HDTV

I’ve been reading up on HDTV, something I never really paid attention to it until I got the new television. Now, I find that everything else I have is outdated. While DVD Players don’t specifically support HDTV standard, progressive scan, 480p makes a difference. My DVD Player is from 1999 and only supports 480i. The current DVD player also doesn’t play anything burned, not audio CDs, not video CDs, and not burned DVDs. Most of the new ones support all of that as well as mp3’s. That would be nice.

Digital cable & Satellite are the next thing on the HDTV list. None of them are good. Adelphia’s web site doesn’t say much about what HD programming they offer, I guess I’m going to have to call them. I checked out direct tv, but they only offer 4 standard HD channels, plus local channels for Washington DC area that I don’t really care about. There is a satellite network called Voom that offers a ton of HD channels, but no local channels. They tout the broadcast channels, but in Frederick MD, there isn’t much in the way of broadcast reception.

I just found out that most Xbox games support 480p and many support higher HDTV resolutions of 720p and 1080i. Along with the Play Station 2, some of the games also support widescreen 16x9 format. The lists I saw had a lot of sports games like football and racing supporting 16x9.

This is all good news, except for the fact that I have to buy a lot of new stuff. The TV has two component video inputs, limiting me to HDTV devices. If I wanted to run digital cable, Xbox, & a progressive scan DVD player, I’d be out of luck without buying a new home theatre receiver that supports component video switching. I’d also have to purchase some new cables and connectors that wont be cheap. That being said, I hope to perform these upgrades over time, probably starting with a new DVD player.