I saw high definition television last weekend. We were visiting some family and they have a very nice HD tv and subscribe to the HD service from Comcast. You know something? It was beautiful. We watched a little bit of football and I was sincerely blown away by the quality. Some day I’ll be able to watch tv like that.
Why not today? Well, because I’m a cheapskate. To buy a comparable television would cost me somewhere around $1500 to $2000. Then, on top of that, I’d have to get digital cable and also add on the HD signal. All told, it would set me back nearly $90 per month. While I really like the picture, I also like the picture in my head of my wallet stuffed with money. I’m going to pass for now.
Needless to say, I think I’ll be stopping by my sisters house more often to watch some tv.
Well, we did splurge a few years back before we got serious about our financial situation. The wife and I are both big sport fans, so I’d like to think we are getting our money’s worth. Would I do it again knowing what I know now? Probably not. However, high-definition sets continue to come down in cost and the majority of your HD channels can be acquired freely via antenna (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc.). We’re desperately hoping cable/satellite providers will offer al la carte pricing in the near future so we can add ESPN HD to our channel lineup.
yep, that’s the way to approach it!
when it *is* time…Costco really does seem to have great deals on some of these sets…that’s my plan – for the future. We used accumulated sony points to buy our TV for a couple hundred when it was retailing for around 700. It has HD capabilities but needs the special cable box to show true HD broadcasts but even regular TV does look way better than our old analog set and DVDs look pretty good. It’s also a CRT nothing fancy like plasma or LCD. I figure it’s quite good enough for us for another handful of years at least. But the new sets do look incredible. “Cheapskates” unite!
I love timeshifted High Definition programming!
ESPN HD….. Every time I watch Sportcenter I want it so bad. If HD-TiVo comes out, I will be in trouble. Of course TiVo degrades image quality…. oh the paradoxes of life!
I have an HD TV and I use my computer to upgrade the regular cable analog signal. It looks better than digital cable (and cost lest since its the regular service with no cable box), but it doesn’t look as good as HD.
I’m told in 3 years all the signals will be HD and you’ll need a box to use your regular analog TV to convert the signals. That may be the time to buy a new TV rather than pay to rent a box.