December 5th, 2006: I just bought a cheap HDTV from TigerDirect.com.
It's a Konka DLC-3211UT, a 32″ LCD unit with analog (NTSC) and digital (ATSC) tuners. Input ports are: HDMI, VGA, two Component video, a Composite/S-Video video and an Ethernet (for firmware upgrades only). Well, it works!
The remote control is a bit shoddy but the picture looks good (other than I have to balance the colors).
I didn't realize that there where so many digital TV channels being broadcast over the air. All the local stations have at least one digital channel, most had two or three. One local independent TV station has five digital channels. We have two PBS stations and combined there are five digital PBS channels. Most of the extra digital channels are used for extra programming: weather, music videos, foreign language. Several digital channels are 720p or 1080i and with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The rest are plain old 480i.
My satellite receiver (a Dish Network PVR721) doesn't do HD but I will upgrade it some time next year. I relocated the satellite receiver upstairs and connected it to the HDTV with S-Video.
I'll have to test my DVD players to see if the HDTV will up-convert them to 720p. They aren't “progressive” players so I may only get 480p.
The HDTV defaults to a 16:9 aspect ratio so I have to manually set it to “auto” aspect ratio. This means I can zoom a 4:3 letter boxed video to look 16:9. A 4:3 image normally “looks” like a 25″ (diagonal) picture.
I need to add a Cat-5 drop to get the POTS line to the satellite receiver and add an Ethernet connection for various things.
January 2007: I tested the XBox Live Marketplace HD video rental with my XBox 360. First I rented Superman Returns in HD (720p). Cost was 480 Microsoft Points or $6.00 (USD). File size was 7 GB and time to download was over fourteen hours. I started around 10:00 PM and it ran over-night until the connection was lost around 7:00 AM. Then the XBox 360 shut itself off. I noticed around 9:00 AM, restarted the XBox and restarted the download. It picked up where it let off and then finished after 2:00 PM.
Then I rented Ant Bully in HD (720p). Cost also was 480 Points. File size was 4 GB and time to download was about two hours. I did this download on a Sunday afternoon during a football game.
The quality of the HD playback was quite good and I didn't notice any glitches. You have a limited amount of time to view the movies. Up to 14 days to start watching the movies after downloading. Once you start viewing, you have 24 hours to finish.
Conclusion: Renting HD movies may be practical provided the download time is reasonable. I suspect that XBox Live caps download rates when the system is busy with lots of customers. Such a cap policy makes the time to download a movie unpredictable which would require you to plan movie viewing ahead of time.
February 15, 2007: I picked up a three-meter DMI to HDMI cable from TigerDirect for about $25 to test my MacBook with the Konka HDTV.
I was able to mirror the MacBook desktop to the HDTV but some of the top and bottom were cut off. The MacBook screen is 1280×768 but the Konka could only do 1280×720. Best results were obtained when I turned off mirroring and used the Konka as a separate desktop. I could drag an application window from the MacBook to the Konka and use it there.
I was able to select 1920×1080 Interlaced (1080i) for the Konka but the desktop was pretty much unreadable.
I also tested VGA between the MacBook and Konka and the best resolution I could get on the Konka was 1280×768 at 75 Hz.
March 22, 2007: I received my Apple TV today. I connected it to my HDTV via HDMI and to my network via wired ethernet. I synced it with the iTunes on my Mac Mini desktop. I started moving video podcasts from Democracy to iTunes so I could easily view them in the living room. It seems to work just fine.
April 3rd, 2007: I upgraded my old Dish Network system (Dish 500 antenna and PVR721 receiver) to HD. The upgrade included a new Dish 1000 antenna that can see three satellite slots and a ViP622 receiver/DVR. I connected the 622 to the HDTV via HDMI; moved the Apple TV to Component Video 2 and moved the plain old DVD player to S-Video. I'll use the Composite Video input to plug in a guest device (e.g. my old VCR).
