Guys, I am in the process of looking for a new High Def TV. So many options and features and the prices are all over the place. Would appreciate any good links where I could do some research on various models. Also would appreciate your feedback good/bad regarding your experiences with your TV. I am looking for a set either 42-50 inchs. Would prefer a plasma but at this point I have no idea what are the advantages of plasma vs, LCD, vs DLP. Price of course is important. Want to stay around $2600 or under. I currently have Direct TV so digital cable is not really important to me. I saw the following TV which intriqued me. http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/nabc/product/b2c_product_detail.jsp?eUser=&prod_id=HLR5087WX/XAA Look forward to your feedback.
Whatever you do, you must view these TV's in person before making any decisions. I thought I was gonna get a Sony for the longest until I compared it next to a Samsung... I got the Samsung. Much better picture quality and the only way to compare them is to see them in action. Good luck.
There is no one conclusive answer to your question. It all depends on what you want out of it and how it looks to your eyes (which is hard to figure out with the way sets are configured at stores). I bought a 42" Hitachi plasma a couple of months ago. I went with plasma instead of DLP because I can easily mount the plasma on the wall if I wanted and it took up less real estate than DLP. I chose plasma over LCD because at the time I don't think there were (m)any 42" LCD's that were in my price range. Prices have dropped since I bought my plasma, but I *think* in order to get a good HDTV that's 42"+, you may need to spend a bit more than what you're spending. I could be wrong, as, like I said, I haven't been following prices since I bought mine. An alternative would be to buy an EDTV set. If your viewing distance is around 9-10 feet or more, most people can't tell the difference between an EDTV signal or an HDTV signal. Panasonic makes good plasma sets, as do Hitachi and Pioneer. Fujitsu does as well, but they're pricier. If you want to learn more about various models and what's being recommended by others, go to forums such as : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/index.php
This is good in theory until you find out one thing : Manufacturers often ship the tv's with their contrast, color, sharpness, etc. JACKED UP to blinding levels. Why? So they can make their pictures stand out when it's on a shelf with about 20 of their competitors. Often the picture you see at the store will be blinding when you take it home, and when you turn down the settings, it may not look as great as you had hoped, so be careful... You'll also notice that you can go to one store and look at Model A, then go to another store and look at the same model and the pictures will look different. People can play with settings on the tv's to where a set that would otherwise look great looks horrible because of the jacked up settings. Also keep in mind standard definition signals often can look worse on an HDTV/EDTV set than an SDTV set. Most of the signals you'll see at stores being fed into the tv's are HDTV or dvd signals. Ask them if they can flip to SD ABC or something and see what that looks like...
avsforum is really an awesome place to get input...you should definitely check that place out. Probably one of the first things that you might want to consider is just the physical aspect of it all. Out of the 3 technologies you mentioned (DLP, LCD, and Plasma), DLPs are by far the bulkiest, followed by LCD which are much thinner compared to DLPs, but of course Plasmas are the thinnest out there, thus that's why many wall mount their Plasmas as Dr. did. On a sidenote, it's been awhile since I've researched HDTVs as such, but if you're considering a DLP (they may have fixed this), some people claim that they are capable of seeing a Rainbow Effect, while others can't see the Rainbow Effect at all. Anyways, check out avsforum, it's got tons and tons of information.
i have a 42" panasonic plasma (flat panel) EDTV. the HD programming comes in crystal clear. i have no problems whatsoever. the EDTV costs MUCH less than its HDTV counterpart. the research i did (at the time) seemed to point towards all-japanese manufacturing as the superior product. most user-input sites i visited (at the time) had the panasonics rated the highest. i used the input i got from my research online AND in stores (viewing each "tv") to help me decide. again, i'm happy with my purchase. also, i'm glad i didn't fork out the ca$h for an HDTV. i'm sure the price of those will have dropped significantly by the time i'm ready for another monitor. good luck.
We bought the Sony KDF-42WE655 42" Grand WEGA LCD Projection Television and love it. The built-in HD tuner allows for off-the-air reception of HD without a set top box. We were the opposite of rockHEAD, went in looking for the Samsung and came away with the Sony after side-by-side comparison. Like DaDakota said, different dealers have different display signal strengths and other tricks. Be sure to view the set with and without the HD feed. Unfortunately, we are still going to see a lot of non-HD broadcasts for a while. The difference in clarity can be staggering.
