I've started shopping for a major home-theater set-up for the new house. Not that I'm bragging, mind you, but my media room is 22' by 17', windowless, prewired, and will be so insanely great that I may never leave the house once the equipment is installed.
So far, I've suffered from a series of shocks relating to this search.
1. Because the room is so big, I can and probably should install a screen larger than 100" diagonal. Great, right? Well, yeah, but to get decent resolution on a screen that size, the projector I need is north of $7,500. And that doesn't include the sound system. Yikes!
2. Front-projectors lag behind rear-projection systems in terms of technology and price. Huh? It's the same stuff, except front projectors have fewer moving parts. I don't get this at all.
3. While I can get a hi-def picture from cable/satellite hi-def stations, the picture I will get from the worlds best current-generation DVD player will be inferior to hi-def TV.
Number 3 was the biggest shock of all. I had come to accept DVD as the gold standard of picture quality. It turns out that's far from the truth.
In simplest terms, hi-def TVs use many more "lines of resolution" (the horizontal lines of light and color on your TV screen which, taken together, present the picture) than regular TV. Old SDTV (standard definition television) uses approx 330 lines of resolution to form the picture. VHS VCRs use approx 220. Compare that to the current standard of 1080 for hi def and you get a sense of how much better hi def is. Three times more lines means a picture that is at least 3 times clearer. Here's a great, basic article on the differences between HDTV and SDTV.
However, today's DVDs are limited in the amount of data they can store - about 9 gb total. Hi def movies, because they use so many more lines of resolution, are much larger, storage-wise, than standard def movies. All DVDs today are standard def, and they can be displayed at about 440 lines of resolution, far less than hi def TV.
The good news is that the technology is improving and will solve this problem in short order. The bad news is that there are two competing standards, each backed by a stable of entertainment and technology heavyweights. At this point, it's impossible to say which standard will win out. And therein lies the problem.
Here's a bit about each standard (and here's a great article with more info):
1. Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray is, from a strictly technical perspective, the superior format. Backed primarily by Sony (owners of several Hollywood studios and an enormous library of content), Blu-Ray discs hold considerably more data than the opposition (50-100 gb vs 30 gb for HD-DVD). Sounds like a slam-dunk, right? Not quite. Blu-Ray is more expensive and will take longer to hit the market, although the next version of Sony's PlayStation will support it.
2. HD-DVD
Technically inferior to Blu-Ray, HD-DVD is less expensive and will get to market sooner. In addition, Microsoft has thrown it's hat into the HD-DVD camp.
Where will the market go? No one can tell you for sure, and anyone who says they can is either lying or doesn't know what they're talking about. Personally, I hope Blu-Ray wins out, but don't forget that Beta was technically superior to VHS, and we all know how that one worked out.
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