One HDTV for every five viewers.

By itself, that statement doesn’t seem all that significant. But when you have 70 people attending a Super Bowl party in your house, it’s pretty crazy.

Yesterday was the 8th Annual HDTVexpert.com Super Bowl HDTV Party, and it was a doozy. I set up 14 different HDTV and SDTV screens inside and outside the house to show New York and New England slug it out on the way to an eventual 17-14 Giants victory.

Those screens included seven LCD sets, ranging in size from 15 inches to 52 inches; a pair of plasma HDTVs (42 inch and 50 inch), two 1080p front projectors paired to 82-inch screens, one rear-projector on a 60-inch screen, a 13-inch CRT, and a rather unique short-throw front projector.

Most of the HDTVs had integrated tuners, but a few Samsung, LG, and Vizio digital TV set-top receivers were put into service to demodulate the 720p/60 HDTV signal from Philadelphia FOX affiliate WTXF 29.1. Every HDTV display got this signal from (a) a rooftop antenna, or (b) an attic antenna, or (c) one of two indoor Radio Shack amplified UHF/VHF antennas. (No cable or satellite signals were harmed in the staging of this production…)

The 13-inch CRT TV (a Chinese-made Dynex), part of a demonstration of Zenith’s new DTT900 NTIA digital TV converter, was one of the first things guests saw as they walked through the front door. The rear-projection system, standing right behind my deck doors, employed Epson’s new Powerlite Home Cinema 720 3LCD projector, positioned out on my rear deck and fed by a Samsung DTB-H260F DTV receiver.

HDTVs were spotted on tables, atop the refrigerator, and even on a tiny corner table in the main bathroom. Westinghouse provided a 52-inch TX524805 LCD for the living room, while Samsung had their 46-inch LN-T4681F LED LCD holding court in my temporarily empty dining room. Pioneer donated a PRO-950HD 42-inch plasma for the family room, and LG shipped over a 42LB5D LCD for the downstairs theater.

In Theater #1, Mitsubishi’s HC6000 3LCD projector held sway, while Theater #2 was lit up by Sanyo’s PLV-Z2000 3LCD projector. Both theaters featured 200W Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound systems. Sharp’s 32" LC-32GP3UB LCD set was popular with several kids who sat on the floor in front of the closet to watch the game.

Every year, I always try to have one off-the-wall HDTV screen for the game. A few years back, we projected the game onto the snow in front of my house. Last year, Sanyo’s waterproof 42" LCD monitor greeted guests as they walked up to the front door.

This year, more than a few were taken aback by HD images of the game, projected onto my garage door by Sanyo’s PLC-XL50 short-throw 3LCD projector. This was the last screen I installed, just two hours before kickoff as the sun was setting. It attracted quite a crowd of viewers, including one guest who turned out to be a member of the local SID chapter! (Small world, eh?)

For the most part, things went off without a hitch except for a major DTV tuner failure one hour before the game started and another tuner problem in the PRO-950HD. Both of these were quickly solved with spare DTB-H260F receivers.

As I write this, we’re still cleaning up all of the food, bottles, cans, and other debris. I’m coiling up cables, packing up TVs, and taking inventory of stray remotes. You can find additional coverage at http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-02042008-1482051.html, and I’ll have a full story with photos on my Web site later this week.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank all XIV of those alert DD readers who corrected the typo in my last DD post on January XXI (using Roman Numerals LXII instead of XLII to signify "42"). (I’ve had a few XIIzen printed screw-ups over the past XXV years, and this one had to rank in the top V…)

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