HD TV, is it for me?

[dr strange]

Need to know a few things before I spend heavily on a new Plasma.
After some searching, and after reading good reviews, I have decided it's between two Panasonic's TX-P42S10 and TX-42G10.
Ideally I want full HD as I love movies and my Sony laptop doubles as a BlueRay full HD player. I don't however have a Sky HD box just Sky+, so I will be watching SD tv picture. I watch sport so I have been told 100hz is important. So on this basis, the models I have chosen are both full HD and 100hz..
Recently I have read it's not necessary to have a Plasma, or LCD for that matter if you watch SD tv. Also CRT tv's produce a very good quality picture compared to many Plasma and LCD's unless you have a SKY HD. So do I need a new Plasma? Are they good for watching an SD picture, and is there anything I should be looking for on a model that helps this? Is a Sky+ box ok for producing a good picture, or will I need an HD box? I'm afraid of blurring pictures and ultimately don't want to spend a lot of money only to get a fairly good picture.
Anything else on a Plasma I should look for, or anyone have a different Plasma model they can recommend...any help is wanted. Thanks.

[johntaylor99]

dr strange
Any HD ready LCT TV will produce exellent pictures, without the need of HD.
I have a samsung 40" and 32" LCD HD ready TV's.
Rather than to subscribe to SKY I cancelled my subscription and bought a Freesat box for �150, I did this
1. Because there are so few HD programmes available from SKY.
2. Freesat has BBC HD & ITV limited HD programmes.
3. The difference between HD & SD is hardly noticeable.
The reason I cancelled SKY was cost, My Wife and I watched Freesat for months and hardly needed to use SKY,
so unless you watch SKY all of the time dump it and save a fortune, There are about 8 Movie selections on freesat apart from those movies shown on normal channels.
Hope this helps
johntaylor99

[Mattk]

3. The difference between HD & SD is hardly noticeable.


Not sure thats quite true. I have Sky HD and the difference is significant on some broadcasts but not so much on others.

[Mattk]

dr strange one tip for you. plasma have a 'life' of approx 10k hours so if you are a heavy tv user then this is not as large as it sounds.

easily 10hrs per day in our house = approx 3650k hours per year i.e. 3 yrs use before tv goes into decline.

i would recommend LCD as your way fwd.

[whiskeryron]

I agree with Mattk, I have Sky HD & I find the picture quality astounding compared with SD, buy LCD and make sure you link with HDMi cable(scart is not good enough for HD)

[ZXR]

HDTV is bill if you like watching high quality images at the best possible resoultion. Things to which HDTV is excellent for are films nature / wildlife progs, some entertainment shows such as Strictly and of course sports shows.

Things which make no difference : news, documentaries, history progs with poor quality old archive film (WW 2etc) cops with cameras(again low quality shaky cameras) , soap operas, comedy shows, YBF ( poor quality camcorder footage) and so on.

There are only a few progs being show at the present and they are repeated weekly, so it'll be a while before there will be more diversity in programming

To view HD you will need either a tv with built in HD receiver such as this from Panasonic

http://www.hdtv-news.co.uk/2008/05/07/panasoni c-first-with-freesat-hdtv/

Otherwise you will need a sat receiver such as Freesat HD or Sky HD (which is a subscription service.)
Humax are currently the only manufacturer offering an HD Freesat recorder for around �280 in Argos

http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/products/produc t_stb_satellite_foxsathdr.asp

This will need to be installed by a competent person, not really a diy job cost around �60 or so.

The connection to your tv from the Freesat HD box will need to be via HDMI, scart connectors do not have the required bandwidth to display HDTV.

More clear info here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/digitaltv/faq_h d.shtml

[dr strange]

Thanks to everyone and your feedback regarding 'is HD for me', but the bigger issue seems to be Plasma v LCD.

It's obvious from your replies that SD is not as good as HD, but I will upgrade to Sky HD one day in the near future. I've also taken into account the life expectancy, weight and no. of HDMI ports. Another thing, I hear from the experts that Plasma is a better overall picture quality, but that the public seems to chose LCD. LCD have made ground on the deep black issue which Plasma cannot be faulted for. So with this in mind, I am going to chose between the Panasonic Plasma TX-42G10, and Sony LCD KDL40W5500. A tough choice!