I think I'm gonna wait until OLED technology becomes mainstream in the TV market. That sucker's gonna blow away Plasma, LCD and DLP. Link1 Link2
Yeah, you'll be waiting a bit for that OLED tv.. They're still trying to figure out how to lengthen the lifespan of the blue pixels/OLED's in the picture. Many of those sets' blue "pixels" last about 2000 hours. We may be a few years from seeing good quality OLED sets, but then who knows... some breakthrough may occur granting us long-lasting OLED sets in the next couple of years. Another option that may be closer are SED sets that combine the advantages of plasma, LCD, and LCoS.
A quality rear view projection screen still has the best colors and clarity, even over newer plasma, DLP, and LCOS screens. You also get much more size for your dollar if you can fit the actual TV in your house. Make sure to get a brand with large enough "guns" to project a quality picture. Toshiba Cinema Series TVs (higher end Toshiba) are good bang for your buck. Also, if you plan on getting your HD through a cable box or satellite, they have the HD receiver in the box they give you...you won't need to get a built in HD receiver.
If you're looking for longevity and price, DLPs are the way to go. My father bought a 52 inch Philips for a grand at Costco. If the bulb ever burns out, you can replace it for a hundred bucks or two and it'll be just like new. Downside is the strength of brightness and real estate. Plasmas have a half life, and once it reaches that point, picture degradation become noticable. There might be newer models where you can refill the gas. Current plasma models break a lot. Since it's fairly new technology, the repair rate is low. But if you're going by factory numbers, the error rate is the same as LCDs or DLPs. My personal opinion on LCDs is that they have the most potential to drop in price because of new competition from Dell and other computer companies. I didn't do a lot of research on longevity and the repair success rate. The downside is its quality when showing dark shades or some muddiness in fast motion movie scenes. Flat CRT models will come out soon and it combines the picture clarity of CRT and the real estate of 2 or 3 plasma screens stuck together. I'm not sure if they're out in the states yet. It's probably expensive, but worth it to the trained eye.
if you decide on a dlp tv, they have the samsung hlr-5067 on sale on amazon for $2,052. its probably not as good as the hlr-5087, but it costs much less. both are 720p, but i think the 5087 uses the HD2+ chip while the 5067 uses the HD4 chip. you can read about the difference between the chips in the avs forums. generally, i think people prefer the picture quality from TVs with the HD2+ chip. i think you can get the samsung hlp-5085 (last years model) for around $2000-$2500. i think the major difference between the 5085 and the 5087 is that the 5085 doesnt have a built in hdtv tuner. also, costco is selling a 65" Optoma dlp with the HD2+ chip for $1699 Another thing to keep in mind - samsung is releasing its 1080p (1920x1080 Screen Resolution) models next month (i think). you may want to wait for one of those or get the 720p models at that time when the prices of those TVs drop
I was reading about something that I think is similar to SED called NED from Motorola. It sounded great as well, although I'm no expert in this field. Here are some links about it: http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail/0,,5484_5474_23,00.html http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/wo/wo_052405brandon.1.asp I read elsewhere that Motorola was claiming 50-inch 720p HDTVs <$800 USD and 60+inch 1080p HDTVs <$1500USD. Sounds amazing, although a little hard to believe. While the whole carbon nanotube stuff sounds great for a variety of things, I was reading that Motorola has been delaying this tech for a while now, and just because they could sell us HDTV's at great prices doesn't mean they will. Anyone else here about this tech?
Last month, Cambridge Display Technology figured how how to successfully get the blue polymers to have 100,000 hours of lifetime. I'm not planning on buying for about 2 or 3 more years. Hopefully, in 2007 or 2008, when all the stations have moved over to HDTV (as mandated by the gov't), demand will be high, forcing prices to plummet, and hopefully I'll be able to get a great OLED display then. Link
That is pixel-level brightness. From what I've read, the brightness needed per pixel to generate a screen brightness of up to 200 cd/m2 is 500 cd/m2. In this scenario, according to the article, you're getting less than 6000 hours for the blue half-life. Still pretty pathetic. But... they're getting better.
