High-Def Disconnect

Going the cable route seemed easiest. My provider in Fairfax, Cox Communications, made it easy: Simply exchange the digital cable box with the HD version. Taking the satellite TV path meant a complete overhaul. I'd need an HD receiver as well as an HD antenna, which meant DirecTV would have to come to the house to upgrade everything.

Over the long term, though, Cox HD is demonstrably more expensive than DirecTV. Both charge a monthly fee for the privilege of having HD service -- $6.95 for Cox, $9.99 for DirecTV -- but Cox also charges $9.99 per month per HD cable box, while DirecTV makes consumers buy each HD receiver for $99 with no recurring charge. After one year, the expenses are about the same. But over five years, the Cox $9.99 monthly fee for the HD box would total about $600, compared with $99 for the DirecTV HD receiver. My decision was made.

So now I was in love with this TV and its gorgeous picture. I watched a man tool around New Zealand in a hot-air balloon for hours because the picture was so ridiculously sharp. The Discovery HD Theater program "Equator" makes my television look like an aquarium. During a snowy Monday Night Football matchup between Green Bay and Seattle, not only could I watch snow turn to water as it hit Brett Favre's helmet, but I also could see the powdery wisps of pancake makeup on Tony Kornheiser in the broadcast booth.

But man cannot live on nature shows and sports forever. And neither cable nor satellite offers more than 12 channels of HD programming.

That's right. I paid $1,399 for my HD television, $99 for an upgraded receiver, $110 for the proper cables and an extra $10 a month to a satellite provider that offers me more than 200 channels -- and only 12 of those are in HD.

That's 6 percent. Six!

The other 94 percent of programming is in the regular 4:3 format, the same as the square of your grandfather's regular old TV. That leaves six inches shaded in on the left and right of my screen because most channels are not HD-ready.

And remember my TiVo plan, the one with an HD DVD library of Redskins games on the plane or in the press box? Wrong.

TiVo's 80-gigabyte recorder -- the one that requires a $16.95 monthly subscription -- doesn't work in HD. To record those programs, I need a TiVo HD box that costs -- get this -- $800. Really. And the TiVoToGo service, which transfers recorded programming to a laptop, doesn't work in HD, either.

The good folks at DirecTV informed me that I could still use digital video recording in HD and that their HD-DVR receiver costs $300. More money!

The compromise: The HD television is in the living room, but the TiVo and TiVoToGo are attached to the old Toshiba, where I get regular programming and create non-HD DVDs. And sometimes, that doesn't even work. One time, thanks to software crashes, it took nearly three days to burn the Redskins' 24-14 loss to the Falcons to a DVD.

In the end, I realized that the technology is far ahead of the infrastructure and, for me, there just aren't enough HD channels to justify the expense. If I hadn't needed a new set, I would have waited until there was more programming available.

One night, as my wife and I watched a DVD movie on the HD flat-panel TV, she noted how everyone looked a little fatter. I called Philips, freaked out that something was wrong with my new TV. As it turns out, I should be watching high-definition DVDs -- either the HD DVD format or another technology called Blu-ray -- and scrap my collection of 200 DVDs. Of course, those new DVDs work in only special HD DVD or Blu-ray players, which cost anywhere from $600 to $1,000.

And it's unclear -- as in the old VHS vs. Betamax war -- which of the technologies will become the standard. So in the meantime, I guess it's best to just watch movies with actors who look heavier than normal.

Or a lot of sports and nature shows.