Consider This When Thinking About Buying Big: 1. Choose the Right Screen Size for your Room Your seating distance will determine your sense of picture clarity and detail as well as the quality of the viewing experience. If all you watch are true HDTV images, then you can sit as close as twice the diagonal screen size? about 8 feet away for a 46-inch or a bit more for a 50-inch diagonal screen. But sitting that close may not be practical, because until the final conversion to all-HDTV broadcasting is completed (that?s at least 5 years away) a lot of your TV viewing may well be conventional analog TV, and those images may look fairly crummy up close. (Remember early big screen TVs?) If you watch regular non-HD TV sitting too close to a big screen, you?ll see all the flaws. 2. Flat Panel or Box Those futuristic and very cool plasma and LCD flat panels that are only a few inches thick are appealing, but budget, screen size, and your need for optimal HDTV clarity are big factors you must consider. To get full HDTV resolution on a plasma panel means getting a 50-inch diagonal screen, and that?s expensive (about $3,000 USD and up). If you are willing to abandon the flat panel and accept a more conventional box (one that?s no more than 14 inches deep), you can get full HDTV resolution for a fraction of that amount. A 50-inch diagonal DLP rear-projection set that?s only 14 inches deep and weighs about 75 pounds would be $3,200. Also, you will still get a bright, stunningly good HD picture, minus the ultra-cool flat-panel appeal, of course. If you still like the flat panel and are willing to accept good but not true HD picture quality, you can save a lot of money on a smaller LCD or plasma display. 3. Do You Really Need HDTV Resolution? Let?s say you won?t give up on the thin flat panel display, that you simply must have it. If you are satisfied with DVD clarity? it?s called Standard Definition (480 lines).

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