How To Buy a New TV

Most hard-core tech enthusiasts would say quality was most important, then size, then price. But I live in the real world: price, size, quality.

Price
So let's start with price. If you want a good size/quality TV that will last for 8-10 years, I think you can spend 2,500 to 3,500 bucks. Sure you can spend more, but that's what I would spend right now for a 10-year TV.  Be sure to think about digital. By 2009, all television broadcasts will be in digital. You will want high definition, we'll talk more about quality later, but DON'T BUY AN ANALOG TV, even if you can get a 174-inch set for $2,500 (you can't).

If you need to pay less than $2,500, here are a few ideas:

Get a starter TV:
If you are a student and expect your income to grow, buy a smaller, high-quality LCD that you can use later in life on the kitchen counter or in your bedroom.

Combine tasks:
Buy a bigger an LCD monitor that you can use as both a TV set and a monitor for your computer. You may have to make the couch your home office, but you save a few bucks on the computer side of things and you can get a slightly bigger monitor. (Make sure it has inputs for all your TV and computer needs.)

Buy a High Definition CRT:
CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) are the traditional "Tube" TVs. These are the big boxes we've used as televisions for the last 50 years. Flat screens are sexy, but CRTs are cheaper and have a great picture. You can get an HD CRT set that can handle the new digital signals. They may be bulky, but they have advantages over the flat screens: they have very deep blacks. Many people are wowed by the brightness of LCD monitors when they are all lined up in electronics stores, but the true measure of a good set in your home is how well it displays the darkness of TV images. If the blacks aren't deep, a dark night scene turns into a patchy gray scene. A bottomless well looks more like a hole in the ground with some dirty water.

Size
In May of 2006, $2,500 buys you a 32- to 37-inch LCD TV or a 42-inch plasma TV. 

If you have a small room, 32 inches may be perfect. There are lots of mathematical equations that try to estimate how big the screen should be: measure the distance from the couch to the screen, it should be three times the diagonal size of your screen.

I don't buy those algorithms. I watch sports, I want the TV images to be lifesize.

However, if you have it too big and you sit too close, you notice all the imperfections and—considering how much you shelled out for the TV—that could bug you.

Then there's the wife; she doesn't want the TV to "take over the living-room." Forgive the stereotype; I'm a woman and an exception to the "take over the living-room" generalization, but a lot of couples battle over the size of the screen.

So here's the way to figure this out before you go to the electronics store. Choose three sizes of TV screen you could buy: 32-inch, 42-inch, and 50-inch. Cut out three pieces of cardboard to correspond with those sizes. Tape or lean them in the prospective TV location.  Go sit on the couch. Is it too big? Too small? Do you want it on the wall, on a stand, on the ceiling? Let the cardboard be your guide, then go buy the set.

Quality
HDTV is THE buzzword in the TV industry right now. But lots of people are confused, according to some estimates 50 percent of people who think they are watching an HD signal on an HDTV are just watching a regular old analog signal.  So let's try to explain the basics.    

Television networks and stations transmit high definition broadcast signals to make the picture richer, brighter, deeper, and more clearly defined. True High-Def is a thing of beauty (unless you make your living appearing on TV—then it's terrifying).

To get an HDTV signal you need to have a television capable of displaying an HDTV image, an HD tuner to process that signal, and a receiver to acquire the signal from its source.  

You can buy a television with the Tuner built in, but I don't recommend it.

Why? Because about 85 percent of Americans get their TV signals form the cable company or a satellite TV provider. If you are going to subscribe to the HDTV package from your provider, they'll give you an HD tuner for free or for a relatively low cost.

If you are going to upgrade your TV service to an HD signal, the cable or satellite company needs to give you a special box to receive and process the signal. You only need an "HD-ready" TV to watch that processed signal in high definition. HD-ready or HD capable TVs are a lot cheaper than the TVs with the tuner built in. Don't pay thousands more for a built in tuner you will never use.

So if you've watched Episode one of Hook Me Up, you saw Stephanie's transition: the owner of a 27-year-old cruddy CRT TV is now the owner of a brand spankin' new LCD TV. She had one of our techs there to help her, but armed with the advice in this blog entry and access to all of Yahoo Tech's TV reviews, you too can become a transformed television owner.