Enough people have asked me about this, so I might as well post about it—knowing what I know now, would I switch to HDTV again? No, I wouldn't. It's little bang for a considerable buck, but worse, the net result is that I watch the vast majority of programming in lower definition than before.
Actual high def programming looks, of course, spectacular. Football is utterly gorgeous. When teams line up to kick a field goal, I can make out the facial expressions of the crowd in the stands. Unfortunately, this constitutes a small fraction of the programming I watch. Most of the shows on the major networks aren't available in high def, and the cable networks? Forget about 'em. You're watching low-def shows on a high-def display, which looks slightly worse than it does on your low-def TV.
Worse, though, is the aspect ratio. You're forever dicking with it. Most programming requires vertical letterboxing, so you have black bars on either side of the picture. But since the bars will permanently burn into a plasma display, you have to distort the picture such that it takes up the whole screen. What was 1 pixel is now smeared across several. Yeah, this is why you drop a few grand on HD: to distort the picture and make it even lower def.
The Cocksucker of the Year award (and I mean that in the non-gay-slur way, thank you very much) goes to DirecTv. They charge me $10 a month for HD programming. They charge me $250 for the NFL package. And when the season started and I went to turn on the Steelers game, I was denied access to their HD channel. "Oh, you have to pay another $100 to get NFL games in HD," DirectTv helpfully said.
Already several billion dollars invested, I cursed and paid the extortion money. And then the next week, I looked for the Steelers on HD, and they weren't among the selections. "Not all of the games are available in HD," DirecTv helpfully said.
It's happened three times now. Fills me with all sorts of warm tinglies inside.