High Defination Television...worth it or not!
i am sure that there are quite a few of you out there just like me who got bitten by the HD LCD bugs!!!
with all the advertisments and promotions and cheap deals and quite a few of my colleagues buying them i decided to get myself a nice HD TV. shopped around for a bit until i found the Samsung HD 40" LCD series 5. all the plasmas, lcd & led's look crystal cler while on display with some having better colour and contract than the others. what i found out later was that the sellers always enhance the colours of the ones they want to get rid of first and then just go for the ones that sell themselves. Anyway, got a "thumbs up" from the wife and went and bought it from LULU. got home installed it myself and all (piece of cake). then realised that the picture quality was not as clear as in the showroom. after a few phonecalls to my friends i got to know that although the picture quality is a bit better than normal TV's i wont get the HD clarity unless i have a HD DVD or HD decoder (for cable TV) etc.
what a bummer... that means i have to get rid of my 3 DVD players, either change my HiFi or buy a new surround sound system, get a HD decoder and the list goes on....
anyone have any solutions or have a similar experience?
Most newer laptops even come with an HDMI out port, which makes connecting to an HDTV even simpler.
I got myself a HDTV to enjoy 1080p for my ps3 and pc gaming. I also download the occasional Blue-ray 1080p movies from torrents of movies I'm interested in. It's my 37inch PC monitor now :)
Most probably you have a laptop, and most probably your high end HDTV has a PC input. Try connecting you laptop to the TV via the VGA cable. Then adjust your resolution to 1080. then play your movies or online streaming in your laptop viewed on the TV.
This worked great when I watched District 9. Although that was an H.264 file compressed blue ray movie. The output was in pure HD.
"Don't look back in anger"
You need to live with it dude... if the only reason for you having bought your HD TV for full 1080P picture experience without any players to go along, then SORRY.
other uses of LCD tvs are that they take less space, doesnt need exclusive TV stand, wall hanging etc....
its worth it if you have PS3 to play bluray movies. I use my HD TV to watch all my hi def bluray rip movies by connectin my notebook (HDMI out) to HD TV,
also though my WDTV, so this it one way of quenching your thirst for the HD experience...
yes, other way to enjoy HD TV experience is to buy the HD Setup box from India (Sundirect) to watch few channels beamed on HD (nat Geo, Discov, other upscaled channels), but remember it isnt legal here yet!!.....;-)
One opportunity to view HD programming in Qatar will be the World Cup this year. Al Jazeera Sport had announced that all matches will be broadcast in HD. If it happens, excellent....else, oh well...aren't we all used to let downs by now.
i agree with Jhopp....
why spend more money when you can just connect ur laptop to the TV. mosts of the laptops now even have HDMI output connections and you get get better viewing quality options on sites like youtube, etc.
From what I understand, thats not HD broadcasting at all. Youre selling a box that connects to the internet and your TV, where you select content you want to watch and then have to wait an eternity (Qatar Internet sucks) for it to download before you watch it.
The cost is pretty rediculous too. Anyone with a home PC or Laptop can do this for little to no cost whatsoever. (iTunes / Torrents / etc)
We want true HD Satellite Broadcasting!!
We are starting up in Qatar very soon @ Virgin Megastores in Villagio Mall. Expected lauch date is 5th of March 2010. If you need content to watch for an HDTV, THIS IS IT people.
Its going to be awesome.
Check out the products www.HDwizards.com
@Dyonski:
You said you bought a new DVD player with HD output for your HD LCD TV. Just so you know.. NO DVDs at all are true HD content. They are all standard format 480p (480 pixels of vertical scan lines). True HD can only be found on BluRay discs and played with a BluRay player. True high definition BluRay discs are up to 1080p. Its a huge difference in picture quality compared to a DVD.
Do yourself a favor and go check out true HD content. Your TV is capable of so much more. You will be impressed!
thanks Jhoop and everyone else for the info guys...
guess its gonna be a long wait then, until qatar gets HD friendly.
@ myself-} should be around 2500 or so... go for the 40" if there is not much of a price difference.
Talking of TV's what prices would I be looking at getting a reasonalbe LCD TV? Say 37" ?
FYI...HD signals is more clear than the normal cables.i got same problem i bought one hd lcd tv and my dvd player have no hd output and the display is not good so i decidedto buy new dvd player with hd output and the video is very clear.
I bought my first HD Tv some time in 2006.
There were no HD broadcasts then and there are no HD broadcasts now.. am I happy with the purchase.. very much..why? Xbox 360 games in HD are a class apart when played on an HD Tv.
moral of the story, but a HD Tv, only if you know you can derive mileage out of it.
" Winning is not everything, it is the only thing. Second place goes to the first loser " - J.Johnson
Sorry, but you should have done your homework a bit. To my knowledge, Doha does not have any HD programming despite the fact there are advertisements for it on Showtime / Orbitz stations. Your TV is capable of recieving and displaying a 1080p HD picture, but your source (Ie: cable, DVD, BluRay, etc) must also output an HD signal.
DVD are all encoded in 480p. Some higher end DVD players can "upscale" the signal to 1080p, but its all algorithmic processing hardware / software to fake the signal. Some are better than others, but nothing will stand out as good as true 1080p source material.
You can find 1080p material on BluRay movies, which are playable on a BluRay player or a PlayStation3. Oddly enough, the PS3 is one of the better players out there and can also upscale your DVDs to 1080p.
I am still waiting for HD broadcasting / Satellite service to become available in Doha. Its really a shame that its not.
yeah i guess so...
but hopuffly my ps3 will make up for all the rest :)
Sounds like you should have "ENERGIZED" a little time to find out if HD signals were available in Doha or what it takes to upgrade the signal, before you bought the TV. After all, TV can only display what is fed to it. GARBAGE IN...GARBAGE OUT!!!