GregHowley.com

For over a year now, Linda and I have been looking at HDTVs on and off, but for some reason or another have always put off the purchase. First, we decided that the sets we were looking at were too expensive, and we didn't want to settle for a cheap set. Then we decided to wait for the SED sets to come out at the end of 2006, which they never did. We'd definately done our research: LCD, CRT, plasma, LCoS, DLP, and who knows what other acronyms. In the end, we'd decided that if we couldn't get a SED TV, LCD was the way to go, what with all the light coming into our living room.

We were on the Consumer Reports site this weekend, researching camcorders in preparation for our upcoming daughter, and Linda decided to peek at the reviews on TVs. Turns out that while most of the good LCDs with a decent size were upwards of $4000, the highest-rated model was listed at $2800. So we started talking: should we actually do this? When we went to the actual sites selling the TV and found it for $2000 brand new, that clinched it. We're buying a TV.

Now, I know that this TV will be an entry drug for all sorts of new tech. We have no HDTV feed with which to watch incoming programming, and I'm not going to buy a DirecTV HD Box - after the fiasco we went through recently with them, I'm just waiting for cable to be available before we ditch the DirecTV and get a real TiVo. We also have no HD-DVD player. Should we get a HD-DVD player or wait for the combo players to go mainstream? And the lack of HDTV has been one of my primary arguments against getting a next-gen game console. The Xbox 360 has very few games I'd enjoy playing, and the PS3 is a sad mess right now. Maybe they'll put out a 360 with integrated HD-DVD player - that would be a temptation.

The new TV is a 46" Sharp Aquos LC-46D62U. That's 31.5" tall by 44.5" wide by 12.5" deep. It does 1080p and has two HDMI inputs. I could geek out more on the specs, but if you want that info you can just click the link.