Jim Guest President

"Because it’s there" may be a perfectly good reason to climb the highest mountain in the world, but it doesn’t really justify spending $4 on a box of disposable cutting sheets. They’re supposed to act as a temporary kitchen cutting board, but our testers found that the sheets were too small and too easily damaged.

On the other hand, the $1,800 you’d have to shell out for a Polara oven/refrigerator may conceivably be money well spent if your lifestyle dictates flexibility--and your budget allows it. As an oven, it rated fairly well in our tests, and it lets you chill your roast until cooking time, then switch to oven mode and start cooking dinner while you’re making your way home from work. It’s a convenience for which you’ll pay--our top-rated electric smoothtop range cost $1,000 less and did a better job at baking--but the choice is yours to make.

We’re fortunate to live in a country where consumer choice is a given, but making good choices requires some effort. At Consumer Reports, our job is to ask--and answer--as many questions as possible so you and other consumers can make decisions based on facts.

In 1948, when Consumer Reports reviewed TVs for the first time, we said: "Four questions remain before you can decide whether a set is worth its price to you: 1. Is the program service available where you live? 2. Are the programs good enough, and are there enough of them, to warrant the outlay? 3. Is there a receiver in the price range you can afford good enough to satisfy your tastes? 4. Can you get, and can you afford, reliable installation and maintenance service?"

Now, although technology has made the picture on the screen infinitely better, many consumers are facing very similar questions about whether it’s time to trade in the analog TV set for a new digital one with all the bells and whistles: Is digital programming available where you live? Is the choice of programs worth the extra cost, which can be considerable? If you want a big screen, you face the direct-view vs. projection-TV question. And should you go all the way and spring for high-definition TV?

Debates within the broadcast and manufacturing industries over copy protection and technology compatibility have slowed introduction of HD programming. In December, cable-TV and consumer-electronics firms came to an agreement that should provide easier access to HDTV, pending Federal Communications Commission approval.

Choosing any digital format, especially HDTV, may mean that you will have to change the way you get your programming, since digital broadcasts aren’t as widely available over regular airwaves or cable as they are via satellite.

In 1948, we rated seven sets: six measuring 10 inches or smaller and priced from $250 to $395, and one projection model at a whopping 25 inches and $795. (That would be $5,981 in today’s dollars.) In our March 2003 reports, we rate 89 sets, including 17 rear-projection models--priced from $250 to $3,400 and measuring 27 to 57 inches. We look at the service options, and help you decide about features such as motion compensation.

One last note: Walking past one of our biggest labs during the TV testing, I was pretty sure I’d stumbled onto a movie matinee, and in a way, I had. The TV experts were rating projection sets. The project leader, the electronics reporter, and the factchecker sat in the middle of a darkened room, clipboards and copy in hand, surrounded by a ring of TVs. While the three Charlie’s Angels in the movie (well, 51, I guess, since there were 17 TVs) flew around the screens saving the world, the engineers and reporters compared notes and fine-tuned both the TVs and the article. What a picture!