MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Tech Tuesday. Walking into the TV section of your favorite big-box store can be mesmerizing: the big screens, the surround sound, the crystal clarity of "Toy Story 3" coming from the Blu-ray player. And over at the home theater department, there's a guy watching a 3D movie on an HDTV that has Wi-Fi, Netflix, e-mail and texting. The TV room just isn't what it was. It used to be so simple, cable or rabbit ears?

MR. KOJO NNAMDINow, TVs are essentially computers with features like Hulu, Vudu, Netflix and Roku, options that make it sound like you're visiting exo-planets rather than loading a movie. And why bother going to work when you can read e-mail, hear voicemail, text and surf the web straight from the comfort of your plush recliner? But do you really need a TV that does all that? And how do you choose a new TV that's right for your lifestyle? Joining us in studio to help answer these questions is Jim Barry. He's the "Digital Answer Man" for the Consumer Electronics Association. Jim, thank you so much for joining us.

MR. JIM BARRYWell, hello, Kojo. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

NNAMDIYou're welcome. And joining us from studios in San Francisco is Brian Cooley, editor-at-large for CNET. Brian Cooley, thank you for joining us.

MR. BRIAN COOLEYHello, Kojo. Hello, Jim.

BARRYHey, Brian, how are you?

NNAMDIAnd our listeners should already know how to join us...

COOLEYGood.

NNAMDI...but here's a reminder. You can join the conversation by calling us at 800-433-8850. Go into our website, kojoshow.org. Send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. Jim, what kind of decisions do I need to make before I hit the TV sales floor at Best Buy or Costco or wherever?

BARRYYeah, well, you're right that it's not like buying a TV just a few years ago. And, you know, the research used to say that people bought a TV every eight or 10 years. If you go back 10 years, you're talking an entirely different ballgame from what we're looking at now. So you want to -- and you're right. Before you go into the store, you want to do some research. You can do it online. There's some good websites to go to. You can do it at the newsstand. And then you go in the stores, and you can shop around before you actually buy. So there's a couple of things now. I mean, all of the TVs are flat panel TVs now, and you have basically two choices there: LCD, which is liquid crystal display, or plasma displays.

BARRYAnd then there's some subsets there. But, basically, LCD is in any screen size you want, from tiny ones up to the huge big ones for home theaters, and plasma is pretty much in 40" and larger. So if you get into the larger screen size, then you want to choose plasma or liquid crystal display. So those are a couple of the things to start with. Then you want to talk about screen size. Some of that is -- depends on the room. You also want to think about how you get your TV. Do you get it on cable or satellite or through a phone line, a fiber-optic phone line? Or do you get it the old-fashion way, off the air, as about 10 percent of us still do? So you think about that.

BARRYAnd I always tell people, too, don't only think about what you're watching and where you're watching it and how you get it, but also think about the connectors, things about the back of the set or the sides or the front of the set. Because we don't really just buy a TV anymore because we hook that baby up to our cable or satellite, our DVD player, the new Blu-ray players, to video games, to DVRs, like TiVo and other ones. So you're going to think about all those connectors at the same time.

NNAMDIIt's a Tech Tuesday. On your choice of TV, Jim, you can recommend -- can you -- some good consumer sites where people can research TVs?

BARRYSure. One is actually the guy at the other end of the line here. CNET is a good one that reviews products and has chat rooms and does all kind of -- has news...

NNAMDICNET has a TV buying guide. You can find a link to it...

BARRYRight.

NNAMDI...at our website, kojoshow.org. What else?

BARRYC-N-E-T.com, that's a good one. The Consumer Electronics Association, the easy one there is ce.org, which links to all the company websites, but there's a couple of others. There's one called digitaltips.org, digitaltips.o-r-g, which has some basic information about different categories of electronic products. You can go there and check out some of those things. And then there's a new one CEA has, the association -- it's called the Tech Enthusiasts. It's C-E-A-techenthusiast.com, and that's for -- that's a community. And you can get discounts and all kinds of other stuff. That's just beginning. You can become a member of the Tech Enthusiast community.

NNAMDIYou can find links to all of those at our website, kojoshow.org. Brian Cooley, most flat panel TVs sold today are LCD-based or plasma-based, but retailers are really pushing LED TVs. What should we know about those TVs? And why are they more expensive?

COOLEYWell, LED TV is a variant of LCD. So, like Jim mentioned, liquid crystal display televisions are available in just about every size, and they're what you choose for the smaller size, like a bedroom set in the 30-ish range. But LED is another way of lighting an LCD. Traditionally, an LCD television has basically fluorescent tubes behind the picture like you see up in the ceiling of your office, let's say, that are where the light comes from. And then the pixels in the front are where the color comes from. But what they're doing now is replacing those fluorescent tubes in the back with smaller, more efficient, more accurate LEDs like you might see in your LED pocket flashlight.

COOLEYAnd those have a variety of benefits. The most obvious one you'll see is it allows the TV to be made much thinner. Instead of being maybe 2" or more thick -- which is still pretty thin -- now, we're getting down to as little as about an inch of actual depth of the television. That may sound trivial until you see one of these in the living room or mounted on a wall. And it's amazing how it vanishes that much more into just picture and not all that plastic bezel and depth of case around it, so it's an aesthetic issue. But more importantly, LED is a more efficient way to light a picture, so it will tend to use less energy -- though how much will vary on the comparison you're making.

