I wrote this guide for the gamers out there, but this guide can help anyone planning on buying an HDTV!

So you finally bought yourself an Xhox 360 for your son? Grats! But wait...you're still playing on that 20" Daewoo TV that you bought your first year in college?! I'm sure you can still game on that good old TV that has lasted you this long, but its time for an upgrade! Now by no means am I dissing anyone...we are facing some tough economic times and video games help escape reality, so buying a 360 before buying an HDTV is highly understandable. But if you are in the market to purchase an HDTV or curious as to which TV's are the best, hopefully this guide will help you out!

Now this guide isn't for the well-educated in the HDTV world. This is mainly for consumers who have no idea what 1080i is or what HDMI means. I will be posting each of the 4 chapters separately over the course of this week and next week, so bookmark me!

Without further ado, here is the guide!

Chapter 1: HD Definitions

So let's talk about some keywords when shopping around for a new TV. I won't go over every keyword there is, because it does get expansive. We will discuss the things you should be aware of when hitting up your local electronics store.

1. LCD - Stands for "Liquid Crystal Display". This is the most common form of HDTV out right now. Basically, this form of TV has, you guessed it, liquid crystals inside the television that reflect colors when light is beamed upon it. Pretty inexpensive technology to have an excellent picture.

2. Plasma - Very similar to LCD, plasma televisions usually are purchased when you want a larger television. Some say the color is richer in plasma TVs than LCDs, others disagree. Plasma TVs are also slightly more expensive than LCD TVs. However, Vizio offers an inexpensive plasma TV in the 32" range here, starting at $499.99.

3. Widescreen - Also known as 16:9, this is the standard format for high definition. Your Xbox 360 displays mostly every game in this format, so if you are used to your standard square screen, time to get over it!

4. Component Cables/Inputs - These cables consists of three different colored wires: red, green, and blue. Basically these three wires sends those exact colors to your HDTV separately, causing the picture to be greatly better than the normal 1 yellow wire. These cables are also used to send your HD signal to your television. Audio cables are separate.

5. HDMI - HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. This single cable does the same job as component cables without all the wires all over the place. Your video and audio signal is sent through the HDMI cable so there is no need for separate audio wires. I personally use HDMI for my Comcast HD receiver and never looked back. The newer Premium version of the Xbox 360 has an HDMI port on the back, unfortunately for us early adopters it was not.
6. 720p - An HD format. I go over this much more in Chapter 2 so I won't go too deep into it here.
7. SDTV - Standard Television. Basically any TV not high definition.

I think this is a good start to this guide. If there is anything I left out of this chapter as far as keywords that you feel I should include to make you a better shopper, feel free to comment below :)

Tomorrow I will post Chapter 2, which covers the HD formats!