How about a nice neutral subject thread. I would like to hear about members first experiences with HDTV. Could see some interesting posts. For me:

I first saw HDTV in 1990 . . . . on a 16'x9' Stewart Screen . . .using two Barco 9" CRT FPTV's . . . being feed an HD signal by an HD-LD player . . . and a Wilson Wam Audio system. Almost $500,000 worth of equipment. It was un-freakin-believable. I can remember it like it was yesterday . . . a specially shot HD-LD for the presentation (CES 1990) that showed the Shuttle launching from FL.

The CES 1990 show was the last show in Chicago. In 1991 it moved to Vegas.

Yowza. I first saw it at a Sears. I was mightily impressed. And that was a direct-view CRT! Had to be 1999 or 2000, I think.

Sony headquarters in Tokyo in 1991 on a 16:9 CRT. Took my breath away! I have a 35mm slide photo of it somewhere ... I'll see if I can find it.

Saw it at a boat show of all things. Was a Plasma TV.

The guy said it was one of the first in the country and cost like 20,000$... this was years upon years upon YEARS ago.... like 1995ish... I had never seen such a thing.

I just remember it looked gorgeous...

Then my uncle acquired one a number of years later. He spent about 8,000$ on his. And had like 3 HD tv stations fed to it.


Now I own one, and I only spent about 1200 on mine :)

It was a 4:3 CRT HDTV. If I recall it had 2 commponet ins but no DVI even.
I think it was 2000, 1999. at Best buy prehapps.

I bought my first in maybe 2003. A zenith 4:3 CRT HDTV 32" direct veiw with ATSC tunner bulit in. The only on Best buy had at the time.
I think I payed close to a grand at the time. Now you can get 16:9 TVs for a few hundred. Although finnding HD CRT direct veiw set with HD is tough as the only ones left are at walmart and are SDTV everybody is going LCD and plasma. Even the big RPTVs are going away for the most part.

Was a Sony Plasma TV at Best Buy, probably around 98 or so. I think it was $8,000 and they had the Lost In Space DVD playing on it. Looked atrocious. The DVD player was set to 4:3 and then the TV was set to "zoom" to upscale the already downsampled 4:3 image. Made the 19" tube TVs look like a theater.

Sales drones came over in attack mode when they saw me fiddling with the controls, but were quite relieved when I told them I was fixing it :) They actually said they had a Sony guy scheduled to come out and get it set up. How funny, two settings adjustments and it looked super.

1996, at the CRC ATEL lab where I worked at the time. We watched material from NHK in 1035i (the original HD resolution).

Early 1999 on my sofa after unpacking my 40 inch Toshiba 16:9 tv. Had the TW box waiting for the TV and wathced the 1 show being aired in HD, but can not remember what it was.

I sat in a daze at the picture, my friends thought I was crazy until they came over and saw it.

The Smithsonian. Don't recall the year, but it was not yesterday ;). It was the Japanese Muse system sourced from a laserdisc on a very bulky 16:9 CRT.

Love at first sight.

Honestly? Best Buy:o

The Smithsonian. Don't recall the year, but it was not yesterday ;). It was the Japanese Muse system sourced from a laserdisc on a very bulky 16:9 CRT.

Love at first sight.

+1. Around 1991 or so.

Around 2000 - a friends 55 inch 4:3 CRT RPTV. He had satellite and would get a few HD NFL games. It looked good, but not mind blowing.

I was blown away a year or two later by my father-in -laws 50inch DLP. I think he paid around 3.5 grand for it. :eek:

bought a Toshiba 57H81 from Best Buy back around 1999 or 2000...

back then there were only 2 channels I could get at my apartment...I would sit there and watch some PBS nature show (hummingbirds, coral reefs, etc) for God knows how long...

I saw a HD presentation at a Audio Store in Salt Lake city in 1995 or early 1996. It was a Runco CRT projector with a Faroudja processor for quadrupling DVD and they also had HD content through a server - I think it was a Sencore HD server. It was very impressive, but the video only was probably around $200k. It was impressive, but you can now get the same quality for $5k.

At the Houston Auto Show in 1995 I believe. There was a Jeep simulator and the picture was HD. After that I went to a home theater store to see if any dispays were out and got into an argument with a salesman who thought all of their big-screens were "HD" but none of them were...it was too funny, he actually got mad at me because I told him he was wrong...I guess a couple of years later he was like "oh, so this is what that guy was talking about" LOL

The Smithsonian. Don't recall the year, but it was not yesterday ;). It was the Japanese Muse system sourced from a laserdisc on a very bulky 16:9 CRT.

