De-throning the CRT TV

It didn't take long for the LCD TV to arrive at my house. And what an impression the old CRT TV made on my TV rack when the delivery men removed it from its throne - moved for the first time in 8 years. That black imprint left by the CRT on my white TV rack will never go away, as if to leave it on purpose to serve as a reminder of the 8 faithful years it served us.




I wasn't overwhelmed with what I saw, and I expected it. After all, there aren't any TV content that can resolve the full 1366x768 pixels the LCD TV is capable of. Not free-to-air, not digital cable, not even DVD, which is actually 720x480 pixels. I took out the "Lord of the Rings" DVD which I bought for collection, inserted it for the first time and hoped to see some magic. It turned out like watching VCD on a CRT TV. Images were soft and not sharp. Perhaps it was the DVD coding, but I believe my observation holds for most DVDs in the market. How can a 720x480 video look sharp on a 1366x768 monitor? The same logic holds if you have a 800x600 JPG file and you wanted to view it full screen on a 1600x1200 monitor.

Note however, that I was connecting to the 8-year-old DVD player using S-Video. "EWWW!" You scream. S-Video is old technology! Component video connection should (or could) make the images look better. Ironically, that other new DVD player which I got for free when I bought the Hokkaido tour package in NATAS, which still sits in the box untouched, has component video. So, good excuse for me to dump my DVD player as well?

Well, ok, so I'm gonna get a component video cable tomorrow at the handy store and we'll see how it goes. Sadly, the new LCD TV only has one component video input, so I have to choose between using it for the HubStation set-top box or the (new) DVD player. No points for guessing which one I would use: we watch cable content 364 times more than watching DVD.

Hmm, but the New TV comes with 2 HDMI ports, which is a waste since I have zero HDMI equipment. Perhaps I should... eh... sigh... another never ending vicious cycle to upgrade the other gadgets surrounding the new-kid. Viral purchase syndrome.