On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and a 13", and they have beautiful pictures. I don't want to go any bigger than this. I sit right next to my 13" (I can reach out and touch it right now), so anything bigger would just be overwhelming. I guess I physically could go bigger than the 19 inch, since there's plenty of room where that one is, but meh.
I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.
Something that I found really interesting is even on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite. I decided to turn off my cable last December (paying $55 / month to watch CBS, PBS and USA just isn't remotely worth it, and they wanted to raise prices again. I can get CBS+PBS off the air, and for the money I was throwing at the cable company, I could buy every dvd the usa network puts out and still come out ahead!). Anyway, after turning it off, I got one of those digital tv converter boxes and hooked up my old antenna to it. And the picture was actually really good. PBS on cable, including the HD channel, was a little fuzzy in comparison. I never noticed it before, but for the brief time that I had both, I could switch between cable and antenna and see a clear difference. The air version was a lot better. Tried CBS... same deal. Better picture on broadcast, even through my old tvs. I tried it at a friend's house too, on their hdtv with satellite. The satellite picture for PBS looked outright *bad* on their big television. But the broadcast one was beautiful. Big difference on the computer generated shows (Dinosaur Train especially). While I miss the USA network, I don't miss cable. I have a better picture and a much smaller bill over the air. And best of all, not having USA to fall back to, I got a new appreciation for some old shows on channels I wouldn't have watched before... I now watch "Seinfeld", and I love it!