The HDTV waiting game

Welcome to the HDTV waiting game. It's a game of patience, willpower, and utter indecision. A lot of you may have played before, some of you may be playing now, and plenty of you will be playing this holiday season. It goes something like this:

You want an HDTV. You're probably not quite sure what size, what type, or which brand you want, but you probably have a budget, that magic price point where a purchase can and will occur. Some budgets will be tighter than others. Some will be set by significant others.

You'll go to Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, or Wal-Mart and browse the aisles and survey the wares. You might even take notes, jot down a few models, prices, and key specs. And then you'll come home and type those model numbers into Google. Or maybe you'll go directly to CNET because you know we're a pretty good resource for this stuff. Hopefully, you'll find our freshly redesigned HDTV World, and you'll get some solid info that will help you narrow your choices to a handful of models.

The majority of you won't make a decision in a day or two. In fact, you may spend weeks agonizing over it, coming back to our top products lists day after day during those "quieter" times at work. When it gets real rough, you may send an e-mail to me or to our video guru, Senior Editor David Katzmaier, saying something similar to the one that arrived as I was writing this column:

"Hello, thanks for the great insight and reviews of the past. In your opinion, is the Samsung HL-R68W series that much better of a set and worth the extra $800 compared to the HL-R67W series? Thanks in advance for your help."

I get e-mails like this almost every day--people vacillating over buying decisions, who can't decide whether to step up or down, whether to go smaller and thinner or larger but fatter (rear-projection), or whether to wait for a new model, which will probably be cheaper and better than the model they're currently considering. Both the easiest and the hardest question I get asked is, "Is it better to wait?"

Yes, it is. But can you? Can you hold out?

Cut to Canon Expo 2005 here in New York last week. The company was showing off prototypes of its SED panels, a display technology it has been codeveloping with Toshiba. SED stands for surface-conduction electron-emitter display. A mouthful, I know, but it's also an eyeful. The idea behind the technology is to basically create a flat-panel, wall-mountable display with a picture that looks as good as that of the best tube (CRT) HDTV on the market--which, in our opinion, is our reference TV, the Sony KD-34XBR960. Canon's SED prototypes were 36-inch wide-screens, and frankly, they looked fantastic, even though they offered only 720p resolution compared to the 1080p sets hitting the market now.

Canon says that when its SED sets arrive in stores, they'll offer 1080p resolution, start at 50-inch screen sizes, and go up from there. The rub? They probably won't hit the market until 2007, and it's unclear how much they'll cost--although there's no doubt it'll be more than what a 50-inch plasma will cost in 2007. And get this: by 2009, according to market analyst IDC, most 42-inch flat-panel displays (LCD and plasma) and 50-inch rear-projection sets will cost around $1,000. You think the choices are tough now, wait 'til then.

So how do you win the HDTV waiting game? Well, ideally, you don't. You get the best deal you can get for the price you can afford, and you give in. But for you patient souls who have the willpower to hold out a little longer, here's my quick analysis of what's going to happen with some of the hot TV technologies out there over the next six months.

Plasma
Top products | Technology overview 
Quality: Plasma's already impressive picture quality will continue to improve as manufacturers come out with seventh- and eighth-generation displays. 
Price: 42-inch EDTV models, which are already approaching $1,300, will hit $1,000 by early 2006. At the same time, 42-inch HD models will hit $1,500, and 50-inch models will dip closer to $2,500.

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LCD flat-panel
Top products | Technology overview 
Quality: We're already seeing substantial improvements in LCD quality--better pixel response times and higher resolutions. But that's partly because there was more room for improvement than with plasma, which remains our choice for home theater. 
Price: Look for 25 percent decreases in price over the next six months across the board with 32- and 37-inch models hitting a sweet spot for consumers in the $1,000-to-$1,700 range.

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Rear-projection microdisplay (DLP, LCD, LCoS)
Top products | Technology overview 
Quality: The real jumps in quality will be with products such as the just-announced Sony KDS-R60XBR1, which essentially takes a lot of what's found in Sony's $11,000, 70-inch Qualia 006 and puts it in sets that cost less than half as much. While 1080p resolution is the gold standard, it's not noticeably distinguishable--or worth paying for--in screen sizes smaller than 60 inches. 
Price: Because these types of sets haven't been grossly inflated to begin with, you won't see the huge price drops like what you're seeing with LCD and plasma, but price tags will gradually shave off a few hundred dollars.

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Direct-view tube sets
Top products | Technology overview 
Quality: We don't expect quality to improve much with tube sets. They still offer the potential for the best image quality, especially with top models such as the Sony KD-34XBR960, so they don't have anywhere to go. 
Price: You'll have plenty of budget options in this range with smaller sets (30 inches and less) hitting $500. Manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are trying to make tube HDTVs more attractive by giving them a slimmer chassis, which is a good idea so long as you don't have to pay a big premium for that design advantage.

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Home-theater projectors
Top products | Technology overview 
Quality: Most front projectors use the same sorts of DLP and LCD technology found in their rear-projection counterparts, so the categories are maturing in parallel. In practice, that means improved resolutions at more affordable prices. 
Price: HDTV-resolution LCD projectors will cost an average of $1,500 by mid-2006, while prices for HDTV-resolution DLP models will hit $2,000 around the same time. You can already get EDTV-resolution and XGA models in either technology for less than $1,000, so there isn't much room to go any further, though you may see sub-$700 street prices for these models before the end of 2006.