In a word, YES! I have been anticipating the upgrade to HDTV for a few years and now that I have it here in my home, I am not disappointed.
My first real good look at HDTV came only about a month or so ago when I stopped into a Best Buy store to check it out. At that time I had decided to start researching which model I wanted to buy and thought that a look at the real thing would be helpful.
Up until that point I had not gone out of my way to see HDTV in action because I knew it would increase my desire to get it for myself and I just wasn’t ready to do that for a number of reasons.
The HDTV sets in the store looked nice but I guess looking in a store just cannot compare to how it looks in your own home. The HD on my 51-inch Hitachi 51F59 looks gorgeous. I feel like I could sit there and stare at it for hours. In fact, I half-jokingly told my kids that I would sit there and watch anything as long as it was in HD!
Yes, it really does look that good. There is an HD channel on Dish Network called Equator and they seem to specialize in shows about wildlife and visiting various other countries and such. A lot of it is simply stunning in HD.
If you’ve ever seen one of those crystal-clear photos of some lush rain forest or jagged mountain terrain in National Geographic magazine, just picture that as video and you’ll know what I am talking about.
At this point in time, most of what I watch is not yet in HD, but I am sure that will change in the future. Although we all enjoy programs like American Idol in HD as well as the Late Show With David Letterman.
I don’t usually watch much of the Academy Awards every year but this year I told my wife that I will be there for the whole thing with her if it is broadcast in HD.
What really brought home the difference for me was looking at our old TV set after watching HD programming.
Sometime last year, the old 27-inch Zenith TV we had been watching for 15 years or so finally died. I did not want to spend a lot of money on a new set at the time since I was thinking that a serious upgrade might not be too far out so I decided to just get a cheap 20-inch Sanyo set at Wal-Mart to hold us over for a while.
When I got the new Hitachi set, we donated the Sanyo for use in my son’s room to replace an old generic set my wife bought at K-Mart over 20 years ago that was, amazingly, still working!
I went up to my son’s room a couple of days ago to see how the new Dish receiver was working out up there and I was amazed to see how bad the picture quality was on the Sanyo! And that was with a nice, clean satellite picture that used to look quite good to me on that set!
I guess I am officially an HDTV snob now. Even with standard definition (non-HDTV) signals the new Hitachi set looks wonderful compared to the Sanyo.
As amazed as I am with HDTV, I am almost as amazed at the capabilities of my new Dish Network VIP622 Receiver/DVR. To say this thing will revolutionize our TV viewing is not an understatement. It does even more than I thought it did even after reading a lot about it over the last few weeks in anticipation.
I plan to write a lot more about the VIP622 in the equipment section soon.