COOLEYAnd it also has the promise of being a more accurate way to illuminate an LCD television. Though I think it still needs about another year for it to really get fully developed because there are two kinds. There's edge-lit LED, where the lights are along the edges of the case in the back -- you don't see them -- and local-dimming, where there's a complete panel of LEDs behind the picture, and they switch on and off depending what part of the picture should be bright or dark. But those are relatively new technologies. And I think, a year from now, they're really going to be quite a bit better, and the prices will come down.

NNAMDIIf you're throwing out your old TV and bringing in one of those new 1" TVs, you'll notice it's more than an aesthetic issue, it's a physical issue. The throwing out of the old TV, all of a sudden is very, very difficult, and the bringing in of the new one is so much more easy.

BARRYAnd those old ones are heavy. I had that experience not too long ago where we had a 27 -- in my office, we had a 27" really nice set that was about 15 -- at least 15 years old. Now, we brought in a nice 32" LCD, and this is in a home office. Now, it's very nice, but then I had both of my daughters helping me carry out the old one. And they were saying...

NNAMDIThrowing out a refrigerator.

BARRY...wow, this is heavy. Yeah, and, you know, there are a lot of other issues there about how to get rid of electronic products and how to recycle them. It's one of the big issues with all of this, you know, the $170 billion worth of this stuff we buy every year. What do you do with the old stuff? Now, we've got a couple of -- there is actually a couple of good websites to go to on that regard as well.

NNAMDIOkay. And how can people find those websites?

BARRYWell, one is myGreenElectronics.org -- myGreenElectronics.org. And that's all together. That's kind of a mouthful. But myGreenElectronics.org, another one from the Consumer Electronics Association, the interesting thing about that is you can put in your ZIP code, and it will tell you where there's a recycling center near you. Now, it may be a waste-disposal place. Sony has a deal with waste management. It may be a store, maybe a BestBuy store, which on occasion does -- some of them do on a regular basis, you'll be able to bring your products back. Some of the stores even -- you know, usually TVs, if you take it to the local -- I know in my town, you take it to the local dump, they're going to charge you.

NNAMDIYup.

BARRYSome of the stores will charge you that, but then they will give you back a coupon for a discount in the store. So you want to look at that and put in your ZIP code and you will find out a place near you to dispose of those old TVs.

NNAMDIIt's Tech Tuesday on buying a TV, more complicated than it used to be. We're talking with Brian Cooley, editor-at-large for CNET. He joins us from studios in San Francisco. In our Washington studio with us is Jim Barry. He's the "Digital Answer Man" for the Consumer Electronics Association. If you'd like to call us, the number is 800-433-8850. Brian, should we just avoid buying plasma TVs because of the burn-in factor? Or is that not a problem anymore?

COOLEYNo. That's highly overblown, so to speak. It's definitely an issue that was more of a problem -- you have to go back at least a year. There's been a lot of advancements in the plasma technology, so that burn-in is not such an issue. Now, if you park any image on a plasma TV, like you pause a game and leave it there for several days, you're going to have an issue. But that's just poor usage of the device. That's nothing that the manufacturer really should be on the hook for having prevented. So, yeah, don't do anything dumb like that. But beyond that, we don't find there's any serious issue with plasma burn-in at this point, not in the traditional usage and functional lifecycle of the product.

COOLEYAnd plasmas still do have this, you know, narrowing, but still noticeable, edge in terms of the richness of the picture. And that comes from the fact that they have deeper black levels. When a plasma element -- one of those little picture elements or a pixel -- says, I'm going to go black now, it goes black because there's no light behind it like there is with the LCD I was just describing. The pixel itself creates its own light, so when it shuts off, it shuts off. That creates true black, and therefore all the colors around it look that much more saturated as well as some other technical differences. But that's why plasma looks different, but the difference between plasma and a good LCD is becoming really nil at this point.

NNAMDIHere's Wanda in Washington, D.C. Wanda, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

WANDAHi. I'm calling because -- hello? Hello?

NNAMDIYes, Wanda, we're here.

COOLEYHello, Wanda.

WANDAOkay. I'm sorry. I'm calling because I want to be able to use my television with exercising. And I bought a PlayStation and something called Dance Factory before, and I ended up having spent a lot of money. And when I finally hooked it up, I didn't find it very user-friendly. So I happened to wander -- well, not wander -- but I was in BestBuy and happened to see them on some large screen showing this new thing where people can -- it's like using your whole body. And you can see the image, and you're kind of competing with their whatever -- their fake person on the screen...

COOLEYWell, good for you, Wanda.

WANDA...(unintelligible) exercise.

COOLEYYeah, well, good for you with the exercise. I need to do a little of that myself. But I think what you're describing is the Kinect from Microsoft for their Xbox 360. And the Kinect -- we know that the Wii changed the -- pardon the pun -- the game a couple of years ago by getting you off the couch, exercise more than your thumb with the Wii from Nintendo. And now, we have the Move from Sony, which also uses a wand as the controller. The Kinect, you become the controller.

