It seems that this question gets posed by one mainstream media outlet or another every year or so, and what better time to ask again than following estimates that 50 million American homes will be HDTV-equipped by the end of next year? It's no secret that carriers are pushing HD more frequently in their advertising, and now that select basic cable channels are finally making the move to HD, we wonder if the currently satisfied viewers will get curious and follow along? Numerous analysts have suggested that consumers won't make the jump en masse to demand HD programming until a noticeable amount of non-network content becomes available in HD, and while CNN, Food Network, TBS, and A&E (for instance) are all going (or have gone) HD, there's still hundreds of channels out there that have yet to purchase the first piece of HD recording equipment. Is HDTV ready for mainstream? Our gut says not quite, but we're a lot closer today than we've been.

[Image courtesy of PSBSpeakers]

My, how things have changed in just a few short months. While we once groused over retailers not devoting enough attention to high-definition film, it wasn't too long before the SACD and DVD-A kiosks were canned (hey, it's our best guess, anyway) and HD DVD / Blu-ray titles received expanded exposure. Now that both formats are still holding (relatively) strong, it looks like the major players are seeking to provide an equal amount of promotion for each "until customers tell them they shouldn't." Jim Litwak, president and CEO at Trans World, was even quoted as saying that while Blu-ray sales were currently trumping HD DVD, "the customer is still saying that they want HD DVD." Firms such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Virgin Metastores were all noted as companies unwilling to "snub" one format while the war raged on, and that sits just fine with us.

Well done Kim Komando of USA Today. Well done. Projectors can be a great option for some consumers that seeks a HUGE screen but have space requirements. (and a budget)  But they can be daunting because of the huge price range ($800 - $15,000) but Kim did a great job laying out most of the things you need to look for. She goes over LCD, DLP, and CRT options and talks about how important lumens is. Kim even talks about their Achilles heal: the pricey bulb.

Ms. Komando covers most of what a person should look for but forgot to cover the different resolution. A lot of lower priced units do not produce a high enough resolution to be considered high-def. They will display the same image, but will do so by lowering the resolution of the signal to its native resolution. You can find good inexpensive projectors for under a thousand that does have a good resolution however; just stay away from the 800x600 units if you want to use it for HDTV.

Check out Kim's guide to projectors if you have any questions about these mini-giants of TVs.