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In 2009, Sony continues to offer some of the top sets on the market. The main new developments for 2009 are in the V, Z and XBR9 series.
Here’s a quick run-down on the differences:

• S Series: This is still the “bargain” or “entry-level” Bravia. Fewer connections, some sizes 720p resolution instead of 1080p, and slightly lower-performance hardware.
• V Series: The V series is also designed as a bargain line, but with a few more features than the S series, like 120Hz Motionflow frame rates and a better video engine.
• Z Series: The Z series incorporates internet streaming into the set, a 240Hz frame rate in some sizes, and several innovative features that ensure energy efficiency.
• XBR9 Series: The XBR is still the high-end Bravia. The ninth generation has a 240Hz frame rate, for extreme smoothness in displaying motion, and a cold cathode fluorescent backlight for an expanded color range. As in the Z series, they have also incorporated internet streaming functionality into the set, with no external modem necessary.

For more details on Sony’s line of current and recent Bravia models, visit the Sony HDTV page at Flathdtv.net.

And they are even more surprised when they learn that the high-tech HD signal can be picked up with perfect clarity with their trusty old rabbit ears antenna! So, as you can see, the answer to the question in this blog post title is: an “HDTV antenna” = a “TV antenna”.

The only detail that determines which antennas will work with an HDTV is the fact that antennas are built with tuners, which convert the signal into sound and pictures for the TV. The tuner must be digital, not analog, since all HDTV sets these days are digital.

It’s simple: an HDTV monitor is an HDTV without the tuner. The tuner, of course, is the gizmo that interprets the signal from an antenna or cable, and converts it into moving pictures.

Since there is no built-in tuner in HDTV monitors, they tend to be cheaper and can be a good option for those of us who have no use for broadcast television. Monitors work perfectly fine for watching DVD movies, playing computer games, hooking up to a home computer, or any other “self-contained” application. And if you buy a monitor but then decide you actually do want to watch broadcast TV, you can always hook up an external HDTV tuner.

One of the biggest rip-offs in the world of HDTV equipment is the HDMI cable. This is because, although HDMI cables do the very important job of transmitting high quality video to your HDTV display, they are quite cheap, and somehow it seems easy for salespeople to talk customers into paying a lot of money for them.

This is a frequent topic of discussion on HDTV forums, and the basic argument goes like this: since HDMI cables transmit a digital rather than analog signal, the signal either gets through, or it doesn’t. As long as the cable meets a certain minimum level of integrity, there is no logic in spending twice as much and expecting twice the picture quality.

This was not true back when everything was analog, though– higher quality cables produced a noticeably better picture, and tended to be much more expensive. People who are used to this logic and have not researched the new digital gear can, unfortunately, be talked into paying too much.

As an example of the futility of paying $50 or even $100 for a set of HDMI cables, have a look at this highly rated cable that normally sells for $20, but has been marked down to fifty cents, at the time of this writing:

HDMI 6 foot cable

Most of us are familiar with LED (light emitting diode) lights- they are those tiny lightbulbs that are found practically everywhere, in all sorts of electronic gadgets, flashlights, even traffic lights. And, over the past few years, they have been invading the world of HDTV. But what is an LED HDTV? Is it an array of thousands of tiny lightbulbs?

The answer is yes– and no. There do exist TV screens built out of LED lightbulbs, but since they can’t be made as small as the pixels on a home TV screen, they are used exclusively in giant-size displays, like you would see at sports arenas. One of these screens would not only be terrifyingly huge in your house, it would look awful at any distance closer than 30 feet.

The sets that are often referred to as LED HDTV are more properly called “LED-backlit LCD television sets”, because the LEDs are just providing a highly efficient source of light for the image, and are not actually creating the image themselves. So, an LED HDTV is essentially an LCD HDTV that uses LEDs to provide the main source of light, rather than the fluorescent lamps that are commonly used. There are many benefits to doing it this way, including:

• Lower power consumption
• Better contrast
• More brightness
• Longer life
• More environmentally friendly manufacturing

Currently, the leaders in LED HDTV technology are Samsung, Sharp, Sony and LG. Here are a few of the most popular models at Amazon.com: Popular LED HDTV sets

But, steady progress in Plasma technology has kept it competitive, and it seems now that Plasma will always be a serious competitor for LCD in the 30- to 50-inch range. Image retention is a non-issue with the newest sets, and the cost of a Plasma HDTV in this size range is reliably lower than an LCD set of similar quality.

For example, here are a few of the latest affordable, fairly large Plasma models on the market:

Panasonic VIERA 42 Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV, about $800

Samsung 50-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV, about $900

Panasonic 54-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV, about $1350

To recap, Hz stands for Hertz, and represents the number of times something repeats every second. Thus, an HDTV with a 120Hz frame rate can display 120 different images each second to make a moving picture. For a more detailed explanation, click here: 120Hz frame rate

Essentially, the higher the frame rate you have, the smoother and more lifelike your moving images will be. But, as you can read in the link above, most video sources have only 24 or 30 frames per second, with a few at 60. So, why does the TV set need to be 4 to 8 times faster than the video it displays?

The answer is that the new HDTV sets are getting more clever- so clever that they are able to (sort of) outsmart the video they are displaying!

Let’s say you are watching a baseball pitcher throw a fastball across your HDTV screen. The game is filmed with a 60Hz frame rate, so as the ball goes across the picture, it shows up in a new position every 1/60th of a second. The 240Hz HDTV will actually create three new images, each of which shows the ball at a different position in between the two original positions in the original frames. This “interpolation” technique is by far the smoothest way to display high speed motion on a television screen.

Here’s a handy illustration from Samsung’s page on Amazon.com:

And here’s a brief description of one of Samsung’s top-of-the-line 240Hz HDTV sets:

Samsung UN46B8000 46-Inch LED HDTV

But for many of us, the budget for new gear is a little tighter than it was last year. How do we overcome this problem?

Here are a few solutions that won’t break the bank:

Toshiba 32-Inch LCD HDTV, about $400

Toshiba 40-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV, about $650

Panasonic 42-Inch Plasma HDTV, about $550

Samsung 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV, about $900

Sharp Aquos 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV, about $1300