Posted on 04/09/2014 5:23:56 PM PDT by ErnBatavia
Got rid of a 1970's "Home Entertainment Center", and wifey wants a semi-huge screen TV
This may help (BTW: I believe the links are still current.)
http://www.satelliteguys.us ,
http://www.highdefforum.com ,
and * http://www.avsforum.com/f/ (*best for searches IMO).
All three are worth checking out for most any HDTV information; reviews, equipment, latest news, etc…
For TV reviews, I suggest the following three buying guides for starters,
http://www.lcdtvbuyingguide.com
http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com
http://www.3d-tvbuyingguide.com
And for newbies’ to HDTV; http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ (Note: This can be somewhat technical!)
For the really opinionated tailored to your needs you should supply the following:
Target Budget Amount or Range
What type of viewing — Home Theater, Everyday TV and nightly sitcoms, blue-ray movies, etc.
Room setting and environment — big windows to one side, basement rec room, amount of wall space, viewing distance from your planned seating layout.
Do you plan to add a 5.1 sound system?
Are you looking for wall mounted or standing on a stand on a piece of furniture..
Can you tolerate cutting the wall to add hidden wiring.
Will you feed it from cable, blue ray, disc player, and.or antenna.
Will you promise to never tune to MSNBC?
“I know that Plasma is passe - and that’s about it”
Plasma is NOT passe, especially if you watch a lot of fast paced sports. LCD/LED panels STILL cannot refresh fast enough to avoid judder, that nasty breakup of portions of parts of the picture into a bunch of pixels when something really fast like a football being snapped is occurring.I
I watched the Superbowl on a friend’s top-of-the-line Samsung LCD/LED panel and was appalled at what I was seeing compared to watching football on my old Pioneer Elite 52” plasma panel.
I do gotta buy a new plasma though, as this one is starting to give up the ghost, though I’ve certainly got my money’s worth out of it since I bought it used for $400.00 many, many years ago, when it was selling new for $7,000.00.
Right now I’m looking at the top of the line Samsung PN60F8500 plasma, which is reputed to be nearly as bright as an LCD/LED panel, which is really the primary drawback to plasma, namely they aren’t as bright as LCD/LED panels, so aren’t as good in a situation where you have lots of ambient light, say from a large number of sunny windows.
However, the PN60F8500 has way too many bells and whistles for my taste, and Samsung is reputed to be coming out with a simpler, less expensive model sometime during the middle of this year, but with the same picture quality as the PN60F8500, so I’m waiting until then to make my final decision.
samsung. add a samsung blu-ray player and you’re good to go for netflix, hulu, games, fireplace screensaver, etc etc etc
One's a noun, the other a verb.
Other than that...
Vizio.
I have two. A 32 and a 46. Buy From COSTCO and they double the warranty.
Outstanding tv with great sound and color.
Nooooo! The LG, Samsung were sooo pricey. I didn’t want to spend over $300 for a 32 inch tv. Well hope the original poster sees your post.
The picture quality difference between 1080p and 4K HD is like that of the old fashion 420 cathode ray TV and 1080p. It is that drastic an improvement.
If you want to see just how good 4K HD is over 1080p just head over to your nearest Best Buy and ask a salesman to show you the SAMSUNG and SONY 4K TV's they have on display. As soon as you see the intricate FINE DETAIL of 4K HD compared to all existing 1080p sets you will no longer have any interest in throwing money away on any 1080p set, no matter how "cheap" or a "good deal" it is. They are going to be blowing out 1080p TV's like crazy because once 4K HD TV's flood the market, no one will want them because the picture quality is nowhere near as good as 4K.
Now, although the Samsung and SONY 4K TV's are more expensive, that isn't going to last for long thanks to good old competition. VISIO, which makes a very decent TV, and I believe LG, has already come out with their own 4K line of TV's and they are very reasonably priced. Samsung, SONY, et.al will all have to follow suit and lower their price because they no longer have a corner on the tech and as I said, EVERYTHING is heading to 4K HD.
Now, some will rightly make the argument that there is very little in the way of 4K content available. The answer is simple:
1) 4K Blu-ray players and disks are already under development and should be ready for prime time within 2 years.