COOLEYIt's really a remarkable piece of technology that is a sensor for both video and sound and motion, and you then become the controller. So it sees you and watches you, and then you do that dancing or whatever you want. And it's -- the technology is remarkable, and it's $150. If you already have the Xbox 360 -- if you don't have that yet, it's about 300 bucks for the whole package. But I think Brian would attest it's -- for what you get for that, it's really an advance in remarkable technology.

NNAMDIBrian?

COOLEYYeah, and this is the hardest thing to find this holiday season, is the Kinect. It's red hot. It's difficult to get your hands on, which is usually a good sign. The wisdom of the crowd has spoken and says, yes, this is the future of gaming. It's going to be the body as the controller, no longer the wand or the nunchuck or the gamepad or whatever it may be, which creates the kind of, I think, almost intuitive experience that you're seeking in this exercise program.

NNAMDIWanda, your turn.

WANDAI need all the help I can get. So I would need to buy the Xbox -- was it an Xbox something you said?

BARRYThe Xbox 360 is the one that that works with, and you can buy that with the Kinect. As Brian said, it's been in short supply, but I think they're trying to get them out as fast as they can between now and Christmas. And the total package will be about 300 bucks.

WANDAOkay. Well, I can wait until after Christmas. I just need it, you know, starting in January though.

BARRYYeah, well, you're already exercising, so that's good.

NNAMDIWanda, thank you very much for your call.

WANDAThank you, Kojo. Bye-bye.

NNAMDIJim, before we go further, let's just talk about a basic HDTV purchase. What will I get if I just purchase an entry-level TV this season?

BARRYWell, entry-level, the good news there is that you can get one for just a couple of hundred dollars. And what you're looking at, some of the -- again, we're talking about -- this is not what -- the way they used to advertise TVs in the good old days, and you'll see some numbers that can be confusing. Usually 720 and 1080 are the numbers. These are lines of vertical resolution that are -- the TV is capable of delivering. So usually if you're doing an entry-level, you may do all right with a 720. A TV that's advertised as 720p, and P means progressive. You see some 1080i -- I is interlaced. It's the way those images, those lines get put on the screen. All of this happens in a blink of an eye.

BARRYBut any rate, you can probably save a little money if you get one at 720 rather than 1080. There's a lot of the programming that's out is in 720p. Most of the sports, all the Disney stuff, ESPN and ABC and so forth uses 720. Fox uses 720. So you may be able to save a couple of bucks by looking at the entry-level, the ones that say 720 rather than 1080.

NNAMDIBrian, there's so many confusing options that you can get with your HDTV. Which specs should I ignore as I listen to the sales pitch?

COOLEYYeah, it's kind of taking the question from what we just talked about, which is sort of what's a good basic value television? That would be a 720p with perhaps only a 60 hertz refresh rate, which has been standard for a long time -- and that's still fine -- and the progressive scan which all 720p sets have. But to go into, let's say, a little more aggressive sweet spot, so I'm not pushing you into things that are speculative, but we're also not talking of basic television. You'd look for 120 hertz refresh rate.

COOLEYThat means that the TV repaints the picture twice as fast as traditionally, which is that 60 refresh rate -- which is still fine -- but 120 gives you smoother times during action or fast action on the screen. So you're going to see less blur and smear, which your eye barely picks up, but it just looks a little bit less accurate when you're watching a ball game or watching a performance on TV or an action movie, for example.

NNAMDIHow about like...

COOLEYThen, of course -- I'm sorry.

NNAMDIHow about contrast ratio?

COOLEYContrast ratio is something that, honestly, we can give you numbers all day long, and you can go shop them. It doesn't equate to a better viewing experience. It can be measured. It doesn't -- unless they're dramatically different. And they rate these the way audio companies rate their wattage. You know, 600, 1,000, 2,000 watts. It tends to be not a great barometer of what you're really seeing.

NNAMDIHow about if the sales person is trying to sell me on the viewing angle?

COOLEYViewing angle can be very important, actually, because that's the angle off center. Imagine it sort of looking from side to side from your television out to the room. How wide, how far to the side can you sit and still see the picture with adequate or, let's say, 90 percent brightness as if you're sitting right in front or compared to that? And that's really important for getting people to come over and watch television and enjoy the game or enjoy the Academy Awards or whatever it is. So viewing angle is important to get right. That's easy to check in the store. Just walk around the TV, and you can see which ones drop off really fast and which ones don't.

NNAMDIFor all of those of us who have sat in the corner front seat in the movie theater, actually.

BARRYI know. Well, you're absolutely right. And it goes back -- Brian's absolutely right, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier. What I like to ask people is, what do you watch? Brian was mentioning the refresh rate and stuff. If you watch a lot of fast action stuff -- you're watching a lot of sports -- you want to make sure that that's -- it's not going to be -- have a lag. If you do have crowds or if you have a living room setup or a TV room setup like I have, where one side you have actually -- have a couch that some people sit on, where you do want to make sure you get that side viewing angle.

BARRYSo think about all of those things. The other point that Brian just made is absolutely right. The good news now -- you know, we've been talking about these TVs for a long time -- is you can go in the store now and make your own comparison and say, that one looks just like what I want, and this is the way I'll be watching it at home. And the plasma versus LCD, once you get larger than 40" -- again, some of that becomes a real personal preference. You can say that's the one that I want.

