My mother badly needs a new TV. The 25" Magnavox we bought around 1988 can't hold colors anymore. She's decided to buy a new one. Looking for a no-payments-for-XXX-months" deal, but she's got some cash set aside if need be.
Mom is not an audio- or videophile by any means. She's happy with one speaker as long as it's loud. She will not likely notice the quality of HD, and certainly would prefer a setup that does not require a cable box. She's happy with using the TV remote for everything. She'll just be happier with a traditional TV. Simple is good here.
She has a very nice TV cabinet with doors that matches the rest of her furniture, so the TV has to fit in there. (She does not want a TV hanging on her wall!) We found a 32" Sony at a major appliance chain. The price and financing were good. It fit (just barely, utilizing the cut-out section of the cabinet's back panel). Trinitron is a great tube. So she drives out to buy the thing and the sales guys says, "What do you want that for? It won't be any good in a year. You won't be able to watch TV on it." "You need HD." "Everything's going to be in widescreen." "You'll be looking at black bars on your TV."
Of course, I'm not there, so I don't know the exact "facts" he spouted off, but those were the general ones she got out of it. He kept trying to push her into a widescreen Toshiba for $25 more. The closest I could find on their web site was a 30" 16:9 HD-ready. When I reach back 20 years and do the math, I calculate that the "blocked-off" wide image she'll see on the 32" 4:3 screen will be just a tiny bit smaller than with the 16:9, but when she's watching traditional 4:3 programming (ie. for the next year and probably longer), the blocked-off picture on the 16:9 screen will be dwarfed by what she'd have with the 32" at full screen.
I have not kept up with the A/V market for several years. (I never thought I'd be so out of touch, but you get some money and buy the toys you want, you start back to grad school, you work 60 hours a week, and you just forget about trying to keep current with ANYthing that mattered to you way back in your 20's!) I know that networks will be required to broadcast digitally (but not nec. in HD) at a certain point in time and they they will stop analog transmission at another point in time. I don't know much more than that.
My question is will this television be usable for watching basic cable and DVDs in four or five years? I assume she'd need some sort of converter if everything were suddenly digital, but that's not a big deal. Heck, her local cable company just expanded the channel lineup to include "new" channels like Food Network, so they're not very cutting edge.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Mom is not an audio- or videophile by any means. She's happy with one speaker as long as it's loud. She will not likely notice the quality of HD, and certainly would prefer a setup that does not require a cable box. She's happy with using the TV remote for everything. She'll just be happier with a traditional TV. Simple is good here.
She has a very nice TV cabinet with doors that matches the rest of her furniture, so the TV has to fit in there. (She does not want a TV hanging on her wall!) We found a 32" Sony at a major appliance chain. The price and financing were good. It fit (just barely, utilizing the cut-out section of the cabinet's back panel). Trinitron is a great tube. So she drives out to buy the thing and the sales guys says, "What do you want that for? It won't be any good in a year. You won't be able to watch TV on it." "You need HD." "Everything's going to be in widescreen." "You'll be looking at black bars on your TV."
Of course, I'm not there, so I don't know the exact "facts" he spouted off, but those were the general ones she got out of it. He kept trying to push her into a widescreen Toshiba for $25 more. The closest I could find on their web site was a 30" 16:9 HD-ready. When I reach back 20 years and do the math, I calculate that the "blocked-off" wide image she'll see on the 32" 4:3 screen will be just a tiny bit smaller than with the 16:9, but when she's watching traditional 4:3 programming (ie. for the next year and probably longer), the blocked-off picture on the 16:9 screen will be dwarfed by what she'd have with the 32" at full screen.
I have not kept up with the A/V market for several years. (I never thought I'd be so out of touch, but you get some money and buy the toys you want, you start back to grad school, you work 60 hours a week, and you just forget about trying to keep current with ANYthing that mattered to you way back in your 20's!) I know that networks will be required to broadcast digitally (but not nec. in HD) at a certain point in time and they they will stop analog transmission at another point in time. I don't know much more than that.
My question is will this television be usable for watching basic cable and DVDs in four or five years? I assume she'd need some sort of converter if everything were suddenly digital, but that's not a big deal. Heck, her local cable company just expanded the channel lineup to include "new" channels like Food Network, so they're not very cutting edge.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!