How are NTSC TVs holding up today?

I'm not really sure myself what is the difference between a "digital" TV and an "analog" TV. I think it is a gray area, sort of.


Any SDTV that even has a "2-line digital comb filter" is technically a digital TV because the incoming analog signal gets digitized, stored into memory, and processed to remove some of the artifacts caused by transcoding the color and luminance information in a composite video signal into one signal.


Starting this year, most SDTVs also have to include digital tuners so that they can tune into digital channels. But if you don't use your digital co-ax input, which will be the case for most users (since right now most people can't get too many channels through it anyway), and just use your standard analog co-ax inputs or the composite/S-Video/component inputs, then your TVs digital tuner is bypassed.


I think it is really just the CRT HDTVs that are "fully" digital, in that they always digitize any SD signal from all inputs into memory, store several full fields of information at once, run some relatively complicated de-interlacing and upscaling algorithms on that information, then convert back to analog for display. The drawback to these "digital" HDTVs is that they all seem to have a lot of digital video noise which is noticeable, especially on the User Menus, when you look at the TV from a very very close distance. I don't really see all that noise on the older SDTVs with 2-line comb filters or no comb filters.

Quote:
Ratman,


The OP seems, from everything I can tell, to be looking for an analog tv. Maybe also called NTSC.


As of earlier this year, I believe sometime in March, there are no more "large" crt sets offered without ATSC tuners. By large I'm thinking above 24".


So, if this guy truly is only in the market for a nice-sized analog set, he needs to be looking very hard right now to see what's on clearance.


I was attempting to define SD as digital, since the current marketing lingo for non-HD sets is "SD." If the guy was mistakenly thinking SD and analog were one and the same, then I was just trying to help him avoid a mistake since he's using the term SD in his posts.

I still think the old 4:3 SDTV is a very good thing to consider for many reasons. Most stuff is still broadcast in 4:3 SD format, even on digital cable.


Nothing displays SD better than an SDTV. They don't have to rescale the image and have the sharpest possible picture. They are also the best for playing previous-generation console videogames on (such as GameCube, PS2, XBox, and earlier) because they don't have the 1 to 3+ frame delay that most/all HDTVs do on SD signals, from their digital video processing (3D Y/C comb filter, 3D de-interlacing, etc).


Also CRT SDTVs are very cheap, especially the curved-screen models. I've always liked curved-screen SDTVs...it's not worth it to pay $100 more just for a flat screen CRT SDTV which often have worse image geometry than the curved screen models. I don't think the majority of media will be HD for many years more so SD still has life.


Those are just my opinions. Unfortunately I don't know what SDTV to currently recommend. Lately it seems most of the CRT companies are producing very cheap and low-quality CRTs, both HD and SD sets. I'm sure Sony still makes good CRT SDTVs but the Sony CRT SDTVs are much more expensive than the ones from Sharp, RCA, etc.