Digital Home Thoughts: The HD TV Evolution: Part 7 – Convergence Rules!

Eight Simple Rules
First rule: Any HD is better than pre-HD.
For most consumers their next HD display will be their first. So comparisons will more come against the old analog CRT-based sets or what the early-adopter neighbor got last year. Which means that pretty much any product they buy—and keep—will be better than they expected.

Second rule: Don’t buy until it hurts not to.
Just like in the PC business, next year’s model WILL be better than anything you can get today. It will also be cheaper by as much as 25%. If you can’t accept that fact, don’t buy. If you can afford to wait, wait. You’ll be better off. No matter how good a sale they may be offering today, there will be better deals six months away. And, yes, the neighbor’s new set WILL be better than yours. Deal with it.

Third rule: Separate the subjective from the objective.
It’s a cliché but true nonetheless. Picture Quality is in the eye of the beholder, and in the beholder’s living room/den/whatever. A lot of folks will happily volunteer to tell you what the “best” display technology is. They also will tell you what the “best” computer OS is. If you are a clone of them you can accept their word for it and likely be happy. If not, you might be better off making up your own mind. Honest: the ONLY way to judge the picture quality of a specific display is to take it home, set it up in your viewing room, and feed it your content. Then you let your Mark I eyeball tell you if you like it or not. That’s when you will know what is “best” for you and not somebody else. This is not Macs vs PCs zero-sum game, where the network's effects that help one player could conceivably hurt the other. Here, your choices are not at all impacted by the choices others make, so live and let die, alright?

Fourth rule: Do your homework.
Just because the subjective can’t be measured until you take it home doesn’t mean the objective can’t be qualified. It can and it should. With HD displays the objective consists of essentially four parameters you can vary to get a good candidate display: screen size, resolution, form-factor, and price. (With PCs is CPU-power, graphics power, form-factor, storage, and price.) Simplistic rule of thumb: you can get any three of them to converge if you can sacrifice the fourth. (E.G.; You can have a thin, high-res display at an affordable price if you don’t need it to be too big in screen size or you can have a big, high-res thin display if you’re willing to pay.) Try the other permutations. When you find a display that APPEARS to violate this guideline, it’s time to buy.

Fifth rule: The footprint matters.
The flat panel form factor is sexy, isn’t it? It’s way cooler than a micro-display rear-projector, no? So, which takes up more space in the living room? The flat panel? Not always. Yes, the panel is flat, but the stand isn’t. Typical flat panel stands are in the 9-12” range. Typical rear-projector displays range from 12 to 20 inches deep (with some newer ones going as thin as 7”). Now, unless you are wall-mounting that flat panel display, you are most likely going to stand it atop a piece of furniture (credenza, display stand, or entertainment center) that will most likely be, yes, 18-22” deep. So, if you must have sexy and cool, start by looking at flat panels, but don’t stop there. Don't overlook rear-projectors. They offer very good value.

Sixth rule: Beware price creep.
Retailers love price creep: a customer comes in to look at an interesting display on sale and they end up buying a more expensive model. Why? Incremental price creep - a few inches here, a boost in resolution there, a universal remote here, an extra digital port over there… Pretty soon it all adds up. Anybody that spec’ed out a PC for online purchase knows about price creep, right?

Seventh rule: You’re going to live with the thing for years.
The flip side of price creep - low-balling yourself. Yes, saving money is good. But a TV set is, for most people, a multi-year commitment. Much like a car, you need to consider the long-term value of that extra feature. Some features are just conveniences but others are practically necessities. If you’re only going to hook up one external device to the display, maybe a display with only one digital port is enough for you; maybe a lack of port-specific settings memory isn’t important. Maybe. Or maybe not. For most people, the lack of certain upfront features can entail a larger, later expense (for input switching devices, an after-market remote, etc.) or years of aggravation. Scrutinize every last add-on but don’t short-change yourself.

Eighth rule: Don’t look back.
Once you buy the set of your dreams, don’t second guess yourself. Just as with PCs, there will always be a newer, better model out there every six months, like clockwork. And no, the Red Queen’s race is not going to stop any time soon. Technology will keep on improving and prices will keep falling for at least the next five years. That is the price of convergence. Manufacturers using PC technology to build HDTVs means accepting PC pricing and competition rules, whether they like it or not. And as consumers we should like it. Even if it means that your six-month-old display is now technically “obsolete” and replaced by a newer model with desirable new features. (Been there, done that; Westinghouse LVM-37W3.) Just remember, it still does everything it did the day you brought it home so excitedly. So relax, stop worrying, and go watch that nature documentary on the mating habits of preying mantes over on DiscoveryHD and get your money’s worth out of your new HD display before the newer model comes out next week. Or don’t.

That’s it.

Eight simple rules for surviving the North American HDTV transition. Follow them if it makes sense, ignore them if you want to. It’s all about entertainment, folks. Just go and have some fun in the age of digital convergence.

Me, I’m going off into Oblivion.

Felix Torres is a dabbler in home entertainment electronics and a survivor of both the home computing wars of the 80's and the multimedia wars of the 90's who is currently most interested in home media networks and the North American transition away from broadcast media.