f you haven't sampled high-definition TV yet, let me warn you, it's as beautiful as it is addictive.
Since making the technological leap last fall, I find myself flipping through the 10 HD channels of our Cox cable box, just looking for something to watch. I've been mesmerized by snakes eating small animals and I've traveled the back roads of European countries I have no interest in visiting, just because the images are so vibrant, and the full wide-screen views are so captivating.
And when it comes to sports, HD really shines. The wide view and the crisp picture reveal details that conventional TV just can't. You might see a black jersey on your old set, but HD shows the texture of the fabric. A blurry face tucked in a helmet gets a sharp gap-toothed grin in HD, a beard is transformed into individual whiskers.
With my HD bias clearly on the table, now is as good a time as any for me to officially offer my apologies to our local ABC affiliate, WCJB, Channel 20. I've gone through an entire NFL season of hearing Al Michaels announce that the Monday Night Football game was being brought to us in beautiful high-definition grandeur. And every time I heard his announcement, words not suitable for a family newspaper would escape my lips, because Channel 20 wasn't included in the Cox HD line-up. I couldn't believe that our city's oldest commercial station hadn't made the high-tech switch.
Every Monday night, every college football game, every bowl game, every ABC network program that promised HD magic would earn this same blue Bronx cheer from me. It was particularly galling knowing that the biggest game of the year, Super Bowl XL, will be on ABC today.
Well, this week I discovered that WCJB has been broadcasting in HD since last fall, but Cox hasn't been able to work out an agreement to make it happen. So, I take back six full months of curses, and hereby officially redirect them to the cable company that has been able to get me HD channels that bring me body-building competitions and half-hour shows consisting of nothing but really great-looking movie previews, but hasn't knocked out an agreement with the station that's literally right next door.
The engineers at WCJB offer reassuring tips on just how easy it is to get this HD signal "over the air," the old-fashioned way with a UHF antenna. I live in a neighborhood where outside antennas are against the rules. Even if rabbit ears would work, just diving into the octopus of cables hanging from the back of my entertainment center is way too scary, and besides, that would require reading the handbook for my television, which is nearly as intimidating.
Just getting the HD TV into the living room in the first place was an ordeal. It was not done on a whim. The old TV had this pesky problem of distorting the sound, so all dialogue began to resemble a cell phone call coming in from the edges of digital darkness. Its age made it an unlikely candidate for repair. It was time to go shopping.
Just tip-toeing into the TV department sent me running for the library. There were HDTVs, DLPs, HD-ready TVs, wide-screens, flat screens, projection screens, LCDs and plasma, big screens, gigantic screens and drive-in-movie-sized screens. There were TVs that cost more than a nearly new car and TVs with sound systems that could crack the foundation of my house and make blood flow from my ears. (Tip to TV buyers: Don't go into the store when they are demonstrating home-theater sound with "Jurassic Park." It made the thunder of a top fuel dragster at Gatornationals seem like a mere whisper.)
It had been nearly 10 years since my last TV-buying experience and things were way more complicated. In my adult life, I've bought four homes and a half-dozen automobiles, and I can tell you no purchase was ever as well-researched as the TV now sitting in my living room.
I read magazines, I combed the Web for customer comments, I took notes, and then it was off to the store ready to buy - only to realize that the object of my shopping desire wouldn't fit the hole in our old entertainment center.
The electronic stores had entertainment centers, but the styles looked like something from the set of "Star Trek," which really didn't fit our less-than-space-age living room. So, TV-buying was placed on hold and the search switched to furniture stores, which we discovered hadn't really kept up with TV technology either. The holes wide enough for current wide-screen TVs were way too tall, leaving this giant ugly gap of empty space above, or they didn't have cabinet space to hold a TV, VCR, DVD player and stereo with speakers.
After hitting a dozen different stores between here and Ocala, we were on the verge of giving up. Then I discovered a small shelf that would fit on top of the TV, just large enough to hold the stereo speakers, and thus filling the black hole of ugliness.
The day the new entertainment center was delivered, it was back to the electronics store. But buying an HDTV doesn't mean you'll get an HD picture. For us that required signing up for a special premium service from Cox and getting a new cable box. And just when we thought we'd made all the decisions, the salesman hit us with a final pitch.
"It will work with the cables from the cable company, but if you don't buy these extra special cables for $50, I know you'll kick yourself," he said.
We decided to chance it, and I can report that we get a wonderful picture with the standard-issue cables and I haven't kicked myself once. The Cox high-tech HD box works great, but since we didn't go the extra step (translation, even more money) and get the digital recording gadget, it now requires us using three remote controls to record and play back the programs that flow out of the wall.
There was one other little surprise waiting. The wide screen that looked great on the HD channels and DVDs in the showroom has one small drawback. What the salesman never mentioned is that all those non-HD channels are still broadcast in the standard small-screen TV format, leaving these large borders of blackness down both sides of the new big screen.
The TV delivery guy informed me that leaving that space blank isn't good for the picture tube and recommended watching in the "full-screen" mode, which is great unless watching people with heads stretched out like images in a fun house mirror bothers you.
His other suggestion was to use the zoom viewing option that fills the screen without distortion, but slices off all the edges of the picture, cutting heads off of characters in movies and making all those little extras like the score, clock, down and distance disappear from under football games.
