Posted: November 26 2005 at 11:06am | IP Logged

After years of wanting to buy a hi-def widescreen tv, I finally bought one this afternoon. I settled for a 30" tube tv because it needs to fit into my existing wall unit, although I've always prefered the picture quality of tube tvs. I can't wait to watch DVDs and play videogames on this thing.

The model I purchased is a Sony KV-30HS420. Here's a pic:

Posted: November 26 2005 at 11:45am | IP Logged

Thanks guys.

I used to buy a ton of home theater equipment before I had kids and this is the first new addition I've bought in over 5 years.

I have a Comcast digital cable box that offers HD programming. Ted, I can't wait to see how NCAA looks in widescreen

Posted: December 01 2005 at 8:36pm | IP Logged

After playing around with the TV, I'm very pleased with my purchase. DVD's look great, which is the main reason I wanted the TV, and most of my PS2 games look pretty good too.

The games I've tried out so far are NCAA Football 06, MVP 2005 and NBA 2K6. Although NCAA doesn't support progressive scan, my TV has a feature called DRC (Digital Reality Creation), which upconverts non-HD signals to 480P. While I've always been skeptical of upconverting due to artifacting, I haven't seen a hint of it yet. What's even better is that there is no screen flickering in the background while playing NCAA Football (which is something that's bothered me since Madden 2002).

I also tried a few progressive scan games (MVP & NBA 2K6) running in native 480p mode and then letting the TV upconvert the image (by not setting the progressive scan option in the game) and could not see a difference with the image. NBA 2K6 actually ran and looked better with the progressive scan option turned off because it elimanated the slowdown that was present when it was on. What's even better is that I don't have to concern myself with which games support 480p because I'm just going to let my tv upconvert all the images anyway.

Widescreen (16:9) mode is a completely different story though. I'm just glad that most of EA's game support a widescreen mode because those games really shine when upconverted to 480p. I'm really looking forward to re-playing alot of games in my library with the new tv.

On a side note, whoever said that standard cable (NTSC) images look terrible on  HD sets was correct. I'm going to upgrade my digital cable box to one that supports HDTV.