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This is a guest post from Brian.

Over the past couple months I made the transition from an everyday $120 20″ Toshiba TV to a $2000 42″ Pioneer Plasma TV. It took a lot of thinking, saving, and it was most certainly worth every penny.

I had an advantage of background knowledge and HDTV viewing experience since both my dad and brother own Plasma TV’s (43″ Pioneer Elite and a 42″ Panasonic respectively). Of this knowledge and experience, a few things I found helpful to know are as follows:

• Plasma’s reflect a lot of light, so beware of the positioning of the TV in relation to windows. Plasma TV’s reflect far more light than LCD’s (or so I find at least) and therefore it is important to consider where the TV will be located.
• Beware of most LCD warranties. Most warranties on an LCD will have some sort of next to impossible situation of “if 10 pixels in a row burn out”. I’m no mathematician but considering LCD’s have millions of pixels, I’m pretty sure the chance of burning out 10 pixels in a row is highly unlikely.
• Viewing angle is important. Go to your local FutureShop and you’ll notice that as you walk by the larger than life TV’s, the better ones (and subsequently more expensive) provide a better image from a sharper angle. Once again, think where this TV is going to go. Chances are not everyone will be in direct line of the TV and so it’s important that the TV looks great from all reasonable angles.
• 480,720,1080,I,P, what does it all mean? The number is the number of horizontal lines that your TV can display. The more lines displayed, the better the picture. The letter – I or P – stands for Interlaced or Progressive. Interlaced implies that the lines that are displayed alternate. So for example, 480I will display only 240 lines at any given time. 240 lines alternate with 240 other lines. Of course this happens faster than your eyes can distinguish. On the other hand, 480P will display all 480 lines at any given time. Once again, more lines displayed at a single instance will give a better picture. Traditional cable displays at 480I. High Definition cable is capable of 720P. Blue-Ray and HD Discs are capable of 1080P.
• Resolution. The higher the resolution, the sharper the picture. Enough said.
• HDMI inputs. For me personally, it was important to have more than 1 HDMI input. I don’t know about you, but the thought of having to switch your HDMI connected up-converter-DVD player with your HDMI connected PS3 doesn’t sound too appealing. I ensured that any TV I considered had at least 2 HDMI inputs.

Like I said, these are a few points I thought were important to know when I went shopping for an HDTV. By no means is the list above a comprehensive list of everything to consider when buying your first HDTV. At the end of the day, pick an HDTV that “fits your budget” (when does buying a $2000+ TV ever seem to fit the budget?), and a TV that looks the best through your eyes. You be the judge of what looks best. Don’t let the sales guy persuade you to spend an extra 2 grand just because the specs are better. You be the judge if it actually looks better.

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