My dad bought an early LCD from Sharp (circa 2005). Today, it doesn't play nicely with the newest HDMI variants (notably, it doesn't do HDMI-CEC). It also has annoyingly high black levels. He's thinking about upgrading. I've got a high-end Sony from 2008. It's much better on the black levels and supports HDMI-CEC, but dark colors are a bit greenish. I won't bother upgrading unless the TV dies.

While the video focused on 4K (is content available, etc.), a better question would be whether video quality or any other features on current 1080p sets are any better than older 1080p sets. The answer seems to be that:

- Black levels of LCDs have improved steadily over the years, particularly on the high-end back-lit (rather than edge-lit) LED sets.

- If you've got a *really* old LCD (early 2000's), then you also have some amount of visual blurring because the pixels couldn't change state fast enough. This problem is completely gone with modern panels.

- Newer sets tend to have highly reflective glass surfaces rather than the matte surfaces that used to be more common. This can be amazingly distracting in a brightly lit room, seeing yourself reflecting in the screen when it goes dark.

- Newer sets have lots of fancy Internet features (Netflix, etc.), but you can retrofit those onto an old set with all sorts of gadgets (TiVo, AppleTV, GoogleTV, Roku, most Bluray players, etc.). And those aftermarket gadgets will tend to do a better job of updating themselves.

- Newer sets with LED backlights use less power than the CCFL sets, but not enough that it's worth dumping a bunch of money into a new set. On the the other hand, LEDs also last a whole lot longer, and when they age they slowly dim, versus CCFLs that just up and die.

- Newer sets are much bigger for a given price. If you were price-limited five years ago, you can now afford something much, much bigger.

- Newer sets have all sorts of fancy motion interpolation that tries to take a 24Hz source movie and create fake frames between the real ones. The resulting look feels more like video than like film. You might like this, you might hate it. It's a polarizing topic.

- Newer sets are much thinner, which means that their sound quality is often surprisingly awful. If you're already using an external sound system of some sort, you don't care, but at a bare minimum you'll be wanting a "sound bar".

As it happens, I wrote a long document, initially for my friends, but others in this same situation might find it helpful.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach/step-up-camera2009.html (which I updated a month ago for the most current cameras)

In short, there's no one-size-fits-all answer. For many people, a high-end compact camera like a Canon S100 or Panasonic LX5 will give them everything they want and then some. For others, the mirrorless compact cameras will be more attractive than a big DSLR. And there's no rule that says you're not allowed to own multiple cameras.

I'm an assistant professor at Rice University, in the CS department, and I've been part of the committee that admits grad students. Since there seem to be a lot of questions here, I'll try to answer them as best I can.

Admissions to a research program, like ours, is based on a bunch of different things. A good way to think of it is that your statement of purpose and your letters of recommendation are the things that build your case and everything else is an opportunity for you to shoot yourself in the foot.

First, on behalf of every professor inundated with e-mails, let me say that there's no benefit, whatsoever, in mass e-mailing every professor on the planet to see if they're interested in you. However, if you have a particular research interest that matches a particular professor (say, security of peer-to-peer systems or of mobile code systems, in my case), then do send that one professor a personal e-mail.

So, then, what makes for a good statement of purpose or good letters of recommendation? I always look for evidence that you've got technical interests beyond what you've done in class. I also look for evidence that you didn't just go to "how to get into grad school" school and follow their instructions blindly. Some of these letters just stink like they came from an insert-your-name-here template. Don't tell me "I have lots of energy!" Describe all the work that your energy has produced. Likewise, in many countries, it's customary for the student to write letters of recommendation on behalf of their advisors, who just sign them. Make your advisors write personal letters.

So, what value are the GRE scores? For the General GRE exam, there's some minimal value if the applicant is from the U.S. or Europe, but absolutely zero value if the applicant is from India or China. I don't know what they do over there, but every student seems to ace the exams, probably because they study so hard for them. The exams, thus, aren't measuring anything more than rote ability.

The CS subject test used to actually be useful and a strong score there would catch my attention (and a weak score was a huge red flag). Now, without that, we'll probably end up looking more at transcripts.

Still, let me emphasize, the best way to impress somebody like me is not with good grades or test scores, it's with research and technical experience beyond your class assignments. If you've worked with a professor on a research project, or if your code has found its way into the Linux kernel, that will get my attention (and I'll go look at the source to make sure you're telling the truth).

Obligatory plug: I'm looking for good security-minded students with strong backgrounds in systems and/or programming languages. If that's you, contact me.