting at home, running out and buying a new HDTV for content that won't appear for another couple years is just foolish.
Originally Posted by rupbert Are they buying it purely because they want to watch HDTV though?
Thats why I bought mine... ABC, NBC, & CBS all offer there prime time shows in HD w/ 5.1! Is it worth the money I spent on it?
NO... But it is unreal to watch some stuff in HD! Especially sports American Football, Baseball, and Basketball. It truly is like being at the game sometimes!
The only thing that annoys me about all this HD content is that most of it is only going to be 720p or 1080i.
When you think that over here in the UK, our DVD content is already 576p, going from 576 pixels to 720 is such a small leap. Slightly better in the US only having 480 pixels to use, but still, the leap should be all the way.
The change should have been better thought out and put off for another few years, 1080p all around the board. 1080p content from both broadcasting companies and from what media you could buy and 1920x1080 TV's.
I cant see how a blueray or HD-DVD is going to be that much better than a well-encoded 8Mbit/s DVD in the UK. The only improvements I can imagine are being able to stick on a load more content without having to over-compress the video (which they allready do, perhaps to make DVD look worse to make us all be overwhelmed by these next gen formats)
Anyway, hopefully this will be better than our over-compressed blocky Sky broadcasts (don't get me started on our DVB-T broadcasts, errgh!). :)
Comments 51 to 75 of 76
Yeah, I'm sorry for that post of mine, it was unnessesarily rude in the face of someone who's being perfectly civil and polite in response, sorry :o
Who said you had to splurge? You already own a PS2. I've been gaming in 480p and higher for the last two years, many PS2 games support HDTV's and look much better for it. Play Shadows of the Colossus, God of War, GT4, any 2Ksports games? You've got plenty of content there already. Plus, if your PS2 is was made in the last two years, it probably supports progressive scan DVD playback as well.
Don't want to pay for cable? Cool, hook up an antenna and get all your locals for free. No need for new optical standards, all your DVD's will look better in 480p.
There you go, enhanced playback of the stuff you already have or can get without subscription OTA.
Since the technology is much less popular over here, and also because us brits get screwed on prices just for being brits, your going to need to spend significantly more to get the same sorta kit.
I had a quick look at circuitcity(US) and Comet(UK). It was impossible to compare exact matches since TV's have different product names in the US and UK, but comparing the cheapest HDTV panasonic 42" Plasmas, the cheapst Circuit City has is $1999, the cheapest Comet has is £2,299. Thats 4047 USD, over $2000 more for what is basicly the same product.
Now I'm not suggesting anyone who wants HDTV would need to buy a 42" Plasma, I'm just illustrating that massively increased cost that people over here incur compared to the states, when buying high end kit in general, but especially when buying HDTV kit.
Hi-Res Screens dont show a better picture with as a Standard ETV screen when both are showing ETV. Oh, and while im having a moan about the un-informed general public, they LOVE to stretch the picure so it fills the screen, we cant have any of those black lines at the top or the bottom. DVD's have a narrower ration than widescreen but they dont half complain when we show it in its standard aspect ratio/res.
sorry if this has gone a bit off topic
oh and rjcc 480p != HDTV
HD Ready isnt HDTV as well, the HD Ready screens only have DVI connection on them. With somethings you will need the content protection which is sent though the HDMI (i think, im not 100% sure on the content protection side, i know you need it both on the source and the tv for it to work, and DVI connecitons on hd ready tvs wont have this)
Any TV which is marked as HDTV ready within the UK has to be able to support HD content through a component YPbPr connection and through DVI or HDMI. It must also support HDCP (the content protection) on the DVI or HDMI input.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71226
and im going to wait for big SED displays before upgrading again or perhaps HDR but i dont think they are coming cheap.
lcd's have CRAP resolution
19" tft = ~1" more viewable space than a 19" crt but 1280x1024 instead of 1600x1200? **** that tbh.
