Okay. They're still about 5-10x more expensive than a TV should be IMO.
Whether you consider that worth paying is up to you.
> But I'm a little confused. What's the deal with the HDTV
> Television...where some of them sport a 'built in TV Tuner' and others
> just say HDTV Ready?
The "tuner" is what picks up and decodes the tv network signals from the
air. All the regular analog TVs have had the tuners built in. It's easy and
convenient.
An "HDTV Ready" TV has everything except the ability to pick up the signal,
so that will need an external tuner box.
> Does it mean if I connect a DVD player and an Xbox to the television I
> need another seperate 'tuner' component in order to get the improved
> sharp image quality?
The tuner only deals with the signal from the tv station. A dvd player or
xbox connect using whatever connections the TV supports. You'll want to look
at component video cables for that.
In order of quality from lowest to highest, the types of cables that you
typically connect to a TV:
75ohm coax (What your cable TV comes in as and what old VCRs used.)
RCA style composite (The yellow for video that complements the red/white
left/right audio)
S-Video
Component (This uses 3 cables for the video)
DVI
By the way, DVDs aren't HD. They'll look better on an hdtv though than on a
standard analog tv. Also make sure you use a progressive scan dvd player for
best quality.
> What about my regular cable signal? Will I need the tuner to get
> benefits from that?
Depends on if there is a tuner built in and if it's cable tv ready.
Generally, you'll just use an external cable box and connect it using one of
the available cable types listed above. For instance, my cable box only has
coax and composite.
The quality of cable tv on a big hdtv may not be to your liking. I'm not
sure about how things are in TT, but most cable companies, even those with
digital cable, still use analog for the majority of the lower channels.
Displaying this on a big hdtv means that the image will be "upconverted" to
the HD resolution, but it won't be true HD. Even if your cable company
offers HD on their cable, you may not really get it unless you can connect
the cable tuner with component cables.
Another thing to consider is that digital cable is completely different than
digital broadcast. Almost no HDTV on the market will tune digital cable,
even if it has a built in tuner. It will only pick up the over the air
digital signal.
In the US, Congress and manufacturers just recently agreed on a "plug and
play" digital tv standard and HDTV tuners in 2004 will start including this
capability. If TT follows these standards, look for QAM tuning.
> Or is the TUner only to allow the TV to interpret new digital HDTV cable
> streams?
As I said, the tuner currently only picks up over the air signals, not
digital cable. The US standard for DTV is ATSC. I don't know if TT uses that
or not. Philip mentioned the 4 common HD signal types. There are actually 18
by ATSC standards, but the ones Philip mentioned are what you care about for
HD.
You didn't ask about satellite, but that's another option for both digital
and HD signals. Again, it requires an external box.
Personally, the HDTVs are still too expensive. Especially since they can't
(yet) tune digital cable and I don't watch any network TV.
-Kevin
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