xmiyux

My old donated TV is quickly dying and i need to replace it. I thought this might be a good time to pick up a low end HD television but when i went shopping for one features and prices seem to be all over the place. Essentially what i am wanting is a television around 30" that i can play Xbox games on at the higher resolution as well as watch DVDs. I don't have cable and have no interest in the HDTV broadcasts.

My question though is whether i need to be finding a TV that has a built in HD Tuner. Salespeople appeared clueless in explaining to me exactly what this tuner is used for, some said it was only needed to watch HDTV and others said i needed a tuner to play xbox games or watch movies in HD on it.

My DVD player is a cheap Magnavox that says progressive scan on the front of it. My HT system is an old Kenwood HT in a box using the VR407 receiver. Obviously i will need some new hookups since the red, yellow, white hookups i'm using now wouldn't do what i need.

I did read through the FAQ at the top of the forum and it didn't help any so now i turn to you guys. Enlighten this clueless nerd please

stevevt

Anyone who told you that you need an HDTV tuner to:

- Play Xbox games
- Watch movies on dvd*
- Watch HDTV from an HD cable or satellite box

is a moron and can be ignored.

*DVDs aren't HD, and I'm assuming that's what you meant by "movies."


An HDTV (aka "ATSC") tuner performs the same function as a standard (NTSC) tuner -- it allows you to watch over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts by switching between channels. In this case, it receives and switches HD channels. If you don't want or need to watch HD over your own antenna, you don't need one.

xmiyux

So the Xbox and the DVD player will be able to send the data through my HT receiver and to the HD television at the higher resolution (assuming i upgrade my hookups)?

And yes, by movies i meant DVDs - thanks for pointing that out to me.

As for the morons, they were standard Circuit City salesclerks, honestly i didn't expect them to have large amounts of knowledge about this. It was more a vain hope they could clarify things for me.

bryce0lynch

A tuner just lets you get over-the-air broadcasts. If you had one, and don't live in BFE, then you could watch HDTV for 'free'.

As long as you have an HDTV, with or without the tuner, you can hook up the XBOX HD pak and play games in HD (the ones that support it, anyway.) You can also watch DVD's. If you get a HiDef DVD player (when they become availble in a year or so) you should be able to hook it up and watch HD movies also, regardless of the HD tuner abilities of your set.

Make sure your Kenwood can do compnent video. If it doesn't then you can run your video straight to the Tv and use your receiver for the audio.

Slayer2005

You don't need to send the video signals through an external reciever. You'll need component cables that will hookup directly to the TV set, so unless your reciever has both component (red, green & blue video hookups) inputs AND outputs you'll need to hook the video cables up to the TV to get progressive scan DVDs/Games.

You'll be upgrading the resolution from 480i (interlaced) to 480p (progressive). You'll need to make sure you have your player set to progressive scan mode for DVDs (and make sure the X-Box dashboard is set to 480p also for games). If the HDTV is a widscreen TV set the DVD player to 16:9/Widescreen for anamorphic DVDs.

These are by no mean HD though. For the X-Box to do 480p you'll need the HD-Pack so it can use component cables.

xmiyux

The Xbox supposedly can do 720i and 1280i as well can't it? Is this a higher resolution than a normal DVD player puts out?

My receiver does not have the red, green, and blue video hookups so when i get a television i should make sure it has 2 sets of these (one for the xbox and one for the dvd player)? Then my sound (yellow?) would run to the HT receiver and the others to the TV for video.

Also, a great big thanks to everyone who has helped me so far. I knew the answers had to be something straight forward if i could just find someone to answer them.

Slayer2005

The X-Box can do 720p and 1080i, but only LCD/DLP/Plasma HDTVs can usually display 720p (most CRT HDTVs only display 1080i as far as I know) and VERY few X-Box games are actually 720p or 1080i. Most X-Box games are 480i or 480p.

DVDs are 720x480i (interlaced). Progressive scan turns 720x480i into 720x480p (progressive). Progressive means the the frames are displaying full frames, one after the other, instead of 60 half frames (interlaced) per second. 480p is about 345,600 pixels.

"720p" is 1280x720p (width x height) which is about 921,600 pixels & "1080i" is 1920x1080i (most likely 1440x1080i on a 4:3, non widescreen set) is 2,073,600 pixels. So, as you can see there is a big difference in the amount of detail HD can display compared to DVD and a majority of X-Box games.

Virtually all HDTVs have component hookups. The sound runs seperately and should be able to hook up right to your reciever if you get the correct audio cables.

Luckily, I've heard that all X-Box 360 games will be in high defintiion and soon HD-DVD will be out.

DVD Josh

Thanks to the cheap folks at Sanyo and WalMart, i can now name some that don't.

Spiky

You're kidding. What do the Sanyos have?

Great comments from Slayer above. I would also say that buying an HDTV for Xbox and DVD is pretty silly. The paltry number of games that are actually HD make it not worth it. Although it's probably worth it to be ready for HDTV, future games that will be HD resolution, and future DVD technologies.

xmiyux

How can spending money on any kind of cool electronic thing be silly? Actually i know Halo 2 supports it and honestly that has been taking up the majority of my gaming time. Otherwise it just seems dumb to not buy an HDTV when i know it is only going to be more supported - especially with the Xbox 360 coming out this fall. Once again, thanks everyone for the tips. Now i just need to start scoping out reviews and such for a reasonably priced intro model. Any tips on that?

DVD Josh

The new Sanyos have only component inputs. No DVI or HDMI. Pretty sad.

Spiky

Ah, I thought you said they DIDN'T have component, which would be stupid, not just sad. I'm not surprised some cheap out with no digital hookups. J6P will still hook it up with composite and think he's way cool.

xmiyux,
It's silly when you could be spending it on something else in the electronics world. It's not like Halo2 won't play on an SDTV or EDTV. But I do agree it's worth it for other reasons. If you like sports at all, you will like HDTV, esp if your local stations are broadcasting it. (FREE!) I've checked out some baseball, NASCAR and the NBA Finals and I've only had my HDTV for 2 months. Tennis and football later this year in HD.