Also, you're resolution limited, too. If you don't stay at native resolution, it looks blurred and crap. Use a high-quality CRT and you don't get any of that.
Lets get some things clear though, DVI CAN and does support HDCP, it just depends on the manufacturers implementation of the hardware. If you look in the products specs it will tell you if it supports HDCP or not. Sky are due to start broadcasting HD in the UK this spring with 4 channels, running parallel to their existing line up, e.g. Sky One HD, Sky Sports HD etc. The BBC had originally planned to start their HD broadcasts in 2010 but they are apparently thinking of bringing this forward to 2008 now to coincide with the switch off of analogue signals.
I was in a discussion with a representative from Philips at a trade show and in his opinion the main factor preventing HD adoption in the UK was Sky TV's monopoly of satelite TV. Their prices are already as high as the UK public is willing to pay and they will not pay more for HD. He also voiced the opinion that in the industry the next gen consoles where the great unknown and it was felt that they would be the main driving force for HD in europe. Gamers tend to have a lot of disposable income and as shown with PC gamers are preapred to spend large amounts of cash on things like graphics cards. Decent sized HD screens are now availalble for the same price as high end graphics cards.
It is also worth asking how many of the people saying HD is a technology not worth adopting now are running 64bit or dual core CPUs or even SLI? All of which are either not fully supported yet or offer little improvement for a high expenditure.
There is no High Definition Television broadcast available in the UK yet. There are no DVDs, either. The only thing that could benefit from HDTV is an Xbox 360 - they're not hugely available at the moment either. All of the computer components that you've mentioned are widely available and there is content available to support them.
PC Gamers != Console gamers.
Were you talking about PC gamers I would agree with that statement, theres a large hardcore, who want the best, and desire the fastest. Gaming, and PC's overall, are hugely important to many of our lives. Console gamers, people who only play on consoles, often have very different outlooks, and with respect, they ain't hardcore gamers, they're just people who play games. You're not used to spending huge ammouts of money on a console, you buy it, its there, it never needs upgrading, never needs "that extra £50" for a slightly better graphics card, or another stick of ram.
So I doubt console gamers are going to be so willing, for the most part, to rush out and buy £800 TV's right after they've bought £200 consoles, or whatever the 360're are costing.
Yeah but surely the 10% that can tell the difference are not the 'average joe' anyway? What I mean by this is that only a small percentage of consumers are likely to adopt a new technology, irrelevant of the actual leap in quality. The 90% are only concerned that they receive the programme that they want to watch, not how they watch it. Widescreen television was an excellent example of this.
Broadcast content will be available in a matter of weeks, with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD set to follow later in the year. The xbox360 is here and the PS3 will soon follow. At the moment however i can play HD on a standard xbox with an HD kit, i belive you can play the latest Gran Turismo at 720p on a PSTwo. I could view dvds in HD resoloution using an upscaling dvd player or cinema amp or i could get an external scaler and watch everything at HD resoloutions. There is a valid argument for an HD screen if you look beyond mearly plugging in a TV aerial and expecting something miraculous to happen.
I find it very odd that a PC enthusiast community is so quick to rubbish early adopters to HD when this forum is filled with people who will snap up the latest bit of expensive PC hardware and proudly put pictures of it up for everyone to see.
@ specofdust. A lot of console gamers have more than one console and dont forget console games are considerably more expensive than PC games. Also its a bit insulting to say the only hardcore gamers are PC gamers.
@ rupbert. i agree but during the festive period the electrical retailers where full of people buying HD screens all of which where showing HD content. I wonder how many of them take it home and plug it in and womder why it does not look as good as it did in the shop.
Are they buying it purely because they want to watch HDTV though?
I would suggest that they were merely going to purchase a lcd/plasma, and were lead down the path of HDTV by the salesperson. Logically anyone would spend a few £ more on a TV that was more 'future proof' than the one beside it, even if the technicalities wern't immediately apparent.