NNAMDIA lot of people would like to talk to you about this. But, first, we've got to take a short break, so stay on the line. But you can still call us at 800-433-8850. It's Tech Tuesday. We're talking buying a TV. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIIt's Tech Tuesday. We're discussing buying a TV with Jim Barry. He's the "Digital Answer Man" for the Consumer Electronics Association. Brian Cooley is editor-at-large for CNET Studios. We have a lot of callers on the line. But just before I go to them, Brian Cooley, how important is it to check the inputs when I go to buy a TV?

COOLEYIt's very important. And the key one you want to look for is as many HDMI inputs as you can find.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

COOLEYThat's the way the industry is going. There is still a good use for the S-video for your older gear. I have an old laser disc player, and I use S-video for that -- a few other decks that are legacy. And, of course, you have what's called component, which is an analog set of those little barrel-shaped jacks that are called RCA jacks.

NNAMDIMm hmm.

COOLEYAnd that can deliver high def, even though it's analog, and it also allows you to connect to a wider variety of perhaps slightly older gear. But it's a good lifesaver when you're running out of connections. But HDMI is the key. You want two or three HDMI connectors on your television. Otherwise, you're going to have to rely on your AV receiver to do all of your input switching if you only have one HDMI on your TV, but it's rare to find that few today.

NNAMDIBut we got an e-mail that asks, "What's the deal with HDMI cables that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars?" Jim?

BARRYOh, they certainly can be expensive, but you don't necessarily have to spend that kind of money. HDMI cables can -- you usually don't get -- it's usually an add-on with the set. It's one of those things. So think of in the stores as way for them this market. The good news about televisions for consumers is that prices are unbelievably good. I tell my friends there's never been a better time to buy a television set, and I've been at this for 30 years. But that's not such good news for the retailers and the manufacturers because the margins have been compressed. So the accessory items, including the cables, including HDMI cables can -- are a place where they look for some margin.

NNAMDIAsk for an extra HDMI cable. Here's James in Seabrook, Md. James, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JAMESYes. I was calling because you just mentioned a moment ago about the component inputs. And I was reading an article in this Sound & Vision from, I guess, Ken Pullman, that said that the federal government is going to make it illegal to have those inputs starting in 2012, and maybe by 2015, that you won't even able to get them on the sets anymore because of copy protection. Can you comment on that?

COOLEYYeah, there is an effort to plug what's called the analog hole. So if you have an analog set of jacks coming out of a device into another device -- whatever those may be -- you can transfer the media. You can make copies of media, a DVD to a tape or to a DVD or what have you or to a computer or what have you. And that's an analog thing. The digital connections, like HDMI, have the provision for the original content -- let's say it's a DVD you bought -- to tell that port you may not allow this content to be routed to a recorder.

COOLEYIt's very controversial stuff because a lot of people say, wait a minute, I bought it. I should have the right to make a backup copy for personal use. But it's different between the music and video industries, what rights you have to make copies. You can burn a CD into mp3s on your computer. You may not circumvent the copy protection on a DVD, though, to make a copy. So they're two different sets of law.

JAMESWell, what about the -- you know, if you've got tapes that you've made over the years on VHS and such, and you want to play it back, if you get -- over time will the TV sets no longer have the inputs because they're afraid that (unintelligible).

COOLEYKeep an old TV around.

BARRYThat's one -- one solution is to keep an old TV. The other is to convert those tapes to a DVD or put them onto a hard drive. I would recommend that anyways...

COOLEYYeah.

BARRY...for any tapes, not necessarily feature films. They become so inexpensive where you can just download them or stream them. But the important stuff -- the kids growing up, the graduations, the Little League games -- if you have those on tape, I would definitely transfer those to a disc and have those -- and I'd probably put them in more than one place. We don't -- we're not sure how discs -- long discs are going to last, but they're certainly going to last longer than tapes.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, James. Good luck to you. On to Laverne in Washington, D.C. Laverne, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

LAVERNEYeah, hi. This program is right on time. I need to buy a television set in two days.

LAVERNEAnd I'm going to have to look at the transcript of this program. But I was in the store two nights ago, and I was informed that, besides the LCD and the plasma, which was my choice, there's now an LED. If that's been out there, I was not aware of it.

COOLEYYou know...

LAVERNEThe sales person told me it's more energy efficient. It's actually better than the LCD, and I had never really heard of it. And he even went into what brand of television -- I won't give free advertising -- but he even told me the particular brand of television set which was, you know, preferred. But what is this LED? And how does it compare to the LCD or the plasma?

NNAMDIHere's Jim Barry.

BARRYYeah, well, Brian just mentioned that a few minutes ago as well. LED means light-emitting diode, and it's the way that they backlight an LCD set. I was actually on a program much like this a few weeks ago where a fellow called in and said he bought an LED TV in the store, and he got home. And it said LCD, and he thought he had gotten the wrong set. But it is an LCD -- liquid-crystal display set -- but the LED is the way they backlight it. And the salesman was right in this respect. It does have a couple of benefits. One is it's more energy efficient. It uses less energy because of that LED lighting.

LAVERNEAll right.

BARRYThey can be much thinner -- in some cases, less than an inch. And they can give you a little sharper picture as well because of the way that's lighted. So -- and it will probably cost you a little bit more. It won't be the lowest priced LCDs. It will probably have a little premium on it, but it is the -- the hot area of LCDs are LEDs.

