The Zen of HDTV Buying

Since it’s clear that this week’s theme is going to lean heavily on home theater purchases, let’s take a moment to step back from the details and to gain perspective.

No matter what you end up buying, it’s going to be a lot better than your old TV. Relax.

There are a wide variety of HDTV technologies out there, in different resolutions and sizes, with different accompanying speaker systems and cables and input sources, with different places to get HD media, etc. It’s confusing. It’s stressful to be unsure if you’re about to drop several grand on a piece of junk. What if you screw up?

Here’s the good news, the gospel of high def: Pretty much any new HDTV you can buy these days is going to rule. Sure, it may not be the biggest, or the brightest, or the one that ekes every last pixel out of the content, but who cares? It’s going to be big, it’s going to be flat, and it’s going to look great. There are really very few “bad” HDTVs out there these days, so stop obsessing with finding the “perfect” TV and start trying to enjoy the process of buying a new one.