It's that time of year to plunk down a big chunk of dough for a big screen HDTV just before the Super Bowl. Before you do that, you might want to take a peek at an article at the NewScientist.com entitled Nice TV, shame about the picture. The article mentions:

If you are planning to buy one of the new ultra-wide flat-screen TVs, beware. On show in the shops, they bowl customers over with the sheer size of the images they display. But in many cases, once buyers get them home they quickly realise that the picture quality leaves a lot to be desired.

This is because many flat-screen sets simply stretch pictures designed for smaller screens. Doing this makes the pictures' coarse line structure and low pixel count all too obvious. High-definition TV (HDTV) services, which transmit much more finely detailed pictures, are beginning to go on air, but many of today's large flat-screen TVs will not be able to take advantage of them.

So if you're in the market for a big screen HDTV, be sure to check out the rest of this informative article or you could even build your own non-HDTV big screen TV.