To me, an old-fashioned guy, seeing two widescreen
LCD HDTVs playing side-by-side, one on 720P or 480i, and the other in 1080i or p, i am sorry but i cannot perceive the difference. most if not all widescreen big screens sold here are
LCD and have horrific black levels even today, and pardon me if i offend, but i still see my 25" Magnavox console as a really big screen; maybe it's my small home but it's a BIG screen to me. sit even closer and it's even bigger. in
DTV mode it has a much nicer picture, even if it is SD, it actually looks better with the nicer black levels and no light glare than a 1080p
HD signal. the big disadvantage of HDTVs is they must downconvert to 480i or 720p if the channel isn't broadcasting any better and they are TERRIBLE when they're running in any resolution lower than 1080i. that's the only perceivable diff between my Magnavox Console and a
HDTV. the fact my TV looks great on every channel, DVD-quality, yet the
HDTV looks like crap in about 1/2 the channels in my lineup.
If your converter box doesn't have a
HDMI output, forget even thinking about buying an
HDTV. if they are crappy looking in lower resolution
HD inputs, you don't want to see how awful the RF-Coax input looks in 480i only.
My confusion is that my TVs are regular old 480i TVs, yet any channel in 480i mode (standard def) has the black bars or even so much as a scaled down portion with a black border around the entire picture. yet the
HD broadcasts convert to SD fine and display in full-screen. what gives? i thought it was the other way around? i cannot zoom in on 480i channels and have to be forced to view a smaller picture anyways. does anyone know of a converter that can zoom it full-screen regardless of the channel's aspect ratio?
