Is Bigger Always Better?

i much prefer a small size screen, tv 27 inch, perfectly fine for viewing, an as for my computer monitor, a 17 inch flat screen, running the highest resolution my graphics card can manage, and then i shrink the image down so i'm not even using the full screen, makes everything nice and crisp and pretty (thank god my eyes are still good enough to manage the print size)

Due to poor eyesight, for me, bigger is often better.

I have to keep my 19" flatscreen computer monitor at 800x600, even though often have to scroll horizontally to see an entire page. Every once in awhile I kick the resolution up a notch. Usually, I put it back to 800X600 within the first five minutes, as the print is too small for me.

i expect i won't be able to manage like this forever (but i live in hope)

Yin/yang. Guys often seem to want BIG equipment (and yes <giggle> that might be Freudian), whereas for women the size doesn't always count. The interior designer in me says that the screen should be proportional to the distance that you sit from it. I don't know what that proportion is, but I know it exists. IOW, the smaller the room or the closer you sit from the TV, the smaller the screen should be.

I recently bought a 32" flat screen TV (upgrade from my perfectly fine 1982 Sony Trinitron!) for my living room. It's fine. A (male) friend was over shortly after I got it. He read the specs, and talked me into connecting it to my computer as a monitor. When we turned it on and I sat down at my desk, I felt like my eyes were being blasted. It was very clear but felt like I was being enveloped in the whatever was on the screen -- and not in a good way. I kept rolling the chair back from the desk, as far as the keyboard would allow and it still wasn't far enough. Even he had to admit that, although 'awesome' for games, it was too much for daily work.

I've down-sized my television over the years. My puter monitor is about the smallest you can get without using a laptop. I don't want the equipment to be the room. I want the stuff/equipment to be something in the room.

The thought of a media room totally freaks me out.

ehBeth- That's the thing. The thought of a media room DOESN'T freak me out. If a person has a house that has one large room that can be used solely for media, I say, "go for it".

What my husband would love to do, is to get one of those projectors that can project an image many yards wide. It is not at all practical in our house, because we don't have a setup where we could project that size picture on the wall.

It is too bad. We have a den that houses my husband's hifi. There is a built in unit that covers the entire wall. When we made it, there was no such thing as huge TVs, (at least one that would not break the bank) or we could have installed a hi-def unit there. Then we could have listened to TV at 102db, that woofed right into our bellies!

ehBeth--

I'm with you. Phoenix wanted a window on the world in her refuge, not the whole world in living technicolor with bells and whistles.

I like cocoons and cocooning. I'm also fairly adverse to change and often take a don't fix what isn't broken approach to my life. It would bother me if my comfy cocoon was changed for the sake of change but I'd adjust to it eventually - probably once the feeling of newness wore off.

My "Media Room" - the livingroom, really, features a relatively largescreen HD TV, which does have a superb picture and is part of an elaborate home theater rig with allsortsa bells and whistles and gewgaws. The bedroom tvs are conventional (not HD), varying in size from 32" down to 20", and I find them perfectly satisfactory for casual viewing and/or dozing off to. My office has a 21" conventional TV in one corner, with a much smaller conventional TV in a hutch shelf on my desk (there are a couple pictures of my desk here on A2K - too lazy to look for 'em right now, though), for casual viewing while I'm at my 'puters. The larger TV is rarely on, though its not uncommon for the little TV to be on, volume muted, and one of my monitors displaying 2 or more other TV prgrams, also muted, via a 'puter's Tuner card ... so I can track news and financial info during the business day.

As far as I'm concerned, HDTV is marvelous - I love it - but I don't much see the point to it unless what's going on on the screen is the focus of an overall entertainment experience ... with actual HD program material and multi-channel surround sound.

As per usual, Noddy, you are right on target!

The cable guy is coming on Wednesday, to set up the hi-def. Since the cable company does not supply HDMI cables, I went out and bought one, AND an "S" video cable, in case we attach a DVD player and a better surge supressor.

