neophyte,
Although i agree in part with some of what Peter and Spiff have alluded to, you should understand one strong certainty.
Although it appears that technology in tvs and dvds is changing 'fast', it really doesn't mattter.
At the present time, only 30% of Canadians own a dvd player (even though they have been out on the market for years now) and over 90% still own a regular CRT tv set under 27" in size (sorry i cannot remember the source of where i read this a couple of weeks ago, i just remember the numbers).
Widescreen, flatscreen, HD-DVD, digital TV are all new technologies that SEEM to be selling like hotcakes, but in reality by the time your average Joe actually buys into these en masse such that you could say these new technologies have become a 'must have' mainstream item, it will still be many years from now.
You have no worries for nearly a decade that anything you buy today will be "out of date". Think about how long the LP tradition lasted, or the cassette tape age, then the cd age, now slowly moving into the dvd age. Each new technology lasted near a decade (or more) before a new format came to 'replace' it and yet many still utilize the old technology regardless.
The majority of the country does not have the cash like some others to always have cutting edge technology and hence the masses have to make due for a long time. Companies know this and will usually accomodate the slow change.
Remember the old 13 channel on the dial CRT tvs that needed an external tuner box to get channels beyond 13?
Does anyone use them anymore or do most people finally now own tvs that have the capability internally?
Well think about this as a parallel then, how about the new digital TV tuners now which also sit outside the new fangled widescreen RPTV 50" unit.
How many ppl own a built in digital tuner in their tvs and how long do you think it will take before ppl own new tvs with that capability such that the external box is again no longer required?
It will be quite some time.
Second quick point to keep in mind, formats are always changing. Don't buy something based on what MIGHT become the future wave of excitement. The whole VCR beta vs. VHS thing should have taught alot of ppl that waiting several years before buying into a format is often worthwhile. This more applies to just the media players though. DVDs are going through this painful struggle right now and although we own a dvd player capable of dvd-audio, i have yet to buy a single dvd-a disk!
As for speakers, we just bought a pair a couple of months ago that we plan on keeping for the next 20 years or more. Speaker physical designs can change certainly, but sound quality usually does not. Any quality speaker you buy today will not be surpassed in sound quality by another method of producing sound for quite some time if ever. It is still all highly subjective anyway. There are many who say that the sound from some early 1970 xx brand speaker is the purest sound ever made (i have a stereophile friend who wheels and deals with the stuff all the time). Technology changes does not always mean it is better especially in regards to audio.
