Test Tubes - digital TV; automobile video

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, July, 2000 by Ian Baldwin

TECHNOLOGY | With a DIGITAL FUTURE ahead, TV is finally thinking outside the box.

WATCHING the Masters' tournament for the first time on a digital high-definition television (HDTV), Rick Cathcart was struck by a few things. Even at a distance, the individual blades of grass on the green and the dimples on the golf ball were drawn in intricate, razor-sharp detail. So were the players' faces. "You could tell that it had been three or four hours since they shaved. You could see who had had a restless night and who had gotten a good night's sleep," says the Redwood City, Cal., resident.

Watching Patti LuPone singing at the White House in high definition, Gene Cowan, an art director in Washington, D.C., could pick out the singer's out-of-place strands of hair. "Then the camera pulled back, and what struck me was the color. The color palette on a regular TV set is very muted, but here the blues were blue, the reds were red, the greens were green. The colors were unbelievable."

In La Plata, Md., David Kemp popped a DVD of Twister into his digital home theater to play for family members on a rainy night. "People couldn't tell if the thunder was from outside or from the movie," he says.

TV--and the stuff you watch on it--is in the throes of a digital revolution. Unlike TV's traditional analog format, digital technology transmits pictures and sound as a computer transmits data, allowing programs to be crammed with enhancements such as crystal-clear pictures, surround sound, even interactive features such as Web sites or a choice of camera angles.

To view digital programs, you'll need a digital TV set. There are two kinds: high definition (HDTV) and standard definition (SDTV). SDTV is an updated version of today's television, offering clearer pictures and sound than analog TV--but not nearly as crisp as HDTV. SDTV sets are slowly showing up in stores, but since they have neither the ultra-high-resolution dazzle to appeal to well-heeled videophiles nor the price tags to go home with mainstream consumers (most sets cost well over $1,000), they're not exactly selling like hotcakes.

Part of SDTV's problem is that most digital-TV stations are programming for SDTV as if it were ordinary analog TV. None is making use of SDTV's best feature: the ability to send multiple signals simultaneously over the same channel. "If stations start broadcasting three or four SDTV channels, then people will become aware of it," says Cahners In-Stat senior analyst Michelle Abraham. You could flip between a cooking show on channel 2.1, an exercise class on 2.2, and a sitcom on 2.3, all broadcast by a digital channel 2. So far, that hasn't happened, and in any case it is HDTV--digital's premium product--that's in the spotlight.

In early 1998 an HDTV set was priced at $8,000 for a 55-inch model. Now, a similar set can be had for $5,000. The trickle-down is being pushed along by falling component prices and zooming demand: In the first three months of this year, retail outlets sold about one-third of all the 123,000 digital TVs sold thus far, according to tracking group NPD Intellect.

But considering that a nondigital 55-inch TV set would run about $1,800, the question is, is digital for you?

Digital doubt

IF YOU'RE a dedicated video groupie, you've probably already decided that the answer is yes. You've likely been to a store that sells digital TVs, mouth clamped shut to keep from drooling at the razor-sharp resolution and lush colors of an HDTV set. You probably also know that HDTV programming is pretty slim. But, damn it, you don't care. You will have that box.

You're hardly alone. HDTV's ultra-crisp resolution--up to 1,080 horizontal lines, more than twice that of an analog set--is winning enough consumers over that Cahners In-Stat expects HDTV shipments to retailers will more than double this year. And prices have been edging down. Hitachi, Panasonic and Toshiba sell 36-inch sets that are "HD ready" for $2,200 to $2,800. This type of set--also called an HD monitor--might be considered a toe-in-the-water approach to HDTV because it needs a set-top decoder box. The box is currently priced at $500 and up (RCA sells a 36-inch monitor with decoder box included for $2,500). Even without decoders, these sets will make regular TV channels, DVDs and VCR tapes look considerably sharper.

You'll see more of these sets than higher-priced "integrated" HDTVs, which have a high-definition decoder built in. Retailers are pushing HD-ready sets so that consumers can put off buying a decoder box until the skimpy lineup of HDTV programming bulks up (and the decoder boxes themselves come down in price).

HDTV is no exception to the rule that you get what you pay for. Ironically, you'll notice the most difference between high- and low-end sets in the quality of the line doublers, which controls how well the set improves the picture for standard analog programs and DVDs. Also, wide-screen HDTVs are usually more expensive than their traditionally shaped counterparts. Since high-definition broadcasts are in a wide-screen format, square sets have to squish the picture down to fit in the whole image.