I thought that I would buy a "middle of the road" HDMI, but looking around, all that I saw was either low end stuff, or more pricey cables. So I bought the better one. I know that I could probably get a better price for what I bought, on the 'net, buy I didn't want to wait.

Anyhow, later in the day, when my husband and I went to Wal-Mart, he insisted that we buy a cheapie "S" video, "just to experiment. (Oy, it's starting already.)

When we got home, we brought in the DVD player from the other TV. We interchanged the more expensive "S" video, the cheapie "S" video, and the cable that my husband had had installed on the other TV. Sure enough, we both acknowledged that the more expensive cable produced a superior DVD picture.

Well, my husband shudda known that. For those who don't know, my husband is a hi-fi nut. I have been subjected to more electronic experimentation over the last 40 years than I have every wanted. The whole point of my little room, with the little TV, was to have a place to call my own, where there was no experimentation, no figuring out what sounded better, which looked better, until I wanted to scream!

Anyhow, my husband comes in with one of his DVD players that he doesn't use, and wants to hook it in. I get slightly hysterical, and tell him to take the damn thing out of the room. He compromises, by leaving it in the room, but not hooking it up.

He then busies himself by going to the big set, putting on a DVD, and madly adjusting the various menu options. There is no question, that even though the old TV was ahead of its time, the picture cannot compare to the new one.


In the little room, I turned on a rerun of "Law & Order", and started to relax....................until my husband walks in. He looks approvingly at the set, and remarks, that the TV would sound much better with separate speakers! AAAARGH!

We had been talking about getting a 60" set for the living room. Since there had to be some adjustment to the furnishings, we had decided to wait awhile, before we tackled that project. I have a sneaking suspicion, that after seeing the new TV, my husband will not wait very long to get the big one.

HDMI is digital, so unless you get a faulty cable, the crappy one should look just like the more expensive one. Cabling analog signals is where you gain picture and sound quality with better cabling.

32" is about the smallest size worth buying in HD. Any smaller than that and the difference in picture quality over standard digital cable (480p) isn't going to be noticable.

Also, if you live in a major metro market, there are sh-tloads of HD signals in the air, you just need an antenna if the set is HD ready. They are flat and look like propellers - Radio Shack sells "HD" antennas for around $75. Plus they're small enough to easily conceal indoors or out.

cjhsa - Trust me on this one. I know more about electronic cables than I ever wanted to know. Anyhow, the cables that we were exchanging were "S" video, for the DVD player. And there were visible differences amongst the three cables.

Over the years, I have A-B ed amplifiers, preamps, cables, DVD and CD players 'till the cows came home. I have reached a certain level of sophistication, where I am able to tell differences in cables!

As far as the HD is concerned, when I called the cable company, they had a deal where I would get the HD cable box, and be charged LESS than before. The TV is HD, not just HD ready. (right now I had only basic cable on the set in the little room, connected only by coax.)

Phoenix--

Imagine your Golden Age years if your husband didn't have hobbies and enthusiasms?

Noddy- At one time I could get really excited about improving our sound system. It got to the point where I backed off, probably because my interest in the subject is far less intense than my husbands'.

Now don't get me wrong. I love music, especially classical music. Have you ever had to sit through multiple playings of the same two minutes of music, with the expectation that you were expected to critique all the differences, as various components were exchanged? After a few decades, the whole thing got very, very old.

I love to listen to a piece of music, just for the sheer pleasure of it, in its entirety, and not have to give my opinion on the relative clarity of the high frequencies, the rise time, or the decay. To me, music is an art, not a science. The equipment is simply a means to an end.

For years my audio strategy was to buy the low end of the elite lines. When rugrats punched in the passive subwoofers I was glad I took this tack.

Phoenix, if you can tell the difference between a cheap 5' HDMI cable and a gold plated one, I've got some investment quality swampland in northern Michigan I'd like to show you.

Not the HDMI, (I only have one), the "S" video". If you had A-B ed as much as I have, believe me, you can tell differences. If you can't, it doesn't matter what you get!

Phoenix--

You have my sympathy. Intensively admiring someone else's hobby horse can be exhausting.