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Five Things to Consider Before Buying an HDTV

by Tom Samiljan on November 18, 2008 at 01:45 PM


4. Connecting your TV to all your stuff: What kinds of connections do you need?

 Make sure that the television you buy has an HDMI input. This is the one-stop-shop cable that gives you both high-quality HD video and digital stereo and surround sound, making for a better quality home theater experience, not to mention less cable clutter. This is likely not an issue in most new models, but it could be if you're buying a used TV. HDMI also enables certain TV features such as video upscaling (a feature on televisions and A/V receivers that upgrades standard TV quality to HD quality). Unless you have an A/V receiver with its own HDMI inputs, you'll want as many HDMI inputs as possible on your TV so that you can plug in all your state-of-the-art components, from cable boxes and DVD or Blu-ray players to video game consoles and, say, Apple TV or Vudu.

Also, make sure you get a television with "HDMI 1.3,' which is the most up-to-date version and can enable your TV to play the latest video technologies such as Deep Color and audio processing formats such as DTS Master Audio or Dolby HD (of course, you'll also need a television that's capable of showing this stuff and a surround sound home-theater setup to maximize HDMI 1.3). Now, to complicate matters further, not all versions of HDMI 1.3 are created equal, which is why even the HDMI association recommends looking for features -- Deep Color, DTS Master Audio, etc -- rather than HDMI version number (see next slide for information on these "features").

Alternatively, you can connect these various devices via component video connections, but it's not always the same quality and it means you still have to find a way to connect the audio (via optical, digital audio, or traditional red-and-white cord audio connections). For anything older, such as that VCR you're still using, you'll likely connect via composite or the slightly better S-Video connections, both of which are also on most TVs today (though you might have to look a little harder for S-Video). Lastly, having PC or VGA inputs is handy if you're going to use your TV as a computer monitor, too, though many new PCs come with HDMI outputs as well.

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