Tips on buying a digital TV

By Asher Moses on 31 March 2006

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Features that matter

Size considerations
While it's tempting to buy the largest screen your bank account can afford, you should avoid purchasing a unit that's too large or too small for your room.

Generally, 24-inch and smaller models are ideal for bedrooms, but too small for the main room. The sweet spot for living areas is currently around 42-inches due to recent price drops and improvements in technology.

Nearly every TV sold these days is a wide-screen HDTV, so the chart below only applies to those sets. If you have a regular TV that's not wide screen, the rule of thumb is that you should sit no closer than twice the diagonal measurement in inches. Wide-screen televisions showing high-resolution DVD and HDTV look better than regular sets, allowing you to sit closer and experience a more immersive, cinema-like picture.

If you purchase a 16:9 television and are mainly watching DVDs and digital TV, sitting between 1.5 to 3 times the screen size is optimal. Of course, screens are sold in inches whereas most of us can more easily relate to distances in metres. So don't worry, we've done the conversion work for you.

16:9 TV diagonal screen size
(in inches)
Min. viewing distance
(in metres)
Max. viewing distance
(in metres)
26 1.0 1.98
30 1.16 2.32
34 1.31 2.59
42 1.62 3.2
47 1.8 3.6
50 1.92 3.81
55 2.1 3.9
60 2.29 4.57
65 2.47 4.94



HD-Ready vs. HDTV

A easy mistake to make is to assume that HD-Ready and HDTV are interchangeable terms. They're not. Put simply, HD-Ready only ensures that the display itself is capable of outputting high-definition signals. Yet that doesn't mean that it includes an integrated tuner capable of receiving such signals. In most cases HD-Ready TVs are only equipped with an analog tuner (if anything), and a good example of such a TV is the ViewSonic N4060W.

Bundling an analog tuner with an HD-Ready display virtually eliminates the advantages of upgrading in the first place, as you're still getting analog-quality TV signals. In fact, the quality may even be worse, as the TV is forced to upscale the analog signal to fit the native resolution of the display.

The bottom line is if you decide to purchase an HD-Ready display, make sure you couple it with a HDTV digital set-top box. Alternatively, you could also look for a fully integrated HDTV that has the appropriate tuner built in. One such offering is the LG DT-42PY10X.

MORE RESOURCES
CNET.com.au Related Articles Broadcasters and Official Bodies

Topics: digital, epg, hd-ready, plasma, widescreen, hdtv, hd, lcd, tv, tips, warranty

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Comments (2)

  • bleh commented on 11/04/2006 21:57 Report abuse

    sadly a HDTV IS required in order to experience the xbox 360 PROPERLY.... the resolution can be (depending on the games)heavily squashed on an SDTV.

  • Gregan Curteis commented on 03/04/2006 10:29 Report abuse

    I think you should include advice such that no current televisions digital or otherwise will support connections for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD for HD content yet. As many computer users are aware, they'll be forcing us to upgrade all of our hardware if we want to watch a High-Definition version of any HD-DVD or Blu-ray, else the image will be a scaled down version (I've heard mention of 640x480 res?), all due to copy-protection restrictions. Also worth mentioning is that Foxtel digital doesn't support High-Definition, so if you're a Foxtel cusotmer there's little reason to upgrade to a HD-TV at this time. My advice to people would be either stick with their analogue sets for now, or if they *need* to buy a tv, to buy a cheapish (less than $1000) widescreen SD-TV and use either Foxtel digital or a SDTV set top box. At least then they'll be enjoying good picture and audio quality in widescreen. It'll be years yet before 1080i content will be widely available on free-to-air, and it's yet to be seen whether Foxtel will offer HD content at all. And the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD standards war is a good war to stay out of unless you wanna risk being on the losing side. Also if the regulations change and they allow multichannelling on free-to-air then there'll be no HD content whatsoever - you'll be buying your HDTV prematurely as it won't be displaying HD content free-to-air and won't have the copy-protected connections for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Xbox 360 in HD can't be THAT good by itself... Best to stick to SD for now and save your money until everything HD is worked out. I'd stay out of the game for the next 5 years at least.

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