Now you have a player you need to start looking at televisions. Perhaps the thing damaging Blu-ray sales the most at the moment is the fact that supermarket chains like Tesco are selling cheap HD Ready LCD sets for under £200. Customers will buy these without having all the necessary information to best help them decide the best HD TV to look for. Basically there are two kinds: HD Ready and Full HD.
HD Ready is the lesser of the two because it generally offers a resolution of 720p, which is still high definition but it's essentially the lowest grade that can legally still be labelled as such. 720p produces a better picture than a standard definition television, but to make the most of HD you want to go Full HD. This produces a 1080p image - the highest resolution currently available (the p stands for Progressive Scan and this ensures you get a totally flicker-free image).
A Full HD set is slightly more expensive compared to HD Ready but if you shop around you can get a decent-sized one (32") for under £400. Considering four years ago it would cost you double that price for just a regular LCD, £400 is a total bargain to experience the best HD has to offer. Plasma screens, 100hz and 100,000:1 contrast sets are more expensive still, but that's where it gets complicated. At the end of the day a 1080p Full HD telly will deliver the goods.
Finally you'll need a 1.3 HDMI cable to transfer the data from your PS3/Blu-ray player to your TV (a scart lead just won't cut it). There are expensive gold-plated and platinum cables available but you can find a 1.3 cable for just a couple of quid online and they produce the same results as the flashy ones priced at £20 or more. Meanwhile shorter cables retain the best signal transfer so you don't really want anything longer than 1.5 metres.
Now you've got all the components you need to start enjoying Blu-ray, let's look a little closer at the differences between Blu-rays and DVDs.