[opendtv] News: See the Big Picture? Don't Forget to Examine the Fine Print
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 11:52:02 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/business/yourmoney/02screen.html?th
May 2, 2004
SPENDING
See the Big Picture? Don't Forget to Examine the Fine Print
By MATT RICHTEL
AMERICAN manhood is at a serious crossroads.
Said manhood - that quality that causes mostly normal people to make
impulse purchases in the electrical tape aisle of Home Depot - now
faces an epic consumer dilemma: whether or not to run out immediately
and buy a high-definition, flat-panel television. Or, put another
way, is it wiser to spend what could be more than $5,000 on a
technology with major kinks, or to wait a year or so, and risk not
just falling behind the Joneses, but allowing the Joneses to invite
everyone over to their house to watch the National Basketball
Association playoffs?
When it comes to technology, consumers often must decide between
buying when something is new and cool, or waiting a year or two until
the engineers turn the schematics right side up and make the gadget
actually work to its full potential.
But the stakes have been raised with flat-panel televisions, which
are flooding the market and dominating the Sunday newspaper
advertising pullouts. The new televisions are expensive: at $3,000 to
$9,000, the flat-panel models are not priced like your grandfather's
television, or even his car.
Plus, these flat-panel sets - which come in two main technological
versions, liquid crystal display and plasma - have a dirty little
secret. In certain respects, both are inferior to the fatter, far
less expensive, soon-to-be-orphaned televisions that dominate the
family rooms of America.
In fact, they are inferior in perhaps the most critical respect of
all - for most of the shows that are being broadcast today, they
deliver a smaller picture than advertised and one that can be fuzzier
than the picture displayed by older models.
That is because the new televisions are engineered primarily to show
high-definition programs, which are shot in a digital format. But
most television shows are still shot and delivered in an analog
format, and such images can seem distorted and out of focus on
flat-panel models, particularly when the image is shown in the
wide-screen format.
Based on that factor alone, diving into the flat-panel market now
would seem grossly unwise, like buying a great-looking car with
shoddy brakes, or trading in an 18-inch, all-meat hero sandwich for
something smaller in a pita with a side salad. Sad, really.
Still, several factors highly recommend the new technology. The
televisions are sleek and space-saving - some are a mere four inches
thick (compared to nearly two feet for many of the old sets). And for
DVD movies and those shows that are shot digitally - including a
growing number of the most popular network television shows - the
image quality is spectacular, like having an Imax theater in the den.
Then there is the intangible - the salivation factor.
"I come here to drool," said Dave Whitman, 30. Mr. Whitman, a
computer system administrator, stood in a Best Buy store in downtown
San Francisco recently, staring at a 50-inch Pioneer high-definition
television like Homer Simpson eyeing a jelly doughnut. Mr. Whitman
cannot afford to buy yet.
The flat-panel television seems to have captured the imaginations of
many, but most of all the American man. To test this theory, stand at
a cocktail party and whisper softly, "I just bought a flat-panel TV,"
and watch as admirers form a circle of testosterone and demand
details.
Lars E. Perner, an assistant professor of marketing at San Diego
State University and a specialist in consumer behavior, said the new
televisions appeared to appeal to people who like sports, which can
be transfixing on the big screen, and to people who love to consider,
discuss and ruminate over such things as pixels, display ratios and
other technical minutiae.
"There are so many variables to talk about, so many technical
specifications - like how many inches it is," Mr. Perner said.
Calling Dr. Freud. We've got a code blue.
Here are a few questions to ask when balancing your rational consumer
side with the part of you that, at the behest of friends, once drank
a 12-pack of beer, then ran circles around the university quad in
boxer shorts, and found the experience pretty darn rewarding.
What's the viewing size? The size of a television screen is measured
on the diagonal. The default image on a flat-panel television is wide
screen, which shows the image on a width-to-height ratio of 16 to 9.
In technical terms, this is known as an aspect ratio.
But you may want to reduce the image size when watching regular
(analog) television signals. They are best displayed in an aspect
ratio of four to three, which means you must reduce the size of the
viewable image considerably from the wide-screen format.
For instance, a 30-inch screen becomes a roughly 23-inch screen when
the image is put at a size that works best for analog programming.
How do analog images look? Electronics stores are masters at putting
a flat-panel television in its most flattering light. They fill walls
of flat-panel televisions with vibrant high-definition images of
sporting events, the movie "Finding Nemo," or nature shows so vivid
it seems you can reach out and touch the Serengeti. For whatever
reason, electronics stores are obsessed with displaying nature shows.
Do not be fooled. Objects in the Serengeti may be less clear in your
family room than they appear in the store. Ask the sales clerk to
switch to an analog show. Make sure that it does not look too
distorted on the wide screen, or too fuzzy in the smaller format.
At the Best Buy in San Francisco, a salesman who, citing corporate
policy, asked not to be named, confessed that analog images had a
tendency to be less than clear.
A Circuit City outlet in San Francisco was not even set up to show
analog images. A salesman asserted that the only available feeds were
for high-definition shows.
What is the TV's life span? Plasma televisions have a drawback known
as burn-in. That means that static images can, over time, burn an
image onto the screen. This is a particular problem if users often
reduce the screen to a ratio of four to three to watch analog shows.
Eventually, black bars appear on the screen's edges.
Also, the pixels that make up the images on a plasma screen dissipate
over time. Estimates vary widely about how long a plasma screen can
last, from 10,000 to 30,000 viewing hours. The liquid crystal display
televisions are thought to have a longer life span, perhaps as much
as 75,000 hours. They also do not have the problem of burn-in.
What do you like to watch? Traditional broadcast networks, like CBS
and ABC, are making a growing number of shows available in the
digital format. Cable offers fewer high-definition signals, but there
are some good ones, including programming from HBO, Showtime and
ESPN. Over all, it is worth checking how many high-definition
channels are available, whether from cable and satellite providers or
the free public airwaves.
How about hidden costs? There are considerations that go along with
buying a flat-panel television, such as buying a
several-hundred-dollar stand to put it on. If you want the set
mounted on the wall, installation can cost more than $500. Also,
depending on what kind of set you buy, you will probably need to pay
for a receiver to deliver the high-definition signal to your
television. The cost varies among television-service providers.
Do you really want to read any more admonitions? Of course not.
Buying a flat-panel television is not an entirely a rational
decision. You don't want pointers. You want to buy something awesome.
You are the man! So do it. Get out there. And remember, before you go
to the store, drink a 12-pack of beer, strip down to your boxer
shorts and start running in circles.
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