Our approximately 12 year old 32" Toshiba TV finally started biting the dust a few months back and it started to become clearer and clearer that it would need to be replaced. A few weeks ago we finally did so, replacing it with a Sony 42" rear-projection LCD model. It's a pretty sweet TV. The only thing left to do was get our Dish Network service upgraded to HD enabled, for which I had to wait for the new box to arrive. It did the day before yesterday, hence the lack of posts yesterday, as I went home and immersed myself in the world of HDTV.

Results are mixed, but positive overall. A big TV is great, of course. Regular definition actually looks slightly crappier than on the old TV, probably in large measure due to the size of the screen which expands all the flaws (the newer Dish box did make a difference, even on regular non-HD channels). High definition programming is very cool -- especially in low-motion scenes. High-motion tends to produce a lot of pixelization. The big problem is that there just isn't much HD programming yet. You get about a dozen extra "high def" channels through Dish, but most of them seem to show either fairly useless stuff -- like one channel that seems to be the 24 hour runway modeling channel -- or old movies and programming that clearly wasn't filmed in HD, so it doesn't make much difference. Who cares about some old movie played so that it fills all of the 16:9 screen? That's hardly what I would hope for for "HD."

There were a few good shows on the DiscoveryHD channel -- The Jeff Corwin show, and something called "Insectia" were very cool, and that second one is perfect for the HD format. Also, watching a Panda give birth in HD was...an experience. The thing is I'll bet they play a lot of the same stuff over and over again, like in the early days of MTV. Still, there is a lot of promise there.

Dish Network does not provide the local stations' high def broadcasts, so if you want them, you need to get out the old-fashioned rabbit ears. Depending on where you live, that can work out OK, since the signal is digital, once you have it strong enough there's no worry about fiddling. I watched parts of last night's Patriots game in HD through the over the air transmission and it was very cool.

DVD's are great on the big screen, but the resolution isn't HD yet (that's coming), so Fellowship of the Ring, for instance, is actually slightly disappointing depending on expectations.

Anyway, ttfn for my HD report.