If you are in the market for a new television set, there just hasn't been a better time to get high quality equipment that will last for years at low prices. Of course, TV technology continues to improve and as the new HDTV broadcasting format becomes more standardized the prices will continue to fall, but not the precipitous drops that we have seen in the past few years though.

So what about these LCD HDTVs? What makes them so special, and what should you look for when buying one?

Well, LCD monitors have been used in computers for several years now, and they are known for their bright, exquisite color rendition, so it was a natural leap to adapt that technology to the HDTV format. LCD screens are much thinner and lighter than projection TVs and older CRT screens too, so they can be very useful in smaller rooms that just could not support a larger screen before LCD or plasma screens came along. Many people even mount LCD screens to the wall using special brackets that hold them securely in place, and this is perhaps the ultimate in space saving design.

If you have such a great, eye-pleasing monitor you now need to have programming that takes full advantage of the screen's viewing capability, and that's where HDTV comes in. It is two technologies that were meant for each other. HDTV allows television broadcasting to be sent in a signal that is very dense with digital information about both the video and sound. It is a huge leap over the older analog TV broadcasts that most TV stations have been using for years.

In fact, the HDTV signal can carry screen resolution information up to ten times that of the old analog signals. So when you marry that much sharper and rich resolution with a LCD screen that is capable of displaying the signal in all it's intended glory, you have a combination that is hard to beat for sheer viewing pleasure.

Just make sure that the LCD TV that you buy either has a HDTV tuner already in it or is labeled as "HDTV Ready" which means that it can be hooked up to a HDTV tuner like those used by satellite and cable companies who feature HDTV programming.

Once you view television programming with the combined technologies of HDTV and a LCD monitor, you will wonder how you managed without it all this time.