Buy HDTV

The time has come. If you replace that 10-year-old TV set with something that isn't HD-compatible, you're going to hate yourself — and your HD-equipped neighbors — for another ten years. Of course these days it's hard not to buy one, since anything over $1,500 and plenty on down to about $800 are HD-compatible. We just want to make sure you don't make any big mistakes. Some tips to keep you from tripping on the road to HD:

WHAT MAKES HIGH-DEFINITION TV SO SPECIAL?
Quick lesson: standard TV appears on a standard TV screen as 480 horizontal lines. In order to facilitate broadcasting, those lines were shown "interlaced," like the fingers of two hands coming together. Every other line is visible at any given split second, which looks fine with moving objects on a smallish screen, but pretty awful when it's a still image on a big screen.

New TVs do what computer monitors have done for years — show every line in sequence over and over. This is called progressive scan, and it's a major improvement, especially in the big-screen TV biz. You may have noticed that most new DVD players can send what is essentially standard broadcast video to a TV in progressive scan form, making an overall smoother picture. This is known as 480p, for "progressive," also called Enhanced Definition TV. By definition, EDTV is not HDTV, but HD-ready TVs can support it. And it's a lot better than old-school interlace ("480i") for watching DVDs.

While the most noticeable shift from standard view to high-definition is the changeover from the squarish 4:3 aspect ratio to the cinematic 16:9 widescreen, HDTV's key is higher resolution for sharper detail and better use of screen size. The two main flavors of HDTV are 720p (720 lines in progressive scan) or 1080i (1,080 lines shown interlaced). HDTV's golden ticket is 1080p, that is, super duper resolution with every line showing in sequence, but few TVs can hack that kind of high speed graphics-intensive performance.

HOW DOES HDTV BROADCASTING APPLY TO TV SETS?
First, there's HD-ready. This means that the TV can handle HD-quality video coming in from a separate satellite, cable or antenna-based HD tuner. Look for 720p/1080i compatibility, meaning the TV recognizes the video coming in, and then "upconverts" or "downconverts" it to the screen resolution. Again, think of a computer monitor — when you look at a video clip or even a still picture in full-screen mode, your computer has merely optimized that image to fit.

The upconverter is a smart processor that also amps up lower-quality video, say standard analog cable or even DVD content. These often have a picture expander that takes the 4:3 aspect ratio of standard TV and stretches it or zooms and crops the image to fit the wide-format HDTV screen. Just be warned that a clearer nicer picture of low quality video has a tendency to show just how bad the video really is; to borrow the overused phrase: "Garbage in, garbage out."

HOW DOES VIDEO GET INTO THE TV?

You may have taken the time to learn the standard analog inputs, from the cable-style coaxial plug (also known as RF) and the yellow composite-video "RCA" plug to the newer S-Video and component video cables needed for best picture on good DVD players. Those will still come in handy, but there are others in your future.

Already popular among computer monitors, the DVI (Digital Visual Interface) jack is the first of the digital inputs to make it big in TV land. More often these days, DVI jacks support "High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection." Don't worry about what all of that means, just be sure your next TV has it, or you might miss out on some of Hollywood's better material. Also look out for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It's a format that hasn't yet gained momentum, but has great potential, since it carries digital audio as well as HD video.

Where there's HD, there's FireWire. Another favorite from the computer industry, it's used to link various HD products together. For example, if you were to receive HD from a standalone tuner, record it with JVC's D-VHS recorder and then watch it on your HDTV, you'd get the purest path using FireWire cables.

WHAT ABOUT HD TUNERS?
Oddly enough, tuners are the trickiest part of the whole HDTV issue. You may know that there are laws about TVs having to replace standard analog tuners with digital ones. But it has probably also occurred to you that TV freaks use their cable box, TiVo, VCR and DVD player to decide what to watch, while the TV itself is basically a monitor. My TV is tuned to snow, since everything I watch comes through the A/V inputs. So here's the deal: for now, save money and buy a TV without an integrated tuner. You can always buy one separately, but the greatest odds are that you'll rent a specially programmed one from your cable provider.

Some TV makers are working on partnerships with the cable companies and cable-box makers, so that instead of having a physical box on top of the set, you would slide a little computer card into the TV to access your cable company's scrambled content. It's a great plan and I hope it works, but for now, you'll take whatever black box they give you.