LAVERNEOkay. Great. Thank you.

NNAMDILaverne...

BARRYGood luck, Laverne.

NNAMDI...thank you so much for your call. On to Sheryl in Washington, D.C. Sheryl, your turn. Go ahead, please.

SHERYLYes, Kojo. Thank you for taking my call. I love your show. I was calling regarding being able to watch Internet television on a standard television. What are the options that are available to consumers for that?

NNAMDIBrian?

COOLEYI have two go-to products for you there. First, the one that I think is perhaps the most universally appealing is from a company called Roku. They have a box called the XD. You can get it for as little as $59, and that's list. Look for an even cheaper than that. And it lets you bring in primarily Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, MLB.TV and then a variety of Web sort of content providers out there. But that's going to be a great start for streaming full-screen TV and movie content to your television. No computer, no browsers, not a computer experience at all. And it uses your existing broadband Internet connection. So you're not using cable satellite or over the air in this case. It all comes over broadband.

COOLEYThe one asterisk on this is if you have a lot of investment in the Apple iTunes world, or you want to watch YouTube videos on your TV -- and that's not just always amateur stuff anymore. A lot of big production stuff's on YouTube -- then look at an Apple TV for $100 because that will let you look at your iTunes videos and movies. And it also has YouTube, which for some reason the Roku doesn't.

SHERYLI appreciate the information. Thank you.

NNAMDISheryl, thank you very much for your call. Jim, TVs are starting to look and behave just like computers with Web browsers, air mice, texting, Skype and other options. What do you need to keep in mind before you go for all of these Internet TV options?

BARRYWell, again, go back to what you want to do and what you like to watch and what else you have in your house. As Brian just mentioned -- he mentioned two of the growing number of boxes that you can hook up to your television to stream Internet content movies or whatever. There's a lot of the Blu-ray players now have Netflix built in. He mentioned Roku, Apple TV. There's VUDU. There is, now, Google TV, which is either built into a set. Vizio has some now, Sony Bravia sets or Logitech has one. They call it Revue, which is a separate box. That's a little pricey at $299.

BARRYBut what this means -- the buzzword we've used in electronics for years is convergence. And, really, in this sense, it means the Internet and the television programs all coming together. So you have separate boxes, or you have it increasingly built in to the set. So you're going to see more of those. We're going to see a lot of that at this year's Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas. So that means we'll see a lot more of those on the store shelves next year -- this time next year.

NNAMDISpeaking of what's built in to the set, we got an e-mail that asks, "How reliable are TVs with built in DVD players?"

BARRYWell, usually it's a smaller set, and they're pretty reliable, in my experience. Again, this is kind of a specialty item. This has been something going way back, TVs with video cassette recorders built in have always been a big, big product, and then TVs with DVD players. Again, it's the simplicity. It might be something -- I'm thinking of some uses I've seen of at a beach house or at a -- or in a bedroom or in a spare room where you have the two of those things in one unit. So usually it's a smaller set, and, in my experience, they usually work pretty well.

NNAMDIIt's Tech Tuesday. We're discussing buying a TV. How old is your TV? Do you feel like you're living in the TV Dark Ages? Call us, 800-433-8850. Are you willing to pay more for set-top media boxes like Roku, Apple TV and Google TV? 800-433-8850. Brian, a remote control seems like a pretty small detail in a TV purchase. With a lot of us end up with too many of these things in our living rooms, how do we keep the count down when you buy a TV?

COOLEYOh, you have to get a unified remote. And this is a remote that will take all the functions of those other remotes, and it will learn and emulate them. And that's not all that new. Those have been around for 20 years or more and affordably so. But the thing that's very interesting now is remotes that will not just emulate the other ones, in terms of their commands, but will also create one button macro. That means you press one button on the remote, and it will do all the complicated switching that's required today to change functions on your home AV systems. So, for example, to watch something on cable over the speakers built in to your television is one set of settings. To watch a DVD on the 5.1 surround speakers is another set of settings.

COOLEYAnd that's a lot of fumbling unless you get one of these learning unified remotes. And the one that we like a lot is called the Logitech Harmony One. It's been, like, our top-rated remote for ages, about $150, $170. It's not cheap, but it will let you teach it all the things you ever do on your home AV system. And it does a Web-based learning process. You go to a website. You tell it all the components you have, and the things you want to do. And then you plug it in to -- with a USB cable to the remote. And the website trains the remote as opposed to you punching in lots of codes.

NNAMDIWe got an e-mail from Anthony on Capitol Hill, "I understand that sound quality is sacrificed with the new thinner TV sets. Do you recommend adding external sound systems? If so, which ones?" Jim?

BARRYI recommend adding external sound systems to almost any television set. And you've got lots of choices again. The good news here for prices is you've got stuff from a couple of 100 bucks on up to some serious, serious money for those of you with more discriminating ears and some of us that spent time in the artillery in the service. But you have lots and lots of choices. One of the hottest products these days -- and, you know, some TVs, especially as they get thinner and thinner and flatter and flatter, they don't necessarily have that. They're not going to, just by design, not going to give you the sound quality. One of the hottest products recently are these sound bars. Now, some people pooh-pooh them, but it is a -- think of a long bar like a huge candy bar, sits above or below your flat panel.

