High Definition Blog

Well to be brutally truthful the plasmas will have a great deal of glare. Here are a couple of photos of my S1 Panasonic to explain it better:

That is me sitting on my couch and the light in the room is supplied by a full length door window to the left of my entertainment center. There is not enough light in the room to read by.

Just to show the screen with a dark scene picture on it as you can see the glare is still very noticeable. Now on sports programming where the screen is brightly lit, there is no noticeable glare at all.

Now light walls won’t necessarily be bothersome unless in the reflections there is a dark contrasting area as well such as the picture frames in the above examples. That’s when it gets objectionable for me. If the reflection was just a white wall, it would only deteriorate the super black levels, but not cause you to be seeing something in the reflection. It may be possible for you to tilt a reflective TV where it looks good during the brightly lit times, but still have the superior blacks and picture in the dark. Here is an example of a G20 with a couple of bright reflections to illustrate the issue of the problem with contrasting reflections. Those bright areas would show up in any dark scene just as they do with a totally black screen.

Thanks to soderholmd for the above photo who posted it on highdefforum.com of his G20.

Now going to an LCD is not necessarily going to get you a glare free screen because most of the brands have a reflective screen these days. My daughter has a Sharp LED backlit LCD and it has about the same glare as my Panny plasma. You have to shop around for a glare free HDTV that also has a good picture.

So if you are going to watch in a brightly lit room you can expect some glare. On the other hand in the dark you can not beat the picture of a plasma with any LCD.

While moderating one of my forums last week someone ask me about the ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player. I was not familiar with it so I went digging. After reading about it, I was convinced this was a player I should have so I ordered one. Man it was all that and a bag of chips…

Read my report on this unit here:
ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player

For those people, such as me, who would like their Media Center PCs to have an application where they could work as a set top box with U-verse, the idea has moved one step closer to a possibility.

Announced at CES 2010 was the tremendous news that later this year X-Box owners will be able to use their consoles as a set top box for U-verse!

Here is the engadget story:

Xbox 360 will support AT&T’s U-Verse TV later this year

I have updated the page to reflect the new software version. The update is at the bottom of the page.

See: Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR Video Capture device

EngadgetHD is reporting a new card will be available for your Media Center PC without needing to get it within a bundled package.  This means you can “roll your own” and be able to get all scrambled cable channels by renting a cable card from your cable company.

See: Media Center CableCARDs freed from OEM requirement//

Ever noticed this seems to be Format War II? People post inquiries on forums about LCD sets and within minutes they get a reply suggesting the poster should get a plasmas instead. Then the threads are deluged with posts about why plasma is superior to LCDs. They quote how misleading statements and facts have tainted the plasmas. LCD proponents don’t seem to jump on plasma inquiries in the same manner. Maybe since LCDs are selling so well they don’t feel they have to proselytize like plasma proponents do.

For the complete story click here: Plasma vs LCD - The Next Format War?

Well the long awaited date has come and gone for the analog cutoff. I woke up this morning to find, as expected, my ATSC tuner saying “NO SIGNAL” because not only did the analog go away for the station I was tuned to, but because that particular station reverted their digital frequency to their prior analog frequency.

That is the reason everyone is saying to rescan your channels on your ATSC tuner.

So I did just that and to my surprise I have several new digital stations and several analog stations still broadcasting! One of the analog channels is our Houston NBC affiliate that chose to keep their digital UHF channel rather than revert back to channel 2. Thanks to PSIP information it really was not necessary as I still punch up channel 2 even though they actually broadcast on channel 35.

Channel 2 analog though is still broadcasting! It is running a continuous loop of information about converting to a ATSC tuner with a crawl that says you will need to do something to keep receiving TV signals. I don’t know how long they are going to keep this up, but it seems like a good service for those that ignored, perhaps through ignorance, the cutoff.

Also, there were several other analog channels still operational. None are major stations and I don’t know how long they will still be operating as analog. A bit interesting since I thought analog would be history.

Warner Brothers has a new service that allows people with WB HD DVDs to turn them into Blu-ray discs for a nominal fee.  Costing just $4.95 plus shipping could be a deal for many.  You keep your HD DVD discs, just send in the original cover art.  A color copy could be made for your HD DVD case if you want to keep the disc case looking original.

For details click the banner above.