As any casual TV shopper may know, venturing into your local electronics store's HDTV section can be a bit confusing, to say the least. Unless you keep up with the ever changing technology and terminology of the industry, you risk making a mistake, or worse - wasting money, when the time comes to purchase your new set.

This article by George Ou should help sort things out. He covers the advantages and disadvantages of:

Projection: Pro: price. Con: viewing angle.
Plasma:Pro: resolution, colour, viewing angle. Con: price.
LCD:Pro: picture quality. Con: expensive large size sets.

George also advises, bluntly, against getting suckered into buying so-called high end cables:

Consumers need to get the concept of "monster cables" out of their minds since they DO NOT apply to the digital world. There is zero difference in quality between the cheapest $12 HDMI to DVI cable versus the $100 gold plated "monster cable".

He also makes available some colour gradient graphics and explains how to use them in testing the colour quality of an HDTV.

This is a great piece for anyone in the market for a new HDTV, and it's especially useful for those of us that may be more than a little confused and/or overwhelmed by variations in HDTV technology.

Also see this previous post on HDTV resolutions.

Although the title sounds like an Ebay auction that offers you 10 foot TVs for $2.99, this howto from Projector Central really does deliver a thorough walk through on constructing a projector screen yourself. The article details, in 7 steps, how you can create a 100 inch, 16:9 screen for $98.50.

Here's the criteria they were after, from the article:

It must be cheap. Total budget for all materials to make a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen, including frame, must be less than $100.

It must be simple and quick to assemble. We did not want to make a lifetime hobby out of making a screen. We wanted the materials to be easy to find, and we wanted to put it together in less than two hours of invested labor.

It must be easy to install. We wanted a no muss, no fuss solution with a fixed frame that we could hang on a wall in a matter of minutes.

It must perform!!! We had no delusions that we could invest a hundred bucks and a couple hours labor and come up with a screen that would match the quality of the Stewart screens we use in the projection labs. But how close could we come? That was the challenge. And as you will see below, the results were surprisingly good.

If the cost of the screen is what's been holding you back from buying a projector, perhaps a frugal DIY solution such as this one will be your tipping point.

Article: Make a 100" Screen for under $100

HomeTheaterBlog has documented a recent LCD television wall mounting and has shared the details for anyone looking to undertake the installation on their own. The installer lists the tools you'll need for the hanging and also covers finding an appropriate mount location, stud finding, cabling issues, etc.

About.com also offers some wall mounting instructions, including tips on handling situations where cables aren't (or can't be, for whatever reason) behind the wall:

We can either place an obstacle under the television, which would look odd, or we can cheat the eye with camouflage. I have a friend who had this very problem, and his solution was to create a molding that would be used as a cover for his cables. He painted the molding the same colour of his wall, and when placed over the cables it looks like part of the wall. Granted, it's raised about 2-3 inches off the wall, but it looks very natural. As far as supplies, small strips of wood (a 1x2 for the sides and 1x4 for the face) cut to the length of the TV to the floor should be enough to make such a piece.

Wikihow.com provides a more orderly and straightforward, step-by-step instruction set, if that's more your bag.

Alan Lofft of Axiom Audio has written this informative article on the do's and don'ts of setting up your first home theatre. Topics covered include cabling choices, speaker positioning, video tuning, connection types and a ton more. Here's a television tip, from the article:

Try this simple visual test to determine if you have your video image too bright or contrasty. Look at any white area on the screen during scenes from live TV or a movie. It could be the white shirt or blouse on an actor or TV host. Are you able to see detail within the white areas? If you can't, then you are likely running the brightness too high, which washes out fine detail in bright areas. So lower the brightness and/or contrast. There's a reason why control rooms for TV productions and telecasts are always dimly lit: it's because video images on the monitors look best in a dim or darker room and the greatest range of colors and tones can be displayed.

Alan's website is also packed full of home theatre information and worth checking out.

ProjectorCentral has a large projector database with an extensive criteria filter that enables you to find the projector that works best in your space. If you're planning a home theatre setup, you'll want to know which projectors will work with your available real estate. Feed the site the distance the projector will be from the wall as well as the desired image size and you'll receive a list of suitable units. There is a plethora of other filtering options available too; price, brightness, HDTV compatibility, PC card reader and so forth. Also worth checking out is the site's top 20 overall projectors.

Engadget has posted a useful step-by-step howto on building your own Tivo-like home theatre PC (HTPC) using MythTV. They list each piece of hardware they used on the way to a successful, smooth install. From the site:

The total for the base system is $988. The addition of the TV tuners brings the grand total to $1126.

This price is probably beatable if you opt for a lower end processor, which will save you some money and really wont cost too much performance-wise provided the tuner cards you choose do hardware encoding. Tuner based encoding takes the vast majority of processing load off of the CPU. That being said, faster is always better when it comes to CPUs, generally speaking, so too severe a drop in clock speed will hamper menu navigation and other features which will detract from the snappy, slick user interface that you want in a PVR. If you're not too Linux savvy and aren't ready to do a manual install, a great way to set up MythTV on a PC is by using KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is available on a downloadable, bootable CD that aims to make the MythTV installation as straightforward, user-friendly and painless as possible. If your system meets the hardware requirements, the CD will install MythTV onto your system while prompting you for only a minimal amount of configuration questions. If you encounter problems along the way, the KnoppMyth forum is invaluable. The site's admin, Cecil, not only tirelessly develops KnoppMyth, but also personally answers an unbelievable amount of questions on the forum, which, by the way, is packed full of information on getting up and running with MythTV - useful no matter what your method of installation.

Citizen has given a sneak peek of their new flexible clock, powered by technology from a company called E-ink. The clock is only 3mm thick and can bend around pillars, making it visible from many angles. This would be a fine addition to any recroom, fitting in nicely with your 360 degree LED television. From Yahoo:

Citizen will start production of the clock early next year upon receiving orders with a price tag at 500,000-600,000 yen (4,200-5,000 dollars) each.

via engadget

If you're in the market for an HDTV, check out CNET's response to reader questions regarding HDTV, and specifically 1080i vs 1080p, source importance, price/value, and some gotchas:

Those of you thinking of running your PC through a 1080p set should be aware that you may not necessarily get to use all that extra resolution--even if you have the right high-end graphics card. For instance, the Sharp set we tested allows you to max out at only 1,280x1,024 resolution while the less-expensive Westinghouse LVM-37W1, along with Samsung's 1080p RPTVs and one series of high-end sets from Mitsubishi, accept true 1,920x1,080 resolution from a PC.

So this guy combines an overhead projector and LCD projector panel, throws in a screen and for under $175, he's watching sweet, sweet big screen projected video. See also: Tom's Hardware version.

Electronic House has a nice slideshow of their product of the year picks. Selections include a nice variety of HDTVs, audio components, projectors and home automation toys. The Electronic House guys sure seem to know how to live.