Flat-panel TVs provide a large viewing area with almost no intrusion into your HDTV viewing room… and they offer high-quality HDTV pictures. But which one should you choose: LCD or Plasma?
LCD
Liquid Crystal Display HDTVs can make for excellent HDTV viewing. Here are a few reasons why:
Excellent color: LCDs can display millions of colors and do so accurately (meaning the color coming off the screen is faithful to the color in your broadcast or recording).
PC-monitor-capable: You can use many LCD HDTVs as big (huge!) PC monitors.
No burn-in: HDTVs that rely on phosphors, such as CRTs and plasmas, can, under certain [more...]

In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density Disc (SD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM’s president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.
Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba’s SD format with two modifications that are both [more...]

Blu-ray, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM; which format is compatible with your system?
BLU-RAY
Developed by Sony, Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format meant for storage of high-definition video and high-density data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). Compared to the HD DVD format, its main competitor, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer, 25 instead of 15 gigabytes.
Blu-ray gets its name from the shorter wavelength (405 nm) of a “blue” (technically blue-violet) laser that allows it to store substantially more data than [more...]

A DVD-Recordable or DVD-R is an optical disc with a larger storage capacity than a CD-R, typically 4.7 GB (4.38 GB) instead of 700 MB, although the capacity of the original standard was 3.95 GB. Pioneer developed the 8.54 GB dual layer version, launched in 2005. A DVD-R can be written to only once, whereas a DVD-RW (DVD-rewritable) can be rewritten multiple times. The DVD-R format was developed by Pioneer in autumn of 1997. It is supported by most DVD players, and is approved by the DVD Forum.
DVD discs are the same diameter (120mm) and thickness (1.2mm) as a Compact [more...]

Traditional television sets have a 4:3 aspect ratio. Widescreen television sets have a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Based upon pixel resolution, color resolution, color detail, black level reproduction and a virtual lack of color noise, the DVD picture is nearly 3 times better than conventional VHS.
DVD is a format that will provide significant picture quality advantages when connected to your television set via the S-Video connectors. Your DVD player must have S-Video output to take advantage of this capability. Remember that the color detail signal is so rich, you will find that you do not need to turn your sharpness control up [more...]