Christmas is coming, and all through the house, not a creature was sturring- cause they were busy watching TV!

Everybody knows that this is the season where people forget that they're broke and go out and just buy everything they want anyway. It's a win-win situation: Businesses make tons of money, and people get lots of stuff. Nevermind the inflation of the economy cause the whole thing's done on credit cards, but we'll talk about that some other time.

What we'll be focusing on today is a simple excersize in not becomming a consumer whore. At all costs, it's important not to give into stupid marketing.

A brief example before I dive into the number one scam of XMAS 2007.

MP3 players: We all know which one is getting all the marketing hype... The IPOD touch and the IPHONE. Both are trendy and popular. But what the Apple fanboys don't want you to know: They both suck. Well do they really? Maybe, maybe not. But I assure you that the people buying them are focusing on the hype and not the features. Most of us interested in features end up purchasing a different product, because it turns out there are other players on the market that actually have better/different features. MAKE SURE that if you're going to be buying one, you make a chart of pros and cons. And no, being an IPOD is not a pro, you can't add that to the list. Stick to features only.

And now, the biggest scam of the christmas season: FLAT SCREEN TVS!. The problem, as I pointed out at an earlier date, is that flat screen tvs and all that "High Def" technology is widescreen, and that no medium fits it. (Except for select widescreen broadcasts. Read about that here and then come along as we explain the marketing & pricing hoax and the quick, easy solution.

A quick recap: Because widescreen movies are wider than widescreen tv's there will be letter boxes. Here's the catch: Since both regular aspect TVs and Widescreen TVs have letterboxes on these movies, that indicates that only the width of the TV will affect the size of the picture. This is a correct assumption (for anybody interested in the math, pick up a calculater, hit 5, 8, 0, 0, and 8, then turn the calculator upside down. You'll see it).

So what does all this hoo-rah actually mean? It means that if you concentrate on only the width, and pick up a normal aspect TV, you can save money and get the EXACT SAME SIZED PICTURE!

For example:



Both tvs here are available through walmart. The flatscreen on the left costs a whopping $448. The tube on the right costs a mere $189. The catch? They're both 25 inches wide. Oops! Does that mean a widescreen movie will be the EXACT SAME SIZE on both? Yup. And guess what else: Because most television broadcasts are for regular aspect tvs, you'll actually get a BIGGER PICTURE on the regular aspect ratio more often. In fact, with the media available today, you'll be hard pressed to get a bigger picture out of the widescreen for just about anything (unless you like zooming in on DVDs, and then it's like, why did you buy a widescreen again?).

"But, you just don't understand!" I hear you all chime in. The LCDs are so much higher quality!! You certainly can't recommend these lo-fi tvs!

Well, that's again, where you're wrong. We're at an interesting day-in-age where TVs have actually far surpassed their media. With regular DVDs, pretty much EVERY LCD panel makes it look lossy. And with HD DVDs and Blueray, the story isn't much better. Sure, the resolution is higher, but, oops, it's not nearly as big as TVs available today! And what happens when you take a digital image and expand it? You have pixelation and loss of quality! Not surprisingly, it looks better to do this upscale on analog TVs, as it softens the quality loss.

So are you saying that a BIG regular aspect TV is better in EVERY category? Yup. Buy that instead. You won't go wrong. And certainly, some day in the near future, it'll be realistic to get a flat panel widescreen. They do look nice, don't forget. But for the price difference, it's definitely not worth it. Wait a year or two until they're reasonably priced.

I am proud to take the stand as the ONLY internet personality who's willing to look past the shimmering sparkles to see new technologies for what they really are.

Stumble this article.

Riev_Mordred @ 11/26/07 "Regardless of the lack of citing any of these so-called facts, this is why instead of buying an HD-LCD-TV, I bought a projector. Lossy on 108"? Maybe. Amazing to play Halo3 on? You bet." FredFredrickson @ 11/27/07 "It's not a citation issue, just do some quick math." Riev_Mordred @ 11/27/07 "Quick math even needs to be referenced, all you do is assume your math is correct, and that we know or care what it is. Not saying I disagree with you, quite the contrary I actually agree." FredFredrickson @ 11/27/07 "Fine: here's your math. A standard TV is 4:3, which means that it is four units wide by 3 units high. This breaks down into 1.33 inches of width for every inch of height, calculated by dividing 4 by 3. (You may see standard TV referred to as 4:3 or 1.33:1. Widescreen TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9, or 1.76 inches wide for every inch high (referred to as 1.76:1). movies made for cinema screens are filmed with an aspect ratio of between 1.85:1 and 2.4:1, therefore the movies for cinema are wider than both widescreen TV or regular aspect TV. That means that the restricting axis is the X axis (the width). Therefore, so long as the TVs are tall enough to have letterboxes, the only dimension to change the size of the picture would be the width, and therefore a same width regular aspect TV would play a widescreen movie at the exact same size as a widescreen tv with the same width." ThatSam @ 11/28/07 "and the winner is... 3rd grade math class." Riev_Mordred @ 11/30/07 "Ahhh thats all I wanted. If I'm going to read an article that takes a position, I want to see facts, not opinions. Regardless of how much of an asshole you are, even -you- care about facts most of the time." FredFredrickson @ 12/01/07 "Well, honestly, I DID link to the article where I pointed out all the aspect ratios.. but if you really want me to do the leg work, there you are." Riev_Mordred @ 12/03/07 "Better you than me. You pander to me, monkey boy =P" GGagnon @ 01/05/08 "The question as far as I am concerned is how can you not see how hypocritical you are being? He writes this article based off clearly a decent amount of research and you call into the question of fact or opinion. You ask for mathematical backup. If you are smart enough to understand what he wrote to backup his article then clearly you would be smart enough to figure it out yourself am I wrong? If you choose not to figure it out, but call the article into question that is clearly you just being a class A douche." Login to comment...

Return to main...