Hi-Debt Sellavision

Well, here we go, folks: here is the reality of “HDTV” as it stands in early 2007.

It’s a mess. Not as much as a mess as it was 5 years ago or even two years ago, and thankfully, not as wallet-flattening as buying a used SUV, but it is most definitely a mess.

Thank god I’ve figured it all out over this past two months, and am going to impart to you lucky few this vast knowledge that will save you mountains of Trudeaus (dunno—is he even on a bill?) You folks in the USA don’t deserve any money-saving just because of the outrageous shipping charges on everything I have to buy from you because it’s not available in Canada, the ones that always cancel out any savings I might make by avoiding the GST and brokerage fees. (Just kidding; I'm American too, but your shipping rates still blow.)

Got a few minutes? Pull up your comfy leather chair — you know, the one with the silhouette of the dude getting his hair blasted by speaker blowback — and relax. Have a drink. Have two, or if you just put down some Franklins on some HDTV box or other and are awaiting its arrival, go for broke, open the whole case and call in sick for the rest of the week. You’re gonna need the break.

First of all, no one is in control of the horizontal. No one is in control of the vertical. The blur factor is huge and the picture is oscillating ever upwards to the edge of the screen.

Any possible standards that exist are so all over the place that the guy who sells you the HDTV in the store is extremely unlikely—high-school-level unlikely—to understand pretty much most of it. Oh, he’ll be coached in a few terms, but throw him a stumper and he’ll probably try to sell you a CRT.

Trust me, buying a computer—any computer, Vista or Linux or Mac or Freddy or Alto-Soprano — is far, far easier than doing the HDTV shuffle. But hey, in my case, the journey is the reward.

So let’s start. LCD or Plasma? No one knows. Each one has its benefits. Burn-in on Plasma? That is, trust me, going to be the least of your worries.

Let’s also start with the expectations, the absolutely mind-blowing Cineplex effect you’re going to get as Batman lands in your lap for a feely. Ain’t happenin’, dude. You are not going to get that effect, because you’re going to be watching the Discovery Channel. Or PBS. Or TSN. Or less than a half dozen other channels, none showing movies of any kind. Try “The Truth of Pharaoh’s Tomb.” Try “The Search for the Andes.” “Motor Week.” “Mexico One Plate At a Time.”

Yep, that’s where it stands as of midnight tonight, kids.

Oh, don’t you get me wrong—the picture on those programs will truly blow your rods and cones—but that’s all there is right now, baby. All. There. Is.

So even if you get the finest all-digital HD thingumagoobers worth Granny’s Nigerian-scammed inheritance, you are most, most definitely going to be disappointed. You are going to be cheek-squeezing chums with your cable-support technicians. Every single one of them. Not to mention The Hood Guys, Future Shit, Best Bite, Radio Schmuck, Circuit Shitty . . . well, you will have a fond spot in your heart for every one of them once you have climbed into your HDummer and waved goodbye.

But wait! you screech. I don’t need those channels! I have an upconverting HDMI DVD player! LOTR will kill on that! Well, yes and no. It will certainly kill over watching on a CRT or your computer monitor. But it will not even be close to HD.

See, what these folks have been trying to persuade you is that digital equals HD. Well, let me tell you that that is like comparing a VHS tape to a DVD. HD is light years better than the digital signal that will be issuing forth from your DVD player—if you want figures, about twenty times better. That’s a lot.

The only way you will be able to truly experience HD-class movies is to purchase a Blu-Ray or DVD-HD player and play a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movie in them. And hello, in case you didn’t notice, those makers are squabbling heatedly among themselves and aligning into vast, childish treehouses with club membership cards. Not good for you, O Consumer Fuckwad.

One particular annoyance you’re going to see on your shiny new 42” plasma is “The picture’s funny, Hunter, is it supposed to be like that?”

Yes, Madison, it is supposed to be like that. All over the place, with black bars below and sometimes on the side, or black on top and grey on the sides, or vice-versa, or the picture will be unnaturally stretched, so Lorne Greene looks like Rubberman, or if you fuck with it, Miffy the Pinhead, or even Zoom, Monster from Panandscam. No one except the folks at Discovery HD et. al. seem to have come to grips with how to handle this.

The Holy Grail awaiteth. It is not yet upon us.

My advice? If you were just about to pounce on an HDTV TV (redundant, I know, but a victim of the shell-game acronymery the Electronics folks want us to be mired in), just go ahead and do it.

Because I’m proud to say it: I watched Star Trek before my family got a color television. And this is a whole heck of a lot better than that.