Question about HDTV

[dafaba]

OK this may sound dumb but I can't get a straight answer on this, and none of the How To's and Buying guides directly address it either.
I want to buy a Flat Screen LCD TV and of course it will be HD. However I don’t really want to upgrade my dish and receivers and pay a lot more each month for already over priced programming. I’m fine without HD programming for now, I just want a nice new BIG TV. However I’ve been lead to believe that if I don’t upgrade from the standard dish to HD dish programming that I would be better off not buying the TV at all.
It can’t be that bad? Or can it?
<O
Thanks in advance for any advise.

[NightTran]

what is the dish that you are talkin about is it satelite dish?

[Bay_wolf]

I own a 20 inch LCD HDTV and have standard definition Directv on it. It doesn't look awful and if you can't get hdtv yet due to any reason then it would look alright on the tv. you will see some artifacting and you will be able to tell its not hd but all I can say is i never notice it anymore.

Regards

[dafaba]

I have Directv as well. That's what I mean by dish.

[NightTran]

direct tv is alot better then cable, I have direct TV before with regular tv and it is clear I mean very clear even with 60+ %, cable you have to pay extra for the HD stubs

[dafaba]

Thanks for the input so far.
I think the retail sales people and friends I've talked to are snobs about picture quality.
Of course HD programming looks better but the cost is too high for me right now.
It would cost at least $100 a month and at least a few hundred for the new satellite dish and receivers.
Besides I find it hard to believe that everyone who bought one of those cheap Flat panels at the after Thanksgiving sales last year really upgraded their programming.

After all my video games and pc will look great on a new LCD.

[admin]

HDTV needs HD content to look great, but an SDTV will still look quite good. The problem comes with the size of the screen, even if the screen is SD, because at say 50", standard def looks kind of blurry.

But the TV will have a lot more use than just satellite, PC, Xbox 360/PS3, Blu-ray/HD DVD - they will all look better on a large screen HDTV.

[dafaba]

I'm lookin at about a 37"-46"

[admin]

I've just added a new blog entry on TV buying tips, I think it may be helpful:

http://www.digital-digest.com/blog/DVDGuy/2007/09/12/new-blog-some-tv-buying-tips/

[dafaba]

Thats some good info.
Sounds like it's best to do your homework, and lots of it.
Looking at specs on TV's and I don't see anything on the internal scaler.

[admin]

If you search the net for some professional reviews, then they should talk about the scaler a bit more. If not, you can always do an eyeball test ... go to the store and ask them to display a SD picture (for example, non upscaled DVD playback) and see if the picture is acceptable to you or not. The ability for the TV to display SD properly is going to be less and less important, considering that even cheap DVD players now come with their own scalers.