Love at first sight.

Same here!

early '90s at Narita Airport. (HiVision)

1998, at the TV station I worked at... It was a 34 inch CRT, weighted a ton, and we watched PBS satellite feeds over and over again...

1995/96 at Harvey Electronics in New York City - watched part of a football game like never before. Bad news was they used that same clip as demonstration for close to two years - content anyone!

Somewhere in the mid 80's at NAB. Sony showed a fairly large screen display using FP CRTs and NHK MUSE material. It was played from a 1" tape. In later years NAB had a separate HDTV area, and eventually it was everywhere. I remember wondering if I'd ever see it at home.

Dave

'05. Friends dad picked up a 42" LCD Projection TV, watching HD NBA. Nearly crapped ourselves, now both myself and that same friend own flat panel LCDs :p (46" and 40" respectively).

1985, Sony exhibition in Japan

January, 1994 in London at Harrods while on a business trip. I think the set was a 32-34" 16:9 Sony CRT. Don't know what was producing the source material but it looked great.

I think I first saw hdtv at "The Good Guys" here in Reno (now out of business). It was on a then new type display (plasma lol) which had a price of $20k, I think it was maybe a 36 inch display and a Sony.

Lived in Rural Maine til 5 years ago so there wasn't much around. First chance I got was around 1999 at Best Buy.

Yowza. I first saw it at a Sears. I was mightily impressed. And that was a direct-view CRT! Had to be 1999 or 2000, I think.WOW!!! Me too. I knew after that day that I would jump into HD as soon as it was reasonable and available. It was just a few months after Comcast started offering HD that I began to shop for a plasma. It wasn't till 42" plasmas came down to around $6k that I got serious looking. By the time I got the funds, it was around $4500. Today that same plasma doesn't exist, but could be had for around $500 :(. It now sits in my daughter's playroom connected to satellite SD.

Wal-Mart. I stayed away from them at BB in the early days because I did not want to take out a second mortgage.

It was at The Good Guys in Cerritos CA (store has since closed down). Must of been around 1999, I think. I walked in and saw a Mitsubishi CRT rear projection HDTV playing HD clips of butterfly close-ups and I think other tropical stuff. I was blown away! I knew that I would end up being the first in my family to jump into the HD game.

A&B TV in Austin, Texas. Their website is miserable but the people, service and HT installs are top notch. I dig keeping my money local. If you live close, be sure to stop by.

1985, Sony exhibition in Japan

Ding Ding Ding...we have a winner !:)

Art

1985, Sony exhibition in Japan

Was it Tsukuba Expo?

WFAA in Dallas, the ABC affiliate, they had a 1080 Sony set in the engineering department showing a feed they pulled from Cowboys warmups, circa 1996 or so. Still the best I've ever seen, looked like a window you could fall through into the stadium.

MEC2

... when I plugged in and turned on the new Toshiba 52LX177 about three weeks ago and popped an HD DVD into the XA2. Heading back now to see 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time since the Glendale Cinerama in 1968. Every TV before this has only been "approximately" HDTV.

Had you asked me in 1981 with the shiny new Trinitron for the nipples for buttons on steel I would have said THAT was HDTV. ;)

2000 at Circuit City. Bought my first HDTV (Sony CRT) at hhgregg New Years Day 2001. 1080i set. Component only, DVI was just getting started, I thought I had blown it with the new interface coming on board. I am glad I didn't upgrade until the next go around with HDMI.

I likely saw my first HD feed at at Best Buy or Circuit City around 2002. Wasn't terribly impressed but I needed a new TV so I bought a Panasonic CRT that was HD ready.

I was so unimpressed with the quality of HD at the stores that I had the TV for two years before I decided to actually try out an HD feed. Phone calls to friends and family followed shortly after.

I likely saw my first HD feed at at Best Buy or Circuit City around 2002. Wasn't terribly impressed but I needed a new TV so I bought a Panasonic CRT that was HD ready.

I was so unimpressed with the quality of HD at the stores that I had the TV for two years before I decided to actually try out an HD feed. Phone calls to friends and family followed shortly after.

Tell me about it. I can't believe it's only in the past year or so that actual decent-quality HD feeds to HDTVs in stores have become the norm, instead of just SD or incredibly crappy, bargain-basement "HD." Last I looked, my local Wal-Mart was sending their tvs a better feed than the BB across the street.

No wonder so many people say they can't tell a difference or think "flat-panel tvs are over-rated." They've never seen what they can do!

