politburo diktat 2.0

I bought a television this weekend, 42 inch HD flat panel (plasma) set. This one:

HP PL4260N 42″ High-Definition Plasma TV with HDTV

So far, I like it. The salesman at Best Buy was a helpful, informative guy. My wife would still be there asking questions. This TV was in stock; normally they only stock the sets under 32 inches, for reasons of space. But this was on hand, and we loaded it into the back of my Explorer. It fit easily; I’m not sure if the 50 or 60 inch sets would have.

My son and I set it up and connected it to the power supply, the satellite dish, and the Xbox (which we use to play DVD’s). All the connections are easily identifiable and the back of the set labels them fairly well. It took some time to uncrate the TV and plug everything in, but I saw no reason to hire a “professional” TV installer. It’s only a TV, and unless you are technophobic, it’s easy enough.

I learned one thing about aspect ratios, i.e. the shape of the image. I knew that old TV’s were a squarish 4:3 aspect ratio, and that modern HDTV’s have a more rectangular 16:9 aspect. What I didn’t realize is that widescreen movies (i.e. most modern movies) have an even longer aspect ratio of 2.35:1. (That would equal 21:9, but no one expresses it that way).

So, when I watched The Lord Of The Rings (Widescreen Edition), it still appeared in a slight ‘letterbox’ format, with narrow black bands above and below. It’s a simple matter to zoom in a bit and thus fill up the screen; but then you lose some of the side edges, it’s a matter of taste. But the standard HDTV aspect (16:9) is not exactly the standard cinematic widescreen aspect. It’s not a problem, just something I hadn’t thought through all the way.

For playback of DVD’s I also bought a DVD player that converts standard DVD’s (that we have a house full of) to high definition format. It was only $92, but it’s hard to detect any improvement in playback quality, versus using my son’s Xbox. To get the best possible image, I bought the HDMI cable, which caused some complications. The DVD player needed two specific setup options changed to use the HDMI, but in order to see the setup screen, I had to connect the DVD player with ordinary red-yellow-&-white wires first. Again, it took 30-45 minutes and reference to the manual, but it “wasn’t rocket science.”

A final note on HDTV’s. Connections are everything. I mean the physical wire or cable connecting each component to the HDTV. There are the familiar 3-color (1 for video, 2 for audio) cables, newer 5-color (3 video, 2 audio), and the latest type called HDMI. The back of the HDTV accomodates many different things to be plugged into it; it’s a just a matter of keeping the input source and cables straight.