There have been many great quests in the annals of myth and legend – The Golden Fleece, The Rescue of Helen of Troy, The Holy Grail, The Fellowship of The Ring. Here at The Geek Beat, one quest has loomed above all others: The Quest for A Functional HDTV Antenna.

Seriously, we’ve tried them all – indoor, outdoor, amplified – and they’ve all failed miserably. It’s embarrassing, really. The Geek Beat offices are based on a hillside overlooking the westside of Los Angeles; we have direct line of sight to every major digital transmitter in the L.A. basin. And yet not a single antenna we tested could manage to tune in more than one station at a time. Position it to get CBS, you lose NBC. Got NBC? Forget about FOX (actually, if it wasn’t for Bones and House, we would; but that’s for another article). It was truly crazy-making. (more…)

Got $70,000 to spare and a really big room? For that, plus another $10,000 for peripherals, you can own the world’s largest high-definition plasma TV: Panasonic’s 103-inch TH-103PF9UK.

It is, in a word, breathtaking: the kind of display that commands all eyeballs in the room, leaving everyone mesmerized. We got a look at this behemoth at Panasonic’s premiere event in Los Angeles today. It’s pretty darn nice – with a bunch of caveats. (more…)

With HD DVD and Blu-ray players costing upwards of $1000 a pop – assuming you can even find one – what’s a home theater aficionado in search of the highest quality video to do?

In a move so un-Microsoft-like that it may trigger identity verification tests throughout the company’s executive ranks, the Redmond, Wash.-based company has delivered a quick, easy and cost-effective way to add HD DVD playback to any home entertainment setup. (more…)

In this final installment of The Geek Beat’s series on Everything HD, we learn that while size matters when picking the best HD display, more often than not, he who lives with the most pixels wins.

So, you’ve got your HD disc player, your high definition cable or satellite service or your ATSC antenna ready to go. Now comes the fun part: picking a screen to see it all on. (more…)

This has been a big year for HD. The first generation of HD DVD players have arrived (with Blu-ray fast on its heels), more channels are offering HD content than ever before and televisions capable of displaying all that content at its eye-searing maximum resolution are finally available.

While HDTV displays have typically only supported images up to 1366 x 768 pixels (sometimes referred to as 720p or 1080i), new sets, like Sony’s recently-released 40-inch KDL-40V2500 Bravia LCD, can go up to 1920 x 1080 pixels (also known as 1080p), the HDTV standard’s maximum resolution. At The Geek Beat we refer to this resolution as “True HD,” because this is how the HDTV standard was meant to be viewed. (more…)