I bought a 55" Tosh hd ready RPTV in late 1999 but didn't see HD on it until a few months later on an early model WinTV-HD card. There were some really great early PBS full bit rate HD demos. I miss the quality of those those and rarely see as good broadcast quality HD since. Or, who knows, maybe I've just gotten used to it.

- Tom

My first HD experience was at the now defunct Nobody Beats the Wiz around 1999. They had a 50+ incher setup with the most amazing Discovery-type documentary footage of the Grand Canyon. It was totally amazing at the time, I think the tv was going for around $10,000.

I believe my "first time" with HD was in early 2000, though I had the first gen WinTV-D card in Fall 1999, which could tune OTA ATSC, but only display at 480i/p.

I recall my amazement seeing the same PBS feed that trbarry did (from the same Detroit affiliate ;) ) via a trusty RCA DTC-100 on my NEC XE21 monitor, via analog RGB at native 1080i.

Those were the nascent, pre-DRM days :(

1985 at the Chicago Dealer Electronics show. Sony had several wide flat screens on a wall and showed crisp, colorful videos in hidef. At the time I thought I would have one in a couple years but it has taken me 25 years to get one.
Sony also showed a small hand held video camera (self contained tape and cam) no bigger than your hand. They let us video a scene with live japanese ladies and flowers and then played them back for us.

The Smithsonian. Don't recall the year, but it was not yesterday ;). It was the Japanese Muse system sourced from a laserdisc on a very bulky 16:9 CRT.

Love at first sight.

Thats exactly the same way I saw it too. I don't remember the year. But mid to late 90s seems right.

Adam

Well, we now have to wait for someone who saw the first demo's back in 1964...

My first HDTV experience in the wild was 1999 in a shop somewhere on Long Island.

Before that I saw some demo's during a tour at the national broadcast facilities. Cant' remember the excact date anymore. must have been mid eighties early nineties.

I first saw it when I worked at American TV and Appliance in Madison, WI. Must have been 1989 or 90. At the time it was being promo'd as "coming soon". I had no idea it would be over 15 years before I finally owned one. I was thinking more like 2-3 years.

My first exposure to HD was also a demonstration of the MUSE system in Japan back in the late 1980s, this was before actual consumer stuff had hit the market. First time watching HD in my own home was late 1999 with a Mits 46" RPTV in the U.S. Things sure have a lot changed since then.

Hi,

I saw my first high definition at a Mitsubishi Big Screen store in 1999. They were demoing via some sort of hard drive signal generator. At the time the only HD receiver they were offering cost $3,000 and only did over-the-air signals.

A month or so later I bought one of their first generation 4:3 60" CRT-based HDTVs. (60" on standard definition and 55" for high definition.) I passed on the Mitsubishi HD receiver and was HD receiverless for a little while. Fortunately, a few months later RCA came out with their excellent HD DIRECTV satellite receiver for a much more reasonable price of $650.

I've still got both the HDTV and HD receiver and, knock wood, haven't had any problems all this time.

Larry

I saw it at an elecctronics display at the Texas State Fair in about 1995. It was right after Dallas beat Pittsburg in the Super Bowl. They had the Sony 34" (about $10k at the time) showing a recording of the game. I stopped dead in my tracks. I called my wife over to check it out. You could see the laces on the ball on passes, blades of grass in the field, the texture of the jerseys, faces in the crowd, etc. I was impressed!

My first exposure was at a TV station in about 1999; they had an HD feed to a set in their lobby with a big sign about HDTV.

Alas, something wasn't right with their setup because it didn't look visibly better than SDTV, so it delayed my interest longer than it should have.

1991 or 92 at a broadcasting convention in New York City. I was with my dad who used to own a TV and radio station and he decided to take me along to see if I would get into what he was into. I pretty much already was since I grew up in a household with tons of the latest electonics due to his job and owning both.

It was in awe by the picture and remember it very well to this day. It was actually just a camera focused on flowers and the picture coming from an HD CRT.

About 15 years ago at the Smithsonian Museum

I think it was in 1997, at the HiFi Show in L.A. Joe Kane was using a 9" CRT FPJ on a 6' wide screen and using 720P. It looked amazing!!! Also had the best sub I've ever heard, a Revel.

Around 90 or 91 at the Smithsonian in DC. They had a good size TV displaying crystal clear images of flowery fields and whatnot. IIRC, the sign said that broadcasts of that quality were starting up in Japan around that time (or soon would be).

2001 on a 42" 16:9 CRT of a brand I cannot remember.

It was a fishing show out of all things and I thought I was looking out the window... I couldn't stop watching.

At home in 2001 when I got my first HD set. A 57" Toshiba RP CRT set.