am i the only one not jumping on the HD bandwagon?

[pickle]

im moving house soon and someone said to me 'why not get a nice new hdtv for your new living room'. initially i thought this was a good idea, and not knowing much about them i thought i would look into it..

the big argument for them seems to be 'i dont want to have to buy another tv in a 18months time'. well, the hdtvs available now are only 720p, the ones about in a yr or two will be 1080p. im guessing other factors that affect the quality will also improve as the hd technology as a whole moves forward.

theres no HD material about yet. HDDVD and BluRay are just around the corner, but will be expensive to begin with, and there is not going to be vast catologs of material for them for a long long time.

skyHD is also going to be expensive, and limited. (i think theres only about 6-7 channels of HD) and im sure they will have all sorts of problems with it (who here with sky has never had problems with them?.. i know i have)

the prices will also fall. you can get a really good SD tv for ~£400. im sure the price of a HD LCD now is at least £400 more than it will be in a years time.

i hope this isnt seen as an unstructered rant, but i just feel theres mass advertising and hype for a new technology which a lot of people are buying into thinking its future proof, when it isnt.

anyone else think this, or am i completly missing something or perhaps i just havent seen the light?

 

[theMAD2]

I think you've got a good point, personally I don't like to buy first generation gear unless I have to otherwise you're out of date quickly and pay more. My TV went on the blink recently so I was looking at buying a new one and I thought I may as well jump to HD, but I haven't been able to take advantage of it yet.

I would say unless you need to buy a new TV, wait for a bit, the prices are dropping all the time!

If you want to test out some HD pictures have a look at these:
http://www.wmvhd.com/
You can connect your PC to your TV using DVI and it's pretty impressive!

 

[Duradrum]

im moving house soon and someone said to me 'why not get a nice new hdtv for your new living room'. initially i thought this was a good idea, and not knowing much about them i thought i would look into it..

the big argument for them seems to be 'i dont want to have to buy another tv in a 18months time'. well, the hdtvs available now are only 720p, the ones about in a yr or two will be 1080p. im guessing other factors that affect the quality will also improve as the hd technology as a whole moves forward.

theres no HD material about yet. HDDVD and BluRay are just around the corner, but will be expensive to begin with, and there is not going to be vast catologs of material for them for a long long time.

skyHD is also going to be expensive, and limited. (i think theres only about 6-7 channels of HD) and im sure they will have all sorts of problems with it (who here with sky has never had problems with them?.. i know i have)

the prices will also fall. you can get a really good SD tv for ~£400. im sure the price of a HD LCD now is at least £400 more than it will be in a years time.

i hope this isnt seen as an unstructered rant, but i just feel theres mass advertising and hype for a new technology which a lot of people are buying into thinking its future proof, when it isnt.

anyone else think this, or am i completly missing something or perhaps i just havent seen the light?

Hi. As with any new technology, early adopters will pay more. If you wait, you will get more bang for your buck. How long do you wait thoug? There's always something around the corner.

HD is here. It has been for a long time. I do have a 37" HD LCD, and have an X360 and about 10 HD movies in 720p & 1080i that I stream from my PC to the LCD. I bought the TV knowing exactly the use I would get from it.

Theres no point in buying HD now though unless you intend to feed HD to it. Period. A good SD set with a good SD feed will produce a better image than a HD set with an SD feed. But, were at the stage where the marketing men are creating a riot, advertising HD as 'the future now'. You average Joe has absolutely no need for HD. Techies, however, know exactly what they want.

 

[Goatboy]

There is tonnes of HD material around, ok so the majority isn't strictly legal but it's there and lots of people are enjoying HD as we speak and have been for some time.

People keep mentioning not getting 720p and waiting for 1080p the problem there is that unless you have a huge screen you won't notice any difference and so much material will be 720p so will have to be scaled.

All depends what you've got to spend and what you want to do with it, no point shelling out on HDTV if you're not planning on getting and HD sources - a lot of people are though simply because it's the cool thing to have just like LCD even though a cheap CRT will wipe the floor with it for DVD and TV which is all most people are using them for.