MONEY is no object and you will settle for nothing less than sterling visual quality in your high-definition (HD) TV.
But is it worth forking out thousands extra for an HDTV with full HD resolution, or is a bargain-price HD-ready set good enough?
To cut to the chase, our six-hour test at Audio House at Liang Court shows that it is not worth paying more for a Full HD telly that is anything smaller than a 46-inch model.
But so you understand the full picture, so to speak, here are the mechanics.
What's in the make-up
IN A full HD set, the panels are those that are natively capable (or factory-set) to display 1080p HD movies and games in their full glory. HD-ready TVs, on the other hand, natively support only the "lower quality" 720p.
The numbers refer to the number of pixels that can be displayed on the screen vertically. So a full HD screen can display 1,080 pixels vertically and 1,920 horizontally. A HD-ready screen displays at least 1,280 x 720 pixels.
So if your HD content - movie or TV programme - is created for 1080p, then you need to have a full HD TV to enjoy the full visual splendour. Watch that same content on a HD-ready TV and your goggle box automatically down- scales it to 720p (read: a lower picture quality).
Then, there is the question of how the vertical rows of pixels are displayed - as interlaced or as progressive signals (which explains the 1080i or 1080p label on the sets).
Interlaced means that only half of all the pixels appear at any one time - the odd lines appear first, then the even lines, a split second later. The human eye cannot detect the time gap, so you still see the entire picture. But interlaced signals mean a degradation of picture quality.
To sum up, 1080i quality is akin to 720p because of the interlaced signals. Therefore, it is pointless to pay extra for a full HD panel for 1080i.
Price differences
THE pixels are not mere semantics, but could mean savings of up to 50 per cent to 80 per cent, which works out to a tidy four-figure sum.
Take a 40-inch Samsung full HD liquid crystal display (LCD) TV (model:40A650), for example. It sells for $3,499 at Audio House, while the HD-ready one (model: 40A450) goes for $2,199. Similarly, a 46-inch Sony full HD LCD TV (model: 46X300) costs $5,999, while its HD-ready cousin (model: 46D300) has a $3,699 price tag.
Also, consider the dearth of HD content developed for top-of-its-class 1080p TV now. And HD channels on StarHub's cable TV and SingTel's mio TV are in 1080i resolution.
As far as the three game consoles go, the Nintendo Wii does not have HD content, while most of the HD games for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) are still created on native 720p resolution.
This leaves you essentially, with Blu-ray discs, where you can at least find a decent number of 1080p movies.
Crunch time
THE issue then is this: can you really tell the difference between playing back 1080p content on a full HD TV and on an HD-ready one?
This was our mission at Audio House - the "naked eye" test on four sets of LCD TV sets ranging from 40 inches to 46 inches.
The premise was simple: take a manufacturer's full HD and HD-ready TV of identical size and features, play the same content and see if there are any noticeable differences in quality.
For content, we hooked up two PS3 machines to play the 1080p Blu-ray movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith. We also tested two 720p games - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on the PS3 and Bioshock on the Xbox 360. We tested the comparisons on two pairs of 46-inch TVs, as well as a pair of 42-inch and 40-inch ones.
For the Blu-ray 1080p movie, we could not spot any difference between the 40-inch full HD and HD-ready sets. In fact, we found the picture quality slightly better in the HD-ready set, which was something we could not fathom.
On the 42-inch TVs, we could not see any difference in the details of Will Smith's pores and facial hair and the scar across his face. But with the shadows, they looked like a patch of grey in the HD-ready set. On the full HD set, however, we could see better defined shadows, albeit with some straining of the eyes.
It was only on the 46-inch sets that we found value in paying more for full HD: greater details were apparent. In one scene, when Smith was hanging upside down, there was a greenish hue on his face on the HD-ready set; but on the full HD set, these were clearly defined shadows. The scar running across his face also had more detailed lines on the full HD sets.
THE VERDICT
NOTE that we had to pause the movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith (right) at various scenes and then spend a few minutes to spot the differences. When the movie played normally, there was no appreciable difference, we felt, on the HD-ready and the full HD sets.
All in, we feel that it is not worth paying extra for the full HD version of anything smaller than a 46-inch model.
Then again, does it matter if you see 10 lines on Smith?s scar instead of eight? Or, clearer details of the pattern of his perspiration on his T-shirt?
At the end of the day, full HD versus HD-ready has really become a marketing tug-of-war. If you have extra money, by all means go for full HD. If you want to pay the price of a BMX for a BMW, then HD-ready is definitely the way to go.
This article was first published in The Straits Times, Digital Life on 3 June 2008.
