Chris Pirillo show with Xbox’s Larry Hryb

Scoble I'm telling you HDTV isn't worth it right now.

Yes I have an HDTV, yes I had an xbox 360, which btw thanks to the shortage I made a pretty penny off of, and yes I have Direct TV with all the HD channels.

You know what, I can count those channels on my fingers. And most of the stuff on said channels is crap anyway.

Is it nice the first time you look at it? Hell yes! But when you live with it... here is how your day goes

Is there anything on HBO? NO
Anything on Showtime? NO
Anything on Discovery HD? NO
Anything on those 3 bullshit HD channels which are just upconverted dvd's? NO

thinking... thinking...

Back on the computer I go!

I would highly advise against buying one this early. I would wait until more content is out there.

Stefan: sorry, once you get an Xbox that argument is out the window!!!

i did have an xbox 360, i had pgr3, and nba 2k6. i had it less than a week, then after seeing the prices these things were going for on ebay i immediatly dumped it since it wasn't worth that much to me.

Stefan: that's cool. The folks here at Pirillo's house don't agree with you, but there are plenty of people who would be willing to take an Xbox 360 off of your hands right now.

I agree with Scoble on this one. I have the OLD Xbox still since I cannot get my hands on the 360 and it looks awesome on my 52" HDTV, along with CSI xxxx, Las Vegas (you have got to watch that show on HD Robert), The Office, INHD, INHD2, concerts, Seahawks football games, etc. Yes, often there is nothing on HD and there should be more HD channels, but the HD makes some crappy shows look good so I watch them anyway.

I got rid of DirecTV to have local HD channels on Cable, eventhough a lot of the SD channels on cable really have bad reception. Maybe I'll switch back to DirecTV once their new satellites are providing enough new channels to switch.

Really though I'm waiting for IPTV from Verizon, supposedly they start next year in Everett and work their way down. I'll believe it when they start digging up Kenmore.

Just make sure you buy a 1080p set with HDMI connectors, probably no 1080p sets without it. No one needs 1080p yet, but might as well get ahead of the curve so you can watch blue-ray DVDs from your PS3. :)

Actually, for Scoble, I think now is an excellent time to get a HDTV. Because he mainly wants it for Xbox and some of the HD content out there, he can get a good set for a semi-reasonable price, which will cover him for 720p. If he was thinking PS3 would be the system to have, I'd say wait because 1080p TVs are still new and WAY too expensive. Of course, that begs the question of just how many PS3 games will actually be outputting 1080p, but that's for a different discussion.

You know the image of needing a HD TV to go with a 360, is really really bad marketing, edge-nutcase marketing at that. To really get 360 to function decently, you have to have an HD TV, a Media Center and a 360. Typical MFST, zapping the extreme edge geeks and gamers and missing the mainstream. And now is actually not a good time for HD, too early, and 1080p too expensive. If Microsoft Xbox marketing fluffballs are going to start marrying the idea of a 360 with HD, well, then take gun to head, shoot. But as Live Arcade has shown, it's not always the graphics, it's the gameplay.

Just bought a Sony 42" LCD driven projection set (about 12" deep). Bright colors. Nice picture quality. I had planned to spend $2699 for a CU top-rated Panasonic plasma until Best Buy (aka Worst place on the planet to shop) had their point of purchase station crash (they're blaming a recent change to an XP-based system for many many problems this holiday season) during my transaction. This resulted in a 45 minute delay and then the one set that I had bought was snatched up by someone else. Made me so mad. My wife helped me calm down and the next day we went back for our #2 choice - which was the Sony. I'm sure an LCD-based system is more prone to failure (like the DLP/color-wheel models), but with an extended warranty and no great long-term expectations we're actually very pleased. It was also $1599 vs. the $2699 for the Panasonic Plasma. Watched Leno last night through Comcast digital cable. I can now see what all the fuss is about. The picture is stunning. Still - the formatting issues and lack of content really do make it a luxury purchase pursuit and not, unfortunately, a necessity. Plus, there's the rarely published or talked about issue that regular TV - even through the digital cable box - SUCKS. I suppose it was a crappy signal/formal to begin with. Now, blow up NTSC video and stick it on a 1080i screen and you'll see how horrible it really is. Rich people (like Robert's longer-term MSFT colleagues) will surely have line doublers and stuff, but for the average folk, the picture quality of non HD is poor.

David: even for the rich people NTSC sucks. You just don't realize it until you have an HDTV screen in your house and get to see just how nice TV can be.