As I write this, it’s early Monday morning and we’re in the midst of cleaning up from our seventh annual Super Bowl HDTV Party, a multi-screen festival of football, food, and friends, not to mention some really off-the-wall ways to show the big game in hi-def.

It all started when ABC carried the Rams - Titans game in 2000, the first Super Bowl to be broadcast in HD. That party featured a modest two screens - Sony’s VPL-VW10HT LCD projector, and a Princeton AF3.0HD CRT monitor.

Since then, the number of screens has grown almost exponentially, with the 2005 contest featuring 11 different HD imaging systems, including snow projection outside on the front lawn.

After a pause in 2006, the party resumed this year with ten screens; nine of them true HD. Starting a week before the game, I installed three flat-panel HDTVs on my first floor: Panasonic’s 1080p TH-50PF9UK plasma, Samsung’s 1080p LNS-4695D LCD HDTV, and an older (and smaller) Samsung LTM-1575W 768p LCD HDTV- in the bathroom!

The basement featured Pioneer’s PRO-FHD1 1080p plasma, plus two complete Dolby Digital 5.1 surround-sound theaters featuring Mitsubishi’s HC5000 1080p LCD projector and Sanyo’s PLV-Z4 720p LCD projector, each lighting up an 82-inch front screen.

Additional displays included a Toshiba 34HF81 CRT monitor in my family room, a Sanyo PLV-Z5 720p LCD projector on my rear deck projecting into a 62-inch rear screen behind my sliding deck doors, and Sanyo’s new weatherproof 42-inch CE42LM4WPN LCD monitor, positioned along my front walk to greet guests as they arrived for the party.

The smallest theater was a 12-inch diagonal screen illuminated by Mitsubishi’s PK20 "pocket" DLP projector. Although limited to 800×600 resolution, it did a fine job showing the game, sitting in an antique dry sink by my front door that was filled with stuffed penguin toys, each holding tiny Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears pennants (courtesy of my wife Jackie).

Some technical points of interest: Every HDTV set or STB was fed (directly or through an outboard set-top box) with a terrestrial DTV signal from Philadelphia CBS affiliate KYW, taken from my roof antenna, my attic antenna, indoor antennas, or two temporary outside antennas (Terrestrial Digital’s Lacrosse and Channel Master’s 3023 UHF yagi). This solved the problem of not having a cable RF drop at every HDTV position. (Perhaps I should install one or two in my front and back yards for future use!)

Four of the HDTV displays had full 1920×1080 resolution to take full advantage of CBS’ 1080i broadcast, and on some camera shots, it felt as if viewers were right there on the field. The CBS feed was remarkably clean of MPEG artifacts and noise, which was not surprising as their O&O stations use almost every "bit" of the maximum 19.39 Mb/s data rate allowed for terrestrial DTV broadcasts, unlike NBC and ABC stations.

The weather during the game was bitterly cold, with wind chills dropping below zero. Even so, the Sanyo LCD monitor and PLV-Z5 chugged merrily along for six hours without so much as a hiccup, as did their associated Humax HFA-100 and Samsung DTB-H260F DTV set-top receivers. (Electrons love cold - they move faster!) The CBS DTV signal came from a transmitter 25 miles distant, over a slight hill and through a bunch of trees, but never once dropped out on any of the sets.

Many of my 50+ guests were surprised to learn that those 1080i signals weren’t coming from cable or satellite, but were free, over-the-air broadcasts. Several inquired about upcoming purchases of HDTVs as a result of seeing the game, and more than one wanted to know how to install an antenna and get those glorious HD pictures for themselves.

I’ll have full coverage of the event on my web site (www.hdtvexpert.com) next week. Right now, I have a pile of pots and pans to wash, a mound of trash bags to take out to the curb, and a mess of RG-6, YPbPr, DVI, and HDMI cables to untangle…