Black Friday promises deals on HDTVs, riots likely {Engadget HD}

Nov 9th 2006 10:28PM Ya know, there are a lot of people out there who are being misled by these el cheapo EDTV and HDTV monitors. I was looking through some of 'em and about 80-85% of the monitors' max resolution is something like 1280x800 or 1366x900, some are at 1440x10xx (or close to that, I don't recall the exact resolution). Very very few are full 1920x1080 screens, and the ones that are are considerably more expensive. I think a lot of people are being misled about HD/ED/SD and there will be a looooot of very unhappy people on February 9th 2009 when they're not able to play HD material on their EDTV (or it will look substandard compared to a normal HD monitor). I'm not sure I feel sorry for people, since they should have done some research before buying, but it almost does seem like the companies are intentionally misleading people in an effort to sell more TVs, which is something we've never seen before. 5 years ago, you bought a TV and it was a TV, they were all pretty much the same other than the size...you didn't have to worry about resolution or contrast ratio, nits or anything like that, and I think a lot of people are going to continue to buy TVs in the old manner...a TV is a TV is a TV...but it's not anymore.