Need help fighting HD TV!

[bobbismal]

I have a 15 year old 25" tube TV. The picture looks good enough for me. Problem is, it's dying. I have comcast cable with standard (non HD) signal. Looking at the new TV's, the only thing sold is HD LCD or Plasmas. I also have a standard DVD player with no plans to move to BlueRay.

I cant stand the thought of having to buy an HD TV just to have to spend more per month on an HD signal. Then spend more on a BlueRay player, then spend more to upgrade my DVD's to BlueRay's. Just not going to happen. To upgrade to an HD signal it's going to cost me an extra $50 pm/$600per Year. Not going to happen.

So here's my question. Being that it looks good on a good old lowRes tube TV. Would my standard cable and DVD's look better on a 720p than a 1080p TV?

 

[jtvang125]

Nobody is forcing you to upgrade for cable HD or bluray when buying a HDTV. Depending on where you are you can probably get a few over the air HD channels for free. You can keep your cable service the same, just no HD. I don't see how it's going to be another $50/month, most cable service around here charges about $15 more to add HD if you already have basic cable. Also many people are quite satisfied with dvds on their HDTVs so no need to go bluray yet.

DVDs will look good on either resolution but standard analog cable is going to look bad to watchable depending on the tv. Digital cable on the other hand should look pretty good.

 

[vi edit]

Resistance is futile...

Seriously, don't fear it. HDTV is a wonderful thing. Your cable provider may provide "QAM" HD signals over the regular line for free. You just plug it in to your TV and go.

If not, you can always throw up a $5 antenna and pull in HD signals from your free broadcast stations.

No need for Blu Ray. It's an evolution in technology, not revolution. Conventional DVD's will still look just fine on a 720p HDTV.

If you are looking in the 42" or below range, a 720p set will be just fine for your needs. You may take a bit of a hit in non-HD image quality, but you get used to it. But getting sports events in HD makes it easily worth the pain.

 

[Rio Rebel]

Originally posted by: bobbismal
I have a 15 year old 25" tube TV. The picture looks good enough for me. Problem is, it's dying. I have comcast cable with standard (non HD) signal. Looking at the new TV's, the only thing sold is HD LCD or Plasmas. I also have a standard DVD player with no plans to move to BlueRay.

I cant stand the thought of having to buy an HD TV just to have to spend more per month on an HD signal. Then spend more on a BlueRay player, then spend more to upgrade my DVD's to BlueRay's. Just not going to happen. To upgrade to an HD signal it's going to cost me an extra $50 pm/$600per Year. Not going to happen.

So here's my question. Being that it looks good on a good old lowRes tube TV. Would my standard cable and DVD's look better on a 720p than a 1080p TV?

I agree with the posts above. HD is a wonderful thing.

But to answer your question, the native resolution of the tv (720p or 1080p or whatever) is not the most important factor of how well it displays standard definition content. Size of the display is very relevant, and the ability of the tv to de-interlace and convert resolutions. A tv can look beautiful with HD content, and still look much worse than its competitors in displaying SD content. Frankly, in your case, I would look for another CRT television with a similar size display. Nothing is better than CRT televisions for displaying SD, and the bigger the display, the more you see the imperfections in the picture.

 

[krotchy]

720p vs 1080p is not nearly as big of a deal as simply getting a manufacturer with good scaling technology. Also the bigger the TV the easier it is to spot problems with SD picture on an HDTV. For instance a 1080p Pioneer TV is going to have much much better SD quality than a 720p Vizio, its just the fact that Pioneer and other top tier brands tend to have better processing than the cheaper brands.

Also as mentioned to upgrade to an HD signal, you just need an Antenna to get HD stations over the air or depending on your cable provider, if the digital HD stations are there, your new TV will pick them up, because the cable provider cannot legally encrypt them.

 

[Shawn]

Get one with a QAM tuner. Then you can get basic analog cable + your locals in HD as a bonus without paying anything extra. That's what I do. I get NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, and PBS in HD and I don't pay a cent extra for HD. I also get a bunch of on-demand channels that aren't encrypted. Of course, you are at the mercy of whatever someone else is watching.

 

[phillyman36]

If you mean you cant find a crt tv Samsung still makes crt tv in 27 inches. They are at best Buy(whom i hate right now) I have a Samsung lcd 32 inch and love it but you can still get a crt if thats what you mean

 

[pennylane]

My old TV was a Samsung CRT 27". Aside from being a pretty good CRT TV, it could do HD 1080i. It was a good TV. I don't know if they still make them though.

 

[ultimatebob]

Walmart still sells 27" digital SDTV's for about $250, so nobody is forcing you to go HD yet.

You're going to regret buying one five years from now when almost everything is broadcast in HD and the cable companies start killing off the analog channels, though!

Oh... and even regular DVD's look better on an HDTV if you buy a $60 upconverting DVD player.

 

[Tegeril]

Blu-ray.

 

[kalrith]

If you want to stick with SD, you can probably find a 25-27" on Craiglist for less than $100. SD DVDs and free OTA HD look great on an HDTV though.

 

[bobbismal]

Kinda thanks to all.

Got a 40" Samsung 1080i LCD, and an upconverting Samsung DVD 5-1. Love it. Stuck with the standard Comcast cable, kinda. I dumped the cable box and hooked the cable directly up to the TV. Did a HD channel scan and get about 20 HD channels that look awesome and the normal amount of standard channels. Thanks to Leo Laporte TWIT.com for that one. Turns out he does the same thing. I told my friends that pay for HD cable (no premium channels), they all tried hooking up directly and channel scan. All of them returned their HD boxes. Guess Comcast doesn't want anyone to know they can get HD channels without paying for their box. Leo says they can't block them, but they also don't have to tell you they're there.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: bobbismal
I have a 15 year old 25" tube TV. The picture looks good enough for me. Problem is, it's dying. I have comcast cable with standard (non HD) signal. Looking at the new TV's, the only thing sold is HD LCD or Plasmas. I also have a standard DVD player with no plans to move to BlueRay.

I cant stand the thought of having to buy an HD TV just to have to spend more per month on an HD signal. Then spend more on a BlueRay player, then spend more to upgrade my DVD's to BlueRay's. Just not going to happen. To upgrade to an HD signal it's going to cost me an extra $50 pm/$600per Year. Not going to happen.

So here's my question. Being that it looks good on a good old lowRes tube TV. Would my standard cable and DVD's look better on a 720p than a 1080p TV?

If the channel(s) you have exist in a HD format it will not cost you anything. Just call comcast and say you got a HDTV and that you like to swap the box for a HD box and you're set.
That is exactly what I did (Comcast here too) but I opted for a HD DVR box instead of just a HD box. This set me back $11/month and I haggled and managed to get HBO free fro 6 months too. One of the HBO channels are HD.