2) In the meantime, SONY and at least one other manufacturer already have 4K HD streaming players that download native 4K content movies and store them on a hard drive for you to access and play/stream to your 4K HD TV.
Lastly, all of the 4K TV's have onboard computers that "upconvert" all of your existing 1080p Blu-ray movies and 1080i TV signals to near 4K HD quality (the better the set, the better the upconversion.
I have been an audiophile and videophile for decades and my strong advice to you and anyone else reading this is to WAIT and buy 4K. If you absolutely need a TV to hold you over for 6 to 8 months (there will be great sales on 4K HD sets come Christmas and Super-Bowl season). Then go onto Craigslist and buy a used 1080p set for SHORT money, then invest in 4K HD and enjoy the ride because that is where everything is heading and in the technology game you want to be "ahead of the curve". Otherwise you are throwing your hard earned money down the toilet on 1080p and will be kicking yourself because you didn't wait. Then you will turn around and spend twice as much money when you end up buying 4K HD.
My motto regarding all purchases is this:
"Buy it right the FIRST TIME so you don't have to buy again for a long time."
I hope this helps.
P.S. Sam's Club had 4K HD TV sets available last Christmas and they entirely sold out all of their inventory while their 1080p sets languished on the shelves.
Yey to see a LCD that compares to our six year old Pioneer plasma 42". No viewing angle weirdness, beautiful color range.
Sure, it may be a bit heavier, but how often to you move things around? I set ours up by myself.
Shouldn’t one instead wait for 8K?
Just bought an LG 60” Plasma for $850. It’s my 3rd plasma, 2 Panasonics and the LG. They’re all still running strong.
It’s decent but not spectacular but really, really cheap.
In 2 years I’ll buy a 4K. Plasma is still the best $4$ in my opinion. It’s dying because It can’t go to 4K pure and simple.
Electric use is really not a factor except to Algore, $60 per year instead of $25. Screen burn in ? Nothing compared to the old projection TV’s.
I use a Denon receiver for my HDMI switching. I can’t stand the Idea of getting a smart TV. I uses a PS3 for netflix simply because I have one. I’ll get a ROKU soon for Smart TV Duties.
A ROKU is $100, the smartest smart TV has a $1000 premium in most cases. I am most familiar with Panasonic brand and you cannot tell the difference between a $1200 and a $2500 model picture.
I got a wonderful LG 55” Smart TV at Walmart for about $649. Absolute ONLY disappointment is that it cannot do VERY black nightime...fair amount of gray falsing. Still, a wonderful machine.
We picked up a Hisence brand, 50” LED, 1080p at Wally World for less than 400 bucks. Daughter has had one for a couple of years with no trouble, so we went with it. Not a super well known name but a great picture and great price.
LED, for sure. The second consideration is a fancy-schmancy Internet capable TV that connects to Hulu, Netflix, et al., and can download content, or one that doesn’t. The third consideration is 3D or not.
Frankly, most TVs are good products, so check capabilities and price. Prices are extremely competitive but there are still sales that make for even better deals.
We have several brands, Memorex, Magnavox, LG, Sharp, Samsung, and they are all good products. I like the Sharp Aquos the best.
If you like plasma, stock up, production is stopping.
Have several Vizio sets, purchased at Costco (great warranty) and never had a bit of trouble with any of them.
LG, Sony, Sharp, Samsung still the top brands around. All LED tbs do is side light the LCD screen. It gives you some better contrast values but is not a must. A black mask used by some gives truer darker blacks.
Go to a television store (whatever the biggie is near you). Stand around and look at the screens. Find out which one gives you the picture tones that you like and the crispness. Be careful though if they have the lights very low, that can misled you as to what is actually there.
I like a 50 or 60 inch screen if you can afford it but you can be very comfortable with something smaller.
The Sam’s Club guy was correct in his rankings but the screens are all built by the same manufacturer. The specs are a little different for each end brand name. You will get about the same amount of usage out of any of them.
Because picture enjoyment is individual spend a good amount of time comparing side by side before you decide.
On a large screen and pretty much anything these days 1080 p is standard. 720 aint all that bad but you will notice some lack of crisp edges and smearing if the speeds aren’t up. That is less of a problem these days than say 5 or 10 years ago
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