Posted on 07/18/2007 7:55:12 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
Okay, I am going to spend some of my mad money for a large screen HDTV. I want either a LCD or Plasma TV, no projection tv's. I want 1080p resolution. I'll have around $2000 to spend. What I need is advice on what is good, what sucks, what breaks, what keeps on working, plasma tv life expectancy, etc.
Hit me!
From Wiki...
Look at it, buy it then enjoy it and don't do any more window shopping for at least 2 years so you won't have any regrets for not waiting a couple months for the better model that came out..... :)
Yep. On the back of my Sony surround sound speakers, it says "Made in China".
That's great news - got our 46 LCD last year. Even then the newer DLP's had the better picture - but we weren't ready to deal with the bulb issue. Guess we should have waited...
TV is great....it’s the programming that sucks. The old B&W films are great. One has to really pay attention to the fast pace dialogs....that in of itself tunes the viewer into the acting and the directing as well as the script; much different than the constant deception of special affects.
Make sure you can stand watching an LCD first. My brother has LCD, I have plasma. His has a higher resolution than my plasma but my plasma has hands down better picture quality (Pioneer broadcast monitor and bro regrets his choice). For sports this plasma (72hz refresh rate) is superb viewing. I find LCD smear fatiguing to my eyes. If I were to shop for LCD, 1080p wouldn’t be the thing I’d look for, I’d look for the new 120hz refresh rate (which is probably attached to 1080p only anyway).
Save yourself a few hundred bucks and skip the Monster cable hustle at the store. Get your cables off the net at cablewholesale.com or one of the others.
Great article on cables here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,121777/article.html
Coax, my normal cable TV wire, delivers a full spectrum of digital cable channels with stereo, plus numerous HDTV channels with 5.1 surround.
Would tend to agree on cable pricing rip-offs. One general tip is to never buy cables where the TV sets are sold ... whatever the retailer gives up on pricing the set, they'll make back, in spades, on the cables.
Don't hold your breath, either. Whenever HD programming does come to your area, it won't be in 1080p. There are NO broadcasters presently using 1080p, and there is NO PLAN to upgade on the horizon. Your set may upconvert to 1080p, but only gamers and those willing to invest in the undecided standards of HDDVD/BlueRay can take advantage of native 1080p.
I watch very little TV and then I watch mostly the Discovery channel and the History channel. And Battlestar Galactica and 24. But I do like movies and would like a nice TV to watch them on.
I have been thinking about the laser TV since I read about them but wasn’t sure when they were being put on the market. I am very tempted to wait, too.
lol
we put our feet up, with the soles facing Mecca.
We have had it for 3 months.
There are enough 80s movies and sitcom reruns to make it worth it. Throw in VH1 Classic’s Metal Mania and you have a deal.
;-)
I have FIOS too.
I know you are rejecting projection TVs, but that could mean the ones with a built in Behind the screen projector. Do not dismiss DLP prjectors, such as Radio Shack sells.
At Christmas, they had a DLP projector for sale at $999 with a built in sound system, subwoofer, et al, and a DVD player.
I couldn’t afford it then, but in the mean time, I got my hands on a regular video projector and now have a 9 foot (108”) screen.
The only requirement is that the screen not have direct light on it as this diffuses the color, which is ok, because whn I watch football or a movie, or play my PS2 games, I don’t want to be looking around, I want to focus on the show.
The only cons are the 10 second delay from powering on the TV to seeing the picture (the bulb must warm up first), and the $150 bulb will need replacing every 8,000 hours (4 or 5 years of normal use).
One big reason I chose a 50 in. LCD projection over a plasma is power consumption. Looked at a 50 in. plasma from Vizio, but it uses 500 watts of power continuous. The 50 in. LCD I got uses 200 watts.
Whenever I go into stores selling big screens, one thing I always notice.... the Samsung always has the best and clearest picture.
“Stay away from LCDs, at this point they don’t have the picture quality, black levels or reliability of the big plasmas. At your price point though I don’t know if you can get 1080P on anything larger than a 42 incher.”
From what I’ve seen, the latest, high quality LCDs have excellent picture quality and black levels. The Sony XBR2 LCDs, for example, look excellent to my eyes. Also some Phillips (!) LCDs I looked at a couple of weeks ago were looking pretty good. All 1080p.
I still like plasmas, but you have to go to at least 50” to get 1080p in a plasma screen, and those are still a little pricey. The Panasonic 42” HD Plasma is very nice, however the resolution, IIRC, is only 1280x720 - which still looks great on a screen that size from a reasonable viewing distance of say, 6 feet or more.
At $2000 I’d go with a 65” or so DLP. Toshiba or Samsung are good choices. The most common “if I had it do over again” statement by buyers is going for a bigger screen.
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