Couple of months ago I convinced myself and my wife that we should upgrade from our eight-year old trusty Sony KP-53HS10 Rear Projection HDTV to a sleek new flat-panel. Usually I am an early adopter of new technology, often jumping in much before it becomes mainstream. In this case the Sony was performing very well and we were quite happy with over the air free HDTV via our Media Center PC to satisfy our entertainment needs.
After a remodel of kitchen and family room late last year, the rather large rear projection TV was starting to look out of place. I had already migrated from my Media Center PC to an Apple TV and had my eye on a Dish Network service with exclusive HDTV programming.
Time to jump in!
But what do I buy? I had to come up to speed on the state of technology. LCD or Plasma – which is better? More importantly which one is better for my content/viewing habits? What resolution? 720p or 1080i or 1080p? Does it make a difference in my situation? What kind of connectivity features should I be looking for based on my input sources? Which TVs accept signals from my Mac Mini without any tweaking? Do I need a dedicated VGA port or would HDMI suffice? What about Screen Size? What about all the windows in my family room? Will the glare spoil my viewing experience during daytime?
Through quite a bit of research online and a bit of help from my network of trusted friends, I found answers to all of my questions and narrowed in on a few options. In the end I picked up a 50 Inch Panasonic Plasma Model TH-50PZ77U that satisfied a majority of my criteria.
So far we are having a ball watching movies, sports, and National Geographic in HD. I fire up Hulu on the Mac Mini to catch up on shows we did not bother to record on the DVR. When there are guests, we enjoy watching Youtube on Apple TV even though the quality of the videos does absolutely no justice to the TV’s capabilities 
Since my purchase, I have influenced a few of my friends with their purchase of an HDTV. Some of them bought a different model as their needs were a little different. Nonetheless, my input based on my research and experience were valuable in making their own decisions.
How does all of this relate to bHive Software? Stay tuned.
Filed under: Consumer | Tagged: Flat Panel, HDTV, Panasonic, Sony
[...] a follow up Posted on July 18, 2008 by Jambajaar Continuing from where shyamster left off (see previous post), I am addressing the same “digital home entertainment” problem looking at different [...]