NNAMDII've seen them.

BARRYSo for design purposes, they're really, really well done, and they give you kind of phony surround sound. It will come with a subwoofer, usually a wireless subwoofer. They start at about 100 bucks or so. There's some -- there's a really nice one from Boston Acoustics, which is a good speaker company. It's been around a long time called the TVee -- with two Es on the V -- and they really enhance that sound. And if you are listening to -- or if you're watching television with just a -- the speakers on that television, go in the store.

BARRYCheck out one of these, either the sound bars or -- then you have a lot of choices for what they call home theater in a box, which gives you all the speakers and the processor -- or you can then start going up in price and get really serious processors with all the connectors for all of the things that Brian was talking about just a few minutes ago. So you have a lot of those choices. And the other thing that I would say, when you get better sound on any television set, you'll find the picture is better, too.

COOLEYYes, absolutely true.

NNAMDIHere is Mike in Springfield, Va. Mike, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MIKEOh, hi. Thanks for taking my call. One quick question, and what I was wondering about was what is better, plasma or LCD for, say, extreme cold or extreme hot conditions? Which would be better? I noticed when I was walking through the store, looking at some TVs that there was a lot of heat being generated off the plasma TVs, but they seem to have a better picture when you're looking at it from an angle. But I'm concerned about having one outdoors, but not necessarily exposed to the -- fully exposed to the weather, but still to the cold and the hot.

NNAMDIAre you chilling outside and watching TV today, Mike?

MIKEWell, not today.

NNAMDIHere is...

MIKEBut I do have gazebo with a big hot tub in it, which has a 45-degree angle roof on it, but it'd be neat to be able to sit up there and watch a game or something.

NNAMDIBrian, you should know the...

COOLEYYeah.

NNAMDIBrian, you should know the temperatures here today are in the 20s with high winds.

COOLEYYikes.

COOLEYNot many TVs are going to be rated to operate in those conditions, all right?

BARRYRight.

COOLEYSo, right off the bat, realize you're taking your warranty in your hands if you put a TV into extreme conditions of extreme hot, cold, direct sunlight, high humidity. You know, read the fine print before you buy one of these if you expect it to be covered under warranty. You can always almost download the manual before you buy a TV by going to the manufacturer's website, and then you can look at the fine print that says operating conditions. And that'll tell you what they are expecting you to do with it. Or they're going to say, wait a minute, you sent this in for service.

COOLEYAnd we're looking inside, and it's all corroded because you were in a humid condition, or you had it sitting above a hot tub a lot of times and the steam got in there. There are outdoor-optimized HDTVs. They tend to be made for the commercial or the bar and hospitality market. But if you're going to be doing this and leaving it out there for a long time, that might be the way to go. I'm not up on the brands or the prices, but you can easily Google those and look for just outdoor HDTV. And you'll find several vendors of those.

BARRYI think one brand is Sunbrite, I believe...

COOLEYYeah.

BARRY...which is a flat panel LCD. I might have that name wrong, too, but it's -- but Google that, and you'll find that. And then there's also some...

COOLEYYeah, Sunbrite TV.

BARRY...yeah, some projectors as well that you can use outdoors. These big screens, these giant inflatable screens by the company called Sima has, S-I-M-A, that then you can get a projector and have that closer to the house where it's warm or cool, as the case may be. And that...

COOLEYYeah, and then project it through a sliding glass door or something so it stays all right.

BARRYExactly.

NNAMDIMike, thank you very much for your call.

COOLEYGood luck, Mike.

MIKEAll right, thank you.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, more on Tech Tuesday about tips for buying a new TV. You can call us at 800-433-8850. Go to our website kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. Send us a tweet @kojoshow or an e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIIt's a Tech Tuesday conversation about buying a TV with Brian Cooley, editor-at-large for CNET, and Jim Barry, he's the "Digital Answer Man" for the Consumer Electronics Association. Brian, a lot of TVs come pre-loaded with services Netflix and YouTube. What are the pros and cons of having these extra features?

BARRYWell, this is largely considered to be right now the future of how we're going to watch television, to start to break the hegemony of the cable systems where you have to pay for a bundle of channels, many of which most people don't ever use. But that's just the way that it's been worked, and their business model has to have that so they can amortize the cost. It's like an insurance company, in a way. But what's going on with these Internet applications on the TV is what I mentioned before -- full screen, on-demand viewing of TV shows and movies, no computer, no browser. It's key to keep hammering that. It's not a computer experience. It's a 10" lean back television experience.

BARRYWhat you get is access to things on demand on a nuggety basis as opposed to on a channel lineup basis. It's a different way of approaching the base of content. It's also a part of what, I think, is a major trend in media over the next 20 years, which is to flatten the hierarchy, which currently consists of the producing studio, the network, the stations, then often the cable or satellite company and then, you, the consumer. About three of those five levels are going to come out. We're going to pancake that down with this Internet-driven revolution where the relationship between me and the content I want becomes very short and transparent. It's basically what you want, when you want it. That's what you will get with these things. But the key is of -- no one of these services has anything approaching everything that you want to watch. It's still early days.

NNAMDIHere's the key question, Jim Barry. How much can all these services tack on to my monthly bill?

