Are you HDTV ready? Plus, in defense of tubes

Gary Krakow Columnist • E-mail

We start off this edition with a very good question from . It's one that many people ask me:

What is the difference between HDTV sets and HDTV-ready sets?

HDTV receivers have built-in digital tuners. That means that if a local station is broadcasting in high definition then you can attach an indoor or outdoor antenna to an HDTV set and watch in high definition.

An HDTV-ready set does not have a built-in tuner. HDTV-ready sets usually have analog tuners, so you can still watch current analog TV broadcasts. They can, however accept an HDTV input.

So, with an HDTV-ready set you’ll need an external digital tuner to watch HDTV programming. However, if you have high-definition cable or satellite service you can watch those HDTV stations right now on your HDTV-ready set, no extra tuner needed.

Many of the TV sets being sold today — especially those nifty flat-screen models — are HDTV-ready. 

Christopher John Gores of Minneapolis, MN and many others wrote to remind me that U.S. lawmakers have postponed the deadline for switching over to digital TV sets.

Never fear, analog is still here!  According to fcc.gov: Until February 17, 2009, most television stations will continue broadcasting on both their digital and analog channels.

Here is the current timetable for the switchover to digital television:

• July 1, 2006: All new sets, 25 inches or larger, must have DTV tuners or be DTV-ready
• March 1, 2007: All new sets, 13 inches or larger, must have DTV tuners or be DTV-ready
• February 17, 2009: Proposed shutoff date for over-the-air analog broadcasts

On another subject, one dear to my heart, Alan Phelps of Westerville, OH asks:

Why do the high-end audio proponents prefer tube amplifiers over solid state? My experience with tubes includes hum from the heaters and high frequency hiss, neither of which are present in good solid state amps.

So, I thought I’d ask one of the most famous high-end audio proponents to take a stab at the answer. Here’s what tube aficionado Art Dudley of Stereophile magazine has to say on the subject:

I wonder, though: Do sport fishermen who are satisfied with inexpensive fiberglass rods feel the same compunction to chide those anglers who think of expensive, hand-made bamboo fly rods as an essential element of their hobby?  I doubt it...!

That said, I do think it’s fair to admit that I, for one, simply enjoy approaching my hobby in a certain way, and within certain (aesthetically informed?) limitations. (As Robert Frost observed, in a different context: Why would anyone want to play tennis without a net?)  Yes, I like seeing what I can achieve in my home with tubes, with vinyl, without room treatments—and so on and so forth.  These limitations may be different for everyone. (Some people wouldn’t dream of fishing with flies they didn’t tie themselves — but can’t a machine do a better job of that than a middle-aged man with failing eyesight...?)

But there are more, and more technically sound, reasons than even that. Chief among them is the fact that, before the advent of ICs (entire amps on a chip), a tube amplifier could be made far simpler, with far fewer parts, than a solid-state amp. And I’ve come to associate simpler with better in hi-fi: The fewer parts in the chain, the less there is between me and the music. (Interesting: Now that ICs have matured, people like Junji Kimura of 47 Laboratory have made superb sounding amps using them in very simple designs! I could easily live with one of his amps.)

There are other, more user-specific technical reasons, as well — such as the fact that tubes are inarguably more suited to driving my favorite loudspeakers. (Mr. Phelps may indeed have good reason to think of his solid-state amp as having comparatively fewer flaws — but he would quickly change his mind when that amp’s output section fried itself in the face of an ESL’s capacitive load!)

But at the end of the day, it’s really just a matter of recognizing that everything distorts the music in one way or another, and my own personal choice of tubes (and vinyl, and ...) is simply a matter of my choosing the distortions that I find least objectionable, and contains not one iota of disdain for the potentially very different choices that other hi-fi hobbyists make.

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