HDTV comes home

Not quite two years ago, my wife and I were in the market for a new television. We were replacing an aging 27” and knew we wanted to move up in both size and quality. I have had a killer audio system for years, including an Onkyo THX Certified home theatre amplifier running five Paradigm speakers plus the 15” powered subwoofer. So the audio has blown away the picture for years. It was almost sad, how good my theater setup sounded, and here is this lame little 27” seven year old television right in the middle of it. Kind of like having a Hemi powering a Chevette.

So the time came for us to buy a new television, and I had only two requirements: it had to be 36” or larger, and it had to be HDTV compatible. The later the most important.

We tried a rear-projection HDTV first, and the picture was simply awful. There were a handful of flat plasma televisions out at the time, but none under $10,000, and for that sort of money I expect that if I miss a show, the actors will actually come to my house and act the show out for me.

We settled on a nice 36” HDTV from Samsung. It had come down to a Sony model and the Samsung. I was simply more impressed with the picture quality of the Samsung, so I passed on the Sony. Good decision? I can’t say. It is hard to call a Sony a bad buy, but price vs. performance, the Samsung beat it hands down.

Getting the 100LBs-plus television home was quite an adventure. To fit it in my car, we actually had to take it out of the box at the store, and squeeze it into my backseat. It fit, barely, and I got it home and connected it to our digital cable box. While the picture quality was very good, I would everyday dream when my cable company (Comcast) would offer HDTV in my area.

That day came this week. While browsing the Internet one day early last week, I came across an article talking about the new Motorola 6412 TiVO-like DVR and HD receiver. Sharp looking box, I thought. Dual tuners, even! And better yet, it looked like it was my cable company, Comcast, is using them. A quick call and it turns out that HDTV is now in my area, and that adding the HD / DVR box will only set me back $9.99 a month extra. Sign me up!

They installed the box on Monday. Since then, I have been in HD heaven. I have seen, many times, HDTV in action. But seeing it in a store or a friend’s house is very different from seeing it in your own living room. The picture quality is simply amazing. As is the Motorola 6412 itself. The onscreen Comcast menus and navigation is very well done, though not perfect. The DVR functionality is top rate, as the Moto sports a 120GB HD, allowing plenty of recording room, even in HD content.

HDTV has given my two-year-old Samsung television a new lease on life. I had grown complacent in its capabilities until I saw what it could do with an HDTV signal. Wow.

Now, if only the quality of television shows could equal the quality of my television picture, I would be one happy camper.