BARRYWell, that -- you're absolutely right. And as Brian was pointing out, this is -- the commercial aspects of a lot of these technological advances are what keep them from being adopted widely because all of this innovation -- innovation is just inherently disruptive of the order as it is now. So the cable companies, the satellite companies now -- which came in and disrupted the cable companies -- the phone companies, which then jumped back in now and are disrupting -- I have a daughter that's off in college. And she watches her programs, not on the cable that the college is paying to put in the dorm, but on her laptop, on Hulu or other services, so -- and not paying for it.

BARRYSo the battle is for -- they used to say -- well, Brian and I have probably written a million stories over the last 20 years about PC versus TV and all the rest of this. That's really moot. It's who's going to control that bill? It's the battle of the bill and how is all of this going to -- not only what you want when you want it, but where you want it. We also have all of these mobile applications now.

COOLEYYeah.

BARRYSo I think that they will find ways. There will be ways for -- everything is not going to be free. That, I think, is...

NNAMDIAww...

BARRYNo, it won't be. Set, alas, it will not. But things of value, we'll find value, and we'll find technology will solve some of the issues that it has raised over the last 10 or 15 years.

NNAMDIOn to the telephones again. Jason in Alexandria, Va., your turn.

JASONHey, guys. I have a 42" plasma, a Phillips plasma TV that I bought about six years ago. I bought it here in the States. I lived overseas in Japan for almost three years, where it was hooked up to 110 volts, 60 hertz. During that time, it started to pixelate pretty bad. Color seemed to fade out a bit. And now that it's back in the States, nothing has changed. It still seems to be pixelated out, with just some strange coloring going on. I'm just trying to see what you might think the -- if that's just the TV that went bad? Or was it a power issue, and if it's even worth trying to get it looked at to get it repaired?

NNAMDIBrian?

COOLEYYeah, it's not worth it. How old is it? Seven years? This is...

JASONSix. Maybe just six years, about six years.

COOLEYYeah, it doesn't matter. We're doing high-tech archaeology at this point. This is a fossil. I mean, as Jim said when we started off the broadcast, it used to be a seven-, eight-, nine-, 10-year replacement cycle on a television if you really pushed it. Now, if you've got a seven- or six-year-old TV -- you know, Phillips is really kind of faded -- if they're even still in the high-def business in this market. I don't even know...

BARRYNot in the U.S., no.

COOLEYNot in the U.S., right.

BARRYRight.

COOLEYSo just replace it. The kind of television you're going to get today for even as little as $450 if you went out to get a 42" 720p plasma from one of the major makers is just going to blow you away with the quality. And it's going to have all kinds of greater efficiencies as well. I don't think you can or should get that one repaired.

NNAMDIJim is giving it the hook, sitting here in the studio.

BARRYYeah, I echo what Brian said. That's not -- that's one of the things that -- the TV repairman, one of the things that has gone over the years.

COOLEYYeah, right.

BARRYBut that would cost an awful lot of money to even look at that and get it fixed. And, as Brian pointed out, you're going to get a terrific deal on a replacement, probably. And it'll be a much better set and have all those connectors that we were talking about earlier, too, for all the stuff you're going to want to hook up to that.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Jason. Here is Allan in Bethesda, Md. Allan, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ALLANGood afternoon. Thank you.

COOLEYHello, Allan.

ALLANI have always been vexed by -- well, now that I have an all new digital system, a new AV receiver with lots of HDMI inputs and outputs and HDMI TV and Blu-ray player, what is the best way of hooking up -- well, of receiving the Internet and just simply hooking up a computer to it? Right now, I don't -- my computers don't have HDMI outputs, which, I think, may resolve a lot of the past problems I've had in getting audio and video -- video and audio from a computer to a TV, which would have seemed simple, but it's never been.

NNAMDIYeah, I tried that.

ALLANMaybe because there's always been video outputs, and the audio outputs have always been sort of missing from laptops.

COOLEYYeah, if you want to hook up a computer to a television, it's pretty straightforward. Your computer will certainly have a VGA output for an external monitor. And most high-def TVs today, and for the last number of years -- in fact, almost from the beginning -- have had a VGA input. So you need a long VGA cable -- depends how far away you need to have the computer from the TV. That's a horsey kind of a cable. It's -- you know, it's half an inch or more thick. It's not a pretty thing to look at. So it's not great.

COOLEYI don't know of a great wireless way to bounce the VGA signal from your computer over to the television. And the audio, again, is going out of that earphone mini-jack, that eight-inch jack on the side of the laptop into a cable that branches that into a left and right RCA. And that goes into your television as well. These are common inputs to find. It's not a terribly elegant process, and part of that is because this idea of folks connecting their computer to their television never really took off the way some thought it would.

NNAMDIIt certainly didn't take off the way I thought it would.

ALLANAnd the best way to get -- okay, I understand -- the best way to get Internet streaming on a TV. I know Blu-ray player has it now, a new Samsung. And I don't know. The TV can supposedly do it, and this new Yamaha receiver, the Venge (sp?), I think. It all has it. What's the best way of really getting...

NNAMDIWhat do you say, Brian?

