Upgrade Your Home Entertainment

TV aficionados have a number of things to look forward to this year, as vendors are poised to upgrade everything from HDTVs to set-top boxes to recorders for both the living room and the PC. That means bigger screens, better color quality, and more choices in recording and viewing your favorite shows.

TVs are getting some of the more significant upgrades. To start with, Sharp's splashy demonstration of a whopping 108-inch prototype LCD set further cements the notion that LCD can compete with plasma at the largest screen sizes, says Eric Haruki, IDC research director for digital TVs.

Sharp's new plant, which produced the megaunit, can also make cheaper 46-inch and 52-inch LCDs. The upgraded capacity drives down prices at those sizes, Haruki adds. When Sony and Samsung open their own next-generation LCD plants later this year, that downward price trend will continue.

Also look for HDTVs with 120-Hz refresh rates (60 Hz and 75 Hz are standard currently) and HDMI 1.3 connections. The higher refresh rate will offer better clarity; Philips, Samsung, and Sharp are readying such sets. HDMI 1.3 provides more throughput, which enables improved color fidelity (Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and other vendors have these new HDTV sets).

This spring and summer, you'll also start to see TVs and set-top boxes with CableCard slots. The Federal Communications Commission mandated that set-top boxes shipping after July 2007 come with the cards. The technology will let you choose a set-top box you like--with the storage and processing power you prefer--so that you aren't bound to the device that your cable or satellite Service provider gives you.

High-Def DVD Shakeout

The incompatible Blu-ray and HD DVD formats have left some consumers confused and others unwilling to commit to high-def DVD, for fear that their product could be a dead end in a few years. The debut of LG's $1199 dual-format player, the BH100 (out now), and a corresponding PC drive, the GGW-H10N (due in April), should help. Though it is more than twice as expensive as HD DVD players and costs $200 to $500 more than Blu-ray Disc players, the LG device ensures that no matter which format wins, users won't be left out in the cold.

Content makers are helping, too. Warner Home Video has announced a line of Total Hi Def movie discs that will contain both a Blu-ray and an HD DVD version, so users need not worry about buying the correct format. Total HD discs are due by year's end; Warner sibling studios HBO and New Line Entertainment plan to support the format.

So far, however, no dual-format recorders or burners exist. Blu-ray burners for PCs have seen an upgrade to 2X; the first is the $650 Lite-On Triple Writer LH-2B1S (available now). And Toshiba will offer the SD-H903A HD DVD write-once drive, the first HD DVD burner for a desktop PC (notebook drives were available late last year). Systems with the new Toshiba drive should be out in the spring.

Record to PC

High-def DVD recorders for the living room are still slow to come (we don't expect any until the end of the year, at the earliest), but PC-based HD recording received an important boost with the introduction of ATI's TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner. The unit, which comes as either an external box or a PCI add-in card, allows you for the first time to not only receive but also record premium HD content like shows from HBO. You cannot, however, record video-on-demand or pay-per-view offerings with the ATI card. And for now, you can get the card only as part of a bundle when you buy certain new Windows Vista systems from major vendors such as Dell, Gateway, and HP.

Replay TV, which got out of the hardware business in late 2005, has finally released a $100 software product that brings its user-friendly interface to your PC, which would make viewing and recording HD on your computer much more palatable. You can try it free for 30 days. Once you purchase it, you'll have to pay an annual $20 fee for the electronic show-guide service after the first year.

So much for that goal of cutting down on TV viewing this year.