Switching from a 4:3 CRT to 16:9 LCD TV? ˑ
With a combination of impulse, cost-sharing and pent-up demand, my parents ended up buying a 32" LCD TV. They've got it up on their wall and are very happy with the way it looks, not to mention the big step up in screen size from the old 21" CRT.
Apart from the form factor, though, the pros don't go too far. This is a short note of issues or things to keep in mind before switching from a 4:3 CRT to a 1080p wide-screen TV. I don't know about you, but I'm going to use it for reference.
Apart from the form factor, though, the pros don't go too far. This is a short note of issues or things to keep in mind before switching from a 4:3 CRT to a 1080p wide-screen TV. I don't know about you, but I'm going to use it for reference.
- Content Quality: If you spend most of your time watching the regular cable/DTH TV content, you're in for distress. When you switch from a small TV to a large one, you'll suddenly notice how pathetic the recording and transmission quality of TV content in India really is. The difference you notice would depend on the specific content supplier, channel and even the programme. The best I've seen is Airtel's pay-per-view movies, which are "DVD Quality", as advertised. The worst are among the most frequently viewed channels -- stupid saas-bahu soaps and music channels.
- Content Aspect: This is partly tied to the first one but I'm putting it as a separate item, mostly because #1 is about differences in screen size (vertical size, actually; see #6) and wouldn't be a big issue if that doesn't change appreciably. This point is about showing 4:3 content on 16:9 screens. None of the DTH/Cable operators in India are offering HD content as of today. Scaling the 4:3 stuff is mostly a PITA, but these days having a 4:3 set isn't all fun either. I wonder if you've noticed, but you often get unboxed 16:9 content on cable, making it look vertically stretched. Then there are those junky Moser Baer Bolly-movie DVDs that letterbox a wide-format movie into a 4:3 signal. How I hate those bastards for doing this. You can't play those DVDs on your 16:9 TVs without losing resolution and/or watching a shrunk 16:9 video boxed in a 4:3 boxed in a 16:9. You wanna know what it looks like? This, minus the outer-most 4:3 boxing. I thank the dedicated aspect switch button on my Sony HD-CRT's remote because I can't tolerate screwed up aspect ratios anywhere, ever.
- Cabling: How many LCD TV ads have you seen where they show the TV hung on a wall? Almost all of them, yeah? How many of them show the cabling? With just two external components -- cable/DTH TV and a DVD player, you get a messy tangle to handle. Most cables are also not long enough to have all the hardware placed in a corner. The result is that you invariably need some sort of trolley under your TV, even if it's up on a wall. My plan is to get a 5.1/7.1 Amp with HDMI multiplexing so that I can connect my peripherals (game console, DVD Hi-fi, Blu-Ray, DTH, PC) to the amp and have just one cable going into the wall-mounted TV -- a 5 meter HDMI. Oh shoot, I forgot about the power supply cable :-| Why didn't they build a power line into the HDMI spec itself?
- Sound Format: Talking about amps, I realised that playing DVDs or other media with 5.1 channel sound on a stereo system is bad juju. This may be specific to Sony DVD players, but the voice channel gets severely choked during the conversion from 5.1 to stereo. If you have a movie DVD that gives you the option to choose between 5.1 and 2.1 channel outputs, you should try them both and see the difference in voice loudness between the two. It's dramatic.
- Peripherals: This note is about integration with the rest of your A/V components. Once you've got an HD panel, you'd want to view everything on it -- youtube videos, DVDs, photo slide-shows, and clips from the new-fangled HD video capable DSLRs and AVHCD capable digicams. Heck, if I get sufficient colour fidelity, I'd even edit my photos on that panel! IMO, not having a PC connected to your HD panel would make you miss out on a huge potential. If I have to choose between hooking up a PC with an HD LCD vs. hooking up DTH/cable with it, I'd choose the former. The good ol' 4:3 CRT is is as good as the more expensive LCDs for watching "TV".
- Sizing: Sizing is another issue when moving from a 4:3 TV to a 16:9 TV. If the aspect ratio wasn't changed, you could just compare the diagonals and say that, e.g. a 28" TV has twice as long edges and 4x as much area as a 14" TV (remember those li'l bachelor-pad fillers?). This doesn't apply when comparing a 21" 4:3 TV with a 25" 16:9 TV. The latter is actually smaller, at least where "TV" content is concerned. Since content resolution is measured in number of lines in the vertical (e.g. 480p, 720p, 1080p, etc.) irrespective of aspect ratio, I find it more instructive to compare the vertical edges. By that measure, a 21" 4:3 screen is as tall as a 26" wide screen. The ratio you need is 1.224. If you are a movie buff, you might want to consider the anamorphic wide-screen ratio of 2.35:1 The height equivalence for that will be at 1.53x. If I want to upgrade my 29" TV and watch DVD/Blu-Ray movies at essentially the same vertical size as the ones I watch on HBO, I'd have to get a 46" LCD TV.