COOLEYI don't find that there's a big difference in the performance between how you do it. So the Blu-ray decks can do it then -- the more modern ones. The TV can have it built in. You can buy a set-top box, either a Roku, an Apple TV box, a Boxee box, or you can get it built into some of the receivers. That's a little less common, but they all kind of work the same way. The key factor there is, what services do they have -- Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Yahoo. What do you want? 'Cause they don't have all the services on all the devices.

COOLEYAnd do they have wireless? That's key. Some of the older products might still have wire. That's pretty rare right now. And, also, what kind of a broadband connection do you have? The best favor you can do yourself is to make sure you have at least a 10 megabit subscription to your DSL or cable or fiber. Fiber is always much faster than that. If you're still hovering on one of those kind of lower speed, two, three, 4 megabit accounts, bump that up.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Allan. Let's talks about the hottest new technology, 3D. An e-mail from Jennifer asked, "Is it time to buy a 3D set? Will the technology get cheaper and better in the next few years?" This technology has actually been around since the early 20th century, but we're finally seeing it on our TVs, Jim.

BARRYYes. And the answer to the first part of the question, will it get cheaper? Of course, it's electronics, right? It'll get cheaper as time goes by. But a couple of things about 3D. First of all, it is remarkably inexpensive already for a new technology. You can get a 3D TV, 40 or 50" for under $2,000, which, for a new technology is very, very low starting point. If you remember the early HDTVs, they were $5- or $10,000. I consider 3D a feature of -- a really good feature of a high-end set.

BARRYSo we talked a lot about these 32" sets and so forth, that a lot of people are buying our smaller sets, spending a couple of hundred bucks. I wouldn't even consider 3D there unless you're into gaming and stuff. But on the bigger screen sets, you'll find that 3D will only add a couple of hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollar price tag. So that's one thing to think about. Having said that, 3D has some challenges that HD and others didn't. First, there's the glasses. Some people don't like the glasses. The glasses are not compatible, one with the other. Samsung doesn't work with LG doesn't work with Sony doesn't with Panasonic.

BARRYSo they're -- and they're expensive. The glasses are a hundred bucks or more. So you may get a -- you'll probably get a couple of pairs with your set. But we talked earlier about group community viewing experiences, you know, if you've got all those glasses. There is a limited amount, but a growing amount, of programs. If you do have a Blu-ray player, the one that's 3D -- and there's more of those, and they're not very expensive comparatively either and you've got kids that watch a lot of animated programs, there's a lot of those in 3D -- animated movies and so forth. So that might be a consideration.

BARRYThere's more and more sports. ESPN is doing more sporting programs. They did the Masters last year. They did the World Cup. So that's growing. Some sports -- the ones I've seen -- some are terrific. The Masters was spectacular. Football games, the over-head shots, to me, it doesn't do much. Down on the field, you've -- the shots -- you feel like you -- you know, I'm going to have to tackle that guy. So it really is terrific, the natural progression from black and white to color, to color to HD, HD to 3D. More realism, it's coming. But to answer the question of the e-mailer, it's not for everyone yet, and it's not going to be pervasive for some time.

NNAMDIBrian, there's also been a lot of buzz surrounding Apple TV and Google TV. What's the difference between the two?

COOLEYWell, they're trying to do somewhat different things. Apple TV is in Apple style, a relatively closed environment, not entirely, but, as I mentioned, it does have access to all your iTunes media. It also let's you do something very cool called AirPlay, where you can bounce a video from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that is on that device and say, you know what, I like watching this, but I'm sitting here in the living room. I'd rather watch it on the big screen. Send it to the Apple TV wirelessly. And I want to watch it right now in the big screen. Very cool, and it just debuted that feature within their iOS software. So that's a couple of things to realize about Apple, plus, as I mentioned, Apple TV has YouTube support.

COOLEYOn the other hand, Google TV is trying to do more of a merging of everything. It will let you sit there with a small keyboard at your sofa and type in whatever, "The Office" and it will search the web for any webisodes, either full length or short clips. It'll search your cable, satellite or what have you, program listings for "The Office." And it will also search all the assets, all the files that may live on the computers in your home network for any file that might be "The Office."

COOLEYAnd put those all into a single list and say, here's all the stuff that is "The Office." Which do you want to watch? That's more of a pan media aggregation that Google TV is doing. Apple is a little more focused. Google is having a lot of fight right now with the major networks, who have pretty much all blocked their content from showing up there yet. And it also is only working fully and with all the features on Dish Network, which is -- you know, this is just part of it being an early technology.

NNAMDIAnd I'm afraid we're almost out of time, but this comment was posted on our website by Jason. "D.C. has free e-cycling on Saturdays at the Fort Totten Trash Transfer Station. You can dispose of e-waste for free, including batteries. You just need to have a D.C. driver's license." And this e-mail from Barb in Petworth. "I don't own a TV. I use websites to watch whatever shows I want, whenever I want. With the large flat screens you can hook up to the computer, why bother with a TV? I know a number of people in their 20s who have made similar decisions." Barb mentioning, in their 20s, she's doing that age-boasting thing.

BARRYYes. There are some cable and satellite executives, if they're listening, having agita right now hearing that.

NNAMDIJim Barry is the "Digital Answer Man" for the Consumer Electronics Association. Jim, thank you so much for joining us.

BARRYThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIBrian Cooley is editor-at-large for CNET. Brian, thank you for joining us.

COOLEYThanks, Kojo.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.