With all the Black Friday deals now seven days (plus a few hours) and counting… I’ve had another letdown… not one retailer is pushing an EDTV. Now, you might think I’m crazy for wanting an EDTV when HDTVs are so cheap, but there are a few reasons.
For those that don’t know, EDTV represents TVs that run at 480P progressive scan. They aren’t quite HDTV, which is reserved for quality grades above 480P (1080i, 720P, 1080P, and so on). EDTV was meant to be a transatory standard, helping people walk away from the 480i SDTV, without suffering as painful upscaling when going up to HDTV. In other words, high definition content looks good on it, and standard definition content looks okay on it as well. So what is EDTV actually great at? Quite a few things actually:
Nintendo Wii outputs at a maximum of 480P, and as such, it looks best on EDTV.
Sega Dreamcast, using the VGA cable, also outputs best at 480P, and looks best on an EDTV.
Modern DVD movies are designed for 480P, and also look best on an EDTV.
Those are just the top three, many original Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube games are also rated at 480P. However, PS3 and Xbox 360 utilize anti-aliasing in their backwards compatibility, which levels the playing field.
Now, I know what you’re going to say… there are other options. Sure, I can get a Plasma EDTV and yes, computer CRT monitors do run just fine at 640×480 (except that they aren’t traditional televisions)… and I can probably dig up an LCD EDTV off of eBay. However, I was hopeful that at least one retailer would have had a cheap LCD EDTV… I really don’t want a giant CRT in my house anymore…