So this wide-screen HD stuff is great, but it's not perfect. And I know in the coming years there will be more HD programs. The choices now are pretty slim but growing, just not quite fast enough for my HD appetite. And I've learned that just because a network says a program is in HD doesn't mean I'll see it that way. If I was a big fan of the Seahawks or Steelers, this would bug me even more.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060205/DAYBREAK/202050314/1078/news
Since making the technological leap last fall, I find myself flipping through the 10 HD channels of our Cox cable box, just looking for something to watch. I've been mesmerized by snakes eating small animals and I've traveled the back roads of European countries I have no interest in visiting, just because the images are so vibrant, and the full wide-screen views are so captivating.
And when it comes to sports, HD really shines. The wide view and the crisp picture reveal details that conventional TV just can't. You might see a black jersey on your old set, but HD shows the texture of the fabric. A blurry face tucked in a helmet gets a sharp gap-toothed grin in HD, a beard is transformed into individual whiskers.
With my HD bias clearly on the table, now is as good a time as any for me to officially offer my apologies to our local ABC affiliate, WCJB, Channel 20. I've gone through an entire NFL season of hearing Al Michaels announce that the Monday Night Football game was being brought to us in beautiful high-definition grandeur. And every time I heard his announcement, words not suitable for a family newspaper would escape my lips, because Channel 20 wasn't included in the Cox HD line-up. I couldn't believe that our city's oldest commercial station hadn't made the high-tech switch.
Every Monday night, every college football game, every bowl game, every ABC network program that promised HD magic would earn this same blue Bronx cheer from me. It was particularly galling knowing that the biggest game of the year, Super Bowl XL, will be on ABC today.
Well, this week I discovered that WCJB has been broadcasting in HD since last fall, but Cox hasn't been able to work out an agreement to make it happen. So, I take back six full months of curses, and hereby officially redirect them to the cable company that has been able to get me HD channels that bring me body-building competitions and half-hour shows consisting of nothing but really great-looking movie previews, but hasn't knocked out an agreement with the station that's literally right next door.
The engineers at WCJB offer reassuring tips on just how easy it is to get this HD signal "over the air," the old-fashioned way with a UHF antenna. I live in a neighborhood where outside antennas are against the rules. Even if rabbit ears would work, just diving into the octopus of cables hanging from the back of my entertainment center is way too scary, and besides, that would require reading the handbook for my television, which is nearly as intimidating.
Just getting the HD TV into the living room in the first place was an ordeal. It was not done on a whim. The old TV had this pesky problem of distorting the sound, so all dialogue began to resemble a cell phone call coming in from the edges of digital darkness. Its age made it an unlikely candidate for repair. It was time to go shopping.
Just tip-toeing into the TV department sent me running for the library. There were HDTVs, DLPs, HD-ready TVs, wide-screens, flat screens, projection screens, LCDs and plasma, big screens, gigantic screens and drive-in-movie-sized screens. There were TVs that cost more than a nearly new car and TVs with sound systems that could crack the foundation of my house and make blood flow from my ears. (Tip to TV buyers: Don't go into the store when they are demonstrating home-theater sound with "Jurassic Park." It made the thunder of a top fuel dragster at Gatornationals seem like a mere whisper.)
It had been nearly 10 years since my last TV-buying experience and things were way more complicated. In my adult life, I've bought four homes and a half-dozen automobiles, and I can tell you no purchase was ever as well-researched as the TV now sitting in my living room.
I read magazines, I combed the Web for customer comments, I took notes, and then it was off to the store ready to buy - only to realize that the object of my shopping desire wouldn't fit the hole in our old entertainment center.
The electronic stores had entertainment centers, but the styles looked like something from the set of "Star Trek," which really didn't fit our less-than-space-age living room. So, TV-buying was placed on hold and the search switched to furniture stores, which we discovered hadn't really kept up with TV technology either. The holes wide enough for current wide-screen TVs were way too tall, leaving this giant ugly gap of empty space above, or they didn't have cabinet space to hold a TV, VCR, DVD player and stereo with speakers.
After hitting a dozen different stores between here and Ocala, we were on the verge of giving up. Then I discovered a small shelf that would fit on top of the TV, just large enough to hold the stereo speakers, and thus filling the black hole of ugliness.
The day the new entertainment center was delivered, it was back to the electronics store. But buying an HDTV doesn't mean you'll get an HD picture. For us that required signing up for a special premium service from Cox and getting a new cable box. And just when we thought we'd made all the decisions, the salesman hit us with a final pitch.
"It will work with the cables from the cable company, but if you don't buy these extra special cables for $50, I know you'll kick yourself," he said.
We decided to chance it, and I can report that we get a wonderful picture with the standard-issue cables and I haven't kicked myself once. The Cox high-tech HD box works great, but since we didn't go the extra step (translation, even more money) and get the digital recording gadget, it now requires us using three remote controls to record and play back the programs that flow out of the wall.
There was one other little surprise waiting. The wide screen that looked great on the HD channels and DVDs in the showroom has one small drawback. What the salesman never mentioned is that all those non-HD channels are still broadcast in the standard small-screen TV format, leaving these large borders of blackness down both sides of the new big screen.
The TV delivery guy informed me that leaving that space blank isn't good for the picture tube and recommended watching in the "full-screen" mode, which is great unless watching people with heads stretched out like images in a fun house mirror bothers you.
His other suggestion was to use the zoom viewing option that fills the screen without distortion, but slices off all the edges of the picture, cutting heads off of characters in movies and making all those little extras like the score, clock, down and distance disappear from under football games.
So this wide-screen HD stuff is great, but it's not perfect. And I know in the coming years there will be more HD programs. The choices now are pretty slim but growing, just not quite fast enough for my HD appetite. And I've learned that just because a network says a program is in HD doesn't mean I'll see it that way. If I was a big fan of the Seahawks or Steelers, this would bug me even more.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060205/DAYBREAK/202050314/1078/news
