It’s must-see TV.

The Red Sox will, naturally, lose the division to the hated New York Yankees (winning me $50 from Terrence Fitzpatrick), but prevail in the playoffs.

The Patriots will go undefeated and win the Super Bowl, again.

It is time for a new television, to watch all the fall and winter action. I have the money. I just am not smart enough to decide what to buy.

It used to be a simple decision to but a new television. Black-and-white or color? How big?

Now, you need to be an electrical engineer like on-again, off-again gubernatorial candidate David Emery to buy a new set. But now is the time, with the cost dropping by about 25 percent a year.

“Prices are pretty much in a free fall,” said David Naranjo, who tracks the television industry for DisplaySearch, a market research firm.

The best evidence of this is the expectation of analysts that in the next few weeks the Panasonic will announce that it is dropping prices as much as $500 on plasma TVs that retail for around $3,500.

All this spells good news for anyone thinking about upgrading from the old cathode-ray TV to screens that are 40 inches or larger in the three most popular formats.

If I go to the bank for a new television loan, it will be a minimum of 50 inches. I have to entertain the gang for the Patriots season, then the playoffs, which bankrupt me with the high cost of 5-pound briskets for the annual barbecue, so dollars are important.

Full-featured plasma TVs with 50-inch screens that sold for $20,000 five years ago could edge close to $4,000 this season.

A liquid-crystal-display version and a rear-projection TV with a digital light-processing chip will be considerably less, closing in on $1,800.

Now that’s more like it. Twenty grand was a bit much for the Cobb Manor budget since the house cost only 38 large.

Choosing a set is not longer simple.

Plasma? Flat screen? High def?

There are no fewer than eight competing technologies, as well as different screen sizes and display standards that force the feeble-minded to grapple with a shape-shifting matrix of at least a dozen dimensions.

It used to be that LCD technology was for small screens, plasma for medium, and digital light processing for large. Though the TVs with digital light processing have been the best value, plasma had the technological advantage and could sell for more because screens were big and flat. Now LCDs are as large and DLP TVs are flatter.

I am confused.

As the technologies overlap in the 32-inch to 46-inch screen sizes, the price differences narrow. A price cut in one technology forces cuts on the others, too.

While these changes make any purchasing decision more complex, the resulting markdowns should compensate for the headaches. “The consumer really holds the ace in this game,” said Jonas Tanenbaum, director of flat-panel and direct-view marketing for Samsung Electronics North America.

The question is, how many years do I have left? More important, how many years can the Patriots continue their Cinderella run? When will the Red Sox revert to their second-place ways?

The problem with buying any new technology is that tomorrow it will be cheaper – and better.

This year there are several compelling reasons for trading up to a bigger TV, especially one that offers high definition. NASCAR – who cares? – and the National Football League have begun broadcasting events in high definition. The TV networks are broadcasting more high-definition content. Seeing the sweat knocked off the face of a Buffalo Bills quarterback could be worth the money …

Our pals in China and Taiwan, the so-called Tier 3 makers that few consumers have ever heard of, such as Vestel, Changchong or Xoceco, are dropping heavily discounted LCD TVs into general merchandise stores like Costco and Wal-Mart.

I don’t know about you. But I won’t have a Changchong television in my house, no matter the cost. Or a Xoceco, either.

Dell is also forcing the price down to reachable levels. Dell is applying to TVs the low-cost supply chain and direct-to-consumer sales model that struck such envy and dread in the personal-computer industry. While others were selling 42-inch plasma screens for $7,000, it blasted into the market with one for $3,500.

I could live with a Dell.

That will force manufacturers like Panasonic, Philips Electronics, the Samsung Electronics Company and the Sony Corporation to cut prices even more to soak up some of that overproduction through the rest of this decade.

“Price is being led by capacity,” says Gary Merson, editor of the HDTV Insider newsletter.

Maybe I will wait one more year. That will give me more time to study all of this.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.