In most cases, yes. The story I always tell is of my first experience seeing HDTV. I was watching a Penn State football game, the camera zoom in on the quarter back and you could see the hairs on his arm. You won’t see that kind of detail on TV or DVD.  If your DVD player has built in up-converting circuitry, that’s where your DVD player with it’s 480p of res can digitally enhances it to near 720p, you’ll see a mush sharper image although still not of the quality of HDTV.

Keep in mind, just because you have an HDTV, that doesn’t mean you will see everything in High Depth. You need to be watching a  channel that is in broadcasting in HD. Not all channels are currently sending a true HD signal.

You can find HDTV’s and HDTV compatibles at Walmart, Best Buys and other retail stores, so what is the difference?

Well price for starters, HDTV compatibles should be cheaper to buy but there is a reason for that. You see, HDTV compatibles don’t have a HDTV tuner in them. You are going to need an external tuner from your cable or satellite company to view anything. If you have just an antenna, it’s not going to work for you.

If you buy a HDTV unit it will have the tuner built in and you’ll be able to receive the video and audio signal from your antenna, cable and satellite dish with no problem.

OK, so why would anyone buy a HDTV compatible TV? Let me go on the record and say I would not buy one! But the people that do buy them usually because they just want to play their PS3 and other video games on them or use it as a monitor for their computer. Now that’s fine but if you change your mind six months down the road and want to watch HDTV, you’ll be back to the store spending more money.