HDTV advice

My roommate has a Sharp Aquos, it's fucking great. When I move out I am going to hate watching TV on my little shitty set

 

Well, you appear to have three choices, according to the Circuit City website, which describes HDTV sets in one of three ways: 720p, 1080i, and 1080p.

Ideally, your screen should have 2,073,600 active pixels (1080 high, 1920 wide) to display a 1080-line picture at maximum resolution. Many sets don't. My LCD has fewer than one million pixels (768 high, 1280 wide). When tuned in to a standard-definition program or a 720p program or a 1080i program, it performs whatever conversion is necessary to display the picture on its 768-line screen.

On the Circuit City description of a given set, if you click Specifications and then Resolution you'll find the actual pixel count for height and width. It appears that anything from 720 lines to 1079 lines is referred to as "720p," like mine. Anything more than 1079 lines is "1080i," unless the set can display 1080p programs (such as movies from Blu-Ray disks), in which case it's designated "1080p."

Most of us don't need 1080p because most of what we watch (including sports) isn't available in that format.

So the choice is between what Circuit City calls 720p and 1080i. Since it's preferable (and more expensive) to have more screen pixels, I'd say that the 1080i would be better of those two for sports.

And as fishwrapper pointed out, fast-moving objects tend to blur on an LCD screen, so plasma is probably better for sports.

Maybe I should think about upgrading to a 1080i plasma . . . .

 

And if you want it now and cheap -- Costco or Sam's Club...
Vizio Now, Vizio Tomorrow, Vizio Always

 

1080p.