2nd:
I'll upgrade my TV when I can't watch the programs I want to watch anymore, or when there is significant improvements in the availability of true High Definition content (not upscaled content), either in the form of Blu-Ray, HD DVD or television broadcasts.
I can't explain why, but I don't see a TV in quite the same way as a computer. I must admit that my latest TV set is a good deal better than the last TV I had - the colours are much better, the sound is much better and the picture is much better too. However, the benefits of me buying a new TV right now are minimal.
A lot of early adopters buy hardware the day it comes out. In that respect, I'd consider myself a different type of early adopter - I buy the hardware when the content is there for me to use that purchase. Of course, I'm in a bit of a different boat because I get a lot of computer parts for nothing - if I wasn't getting that kit, I'd still be the same - my purchases would be determined by the content. That's the way I've always been, really speaking.
Upgrading your pc however is different. You are merely increasing the performance, enjoyability of an existing medium.
HDTV in my opinion is not a simple 'upgrade', it's the biggest thing to happen since colour was introduced, it will change how we view television.
Personally I think the launch of Sky HD will be a huge success, not the niche 'enthusiast beta' that some people seem to suggest.
The exact point.
No matter how good a new technology is, the consumer has the choice to adopt it or not.
It would be a nice bedroom TV though and does demonstrate nicely that HD doesn't have to be expensive. You can get bigger but its not brands i would go for. You can get big name 32" HD LCD's for under £1000 now which is alsmost a 50% price drop in 12 months.
You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss upscaled content. If you have a large screen TV it makes a HUGE difference to low quality broad casts, i.e. Sky and its low bitrate channels.
a 27" 4:3 CRT HDTV. Yes, that's right. 4:3 and CRT. Why, you may ask? Because CRTs last for bloody ever, they've got better color than LCDs currently (aside from the Brightside ones), and they're not going to die in a short time for a huge price tag like plasmas. 4:3 because REGULAR TV IS NOT SHOT IN WIDESCREEN. :) As much as I do love the look of widescreen, it's kind of silly when 90% of what you watch is distributed in 4:3 format and not 16:9. And I wouldn't have even wanted it if it weren't that my 10 year old (yes, 10 years) 27" TV was finally showing the purple blotches of death.
As Chris said, if you're going to buy this year because you actually need to, it would be silly NOT to buy HDTV. But if you have a perfectly nice SDTV sitting at home, running out and buying a new HDTV for content that won't appear for another couple years is just foolish.
Thats why I bought mine... ABC, NBC, & CBS all offer there prime time shows in HD w/ 5.1! Is it worth the money I spent on it?
NO... But it is unreal to watch some stuff in HD! Especially sports American Football, Baseball, and Basketball. It truly is like being at the game sometimes!
When you think that over here in the UK, our DVD content is already 576p, going from 576 pixels to 720 is such a small leap. Slightly better in the US only having 480 pixels to use, but still, the leap should be all the way.
The change should have been better thought out and put off for another few years, 1080p all around the board. 1080p content from both broadcasting companies and from what media you could buy and 1920x1080 TV's.
I cant see how a blueray or HD-DVD is going to be that much better than a well-encoded 8Mbit/s DVD in the UK. The only improvements I can imagine are being able to stick on a load more content without having to over-compress the video (which they allready do, perhaps to make DVD look worse to make us all be overwhelmed by these next gen formats)
Anyway, hopefully this will be better than our over-compressed blocky Sky broadcasts (don't get me started on our DVB-T broadcasts, errgh!). :)
Take a look what a short google visit brought up:
http://www.hdtvtotal.com/gallery-displayimagepopup-pid-2205-fullsize-1.html
http://www.hdtvtotal.com/gallery-displayimagepopup-pid-2202-fullsize-1.html
http://www.hdtvtotal.com/gallery-displayimagepopup-pid-2203-fullsize-1.html
http://www.hdtvtotal.com/gallery-displayimagepopup-pid-2206-fullsize-1.html
And no, I don't know where these picture have been taken from. :)