Ah, I paid $500 for my Oppo Blu-ray player, so I think it's pretty impressive that you can get a 32" 1080p display along with a Blu-ray player for only $100 more.
Sure, this new Insignia combo won't beat the Oppo in picture or sound quality, but that's not the point. It would be more appropriate to compare this new combo to other LCD TVs in the $500-600 range.
A few years ago my wife and I bought my mom a 26" 720p LCD for about $600. The contrast ratio was poor and the colors weren't perfect, but it was quite a step up from her old analog TV. This new Insignia could be a decent choice for an older relative who just wants a simple replacement for an older TV. Add a $25 over the air TV antenna and an $11 per month Netflix subscription with Blu-ray and you have a lot of entertainment without much out of pocket expense.
I really want a strong competitor to force TiVo and Windows Media Center to continue to innovate. I had high hopes for the native HD user interface on the Moxi box.
That said, the lack of over the air tuners is a deal breaker for me. I gave my cable company the old heave-ho back in October when they switched HDnet and HDnet Movies to switched digital video. I realized that 85-90% of what I watch is network HD that is available for free over the air.
Time Warner announced that they were getting rid of HDnet and HDnet movies and I felt even more certain about my decision to deep six cable. Then Turner Classic Movies and BBC America announced that they were launching HD channels by late July and I actually gave some serious thought about paying for television programming again. However, Time Warner's foolish decision to drop HDnet Movies means that I will have to wait for the new HD DirecTivo box. Time Warner Cable will get $30 from me every month for internet access, but they won't get a dime for video programming.
I really liked the Pioneer Kuro plasma panels (RIP), but I was quite pleased to get a 1080p front projector for $1350. Sure, the black levels aren't as good with an LCD front projector as with a plasma display, but there's something good to be said for a >100" screen for less than half the price of a 60" Pioneer plasma.
Before purchasing that overpriced, under-performing LDC panel with the 12,000K color temperature, take a good look at what the best front projectors can offer. Sure, you need to replace the bulb every two years or so, but a big part of watching an epic movie is having a high quality image fill a large amount of your field of view. I wish I'd gone with front projection years ago, but today's projectors offer an amazing bang for the buck.
Project Cavalry seems like a good step for Comcast. (Sort of like RCN's "Analog Crush".)
However, Comcast needs to stop cramming three MPEG-2 HD channels into one 6 MHz QAM channel. Bit stripping practices like this result in more channels of HD-lite, and still not enough channels to compete with the 100+ real HD channels that DirecTV and Fios offer. Worse still, Comcast uses an overly-compressed triplex transmission scheme with their "Headend in the Sky" (HiTS) system to send out overly compressed channels to Comcast and non-Comcast cable systems alike.
As madgamer says, it would be nice if Comcast didn't encrypt the content in the extended basic tier when they convert it to digital. Nonetheless, Comcast at least isn't as bad as TWC about applying copy once flags to channels where the content owners don't actually require the copy once flag.
Wow, $250 for a $50 monoprice switch, a 2m HDMI cable and a 6" HDMI extension cable? Crazy high estimate for these three items, but I need a new HDMI switch. My four port HDX-401E from Monoprice won't pass 1080p/60 signals; hopefully the HDX-501 will work better.
Otherwise I'll have to drop $99 on the Oppo three port HDMI switch. Pick me please fellas!
Actually the sound quality of Dolby Tru HD and DTS-MA is quite amazingly better than the earlier compressed digital soundtracks, assuming you have halfway decent audio gear.
In many ways I find the increase in sound quality more striking than the increase in picture quality. Sure, a 1080p movie will look great on a large display that properly shows 24p content. However, if you have a 720p display, an older 1080i display, or a smaller screen you won't get the full effect of Blu-Ray video quality.
Even many older receivers that have 5.1 or 7.1 analog multi-channel inputs will allow you to enjoy the improved sound quality of the new lossless audio compression standards. Lossless video compression is years away and may never be feasible. Lossless audio compression is here today and it can sound wonderful.
How about linking to Metacritic or perhaps Rotten Tomatoes for the reviews? It seems like aggregate reviews tend to be more accurate than an individual review that might be an outlier.
Definitely a great value-add to have the link for Netflix. Hope all the other Engadget HD readers don't make the wait for new movies that much longer.
I have an over the air only household. Then again, I'm enjoying the hell out of local OTA HD content. I can get most everything else that I need through Blu-Ray and DVD rentals, legal internet downloads (Hulu and South Park Studios), and watch it now from Netflix.
Some of the OTA only households are quite well prepared for the digital conversion. Let's kill off analog TV finally!
"I have a MacBook Pro and an Xbox 360 and I would like to get a 20- to 24-inch display that will support both devices. The speakers should be inbuilt, or there should be an aux out on the display to hook up external speakers. Help! Please!"
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