I have this one: http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INT...roductInformation-Print?ProductSKU=KDL40V2500 I love it! The color is "gray" but in real life its more like flat-black or very dark gray... like this:
Yeah same here... at Circuitcity I saw a 1080p Sony playing ICE AGE(animation) off a Samsung Blu Ray player and IT WAS AMAZING... you could see the little furrs on the animals faces and such..
Unless your screen is 60" + you won't notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p. 1080P is just a marketing tool for Sony which doesn't provide much benefit in the real world!!
I think some of the newer TVs support something called deep color (part of HDMI 1.3 IIRC), which basically provides more colors than what we have now. Not sure if it really makes a difference (haven't really seen much on it), and even if it did, you still have a problem of needing source material that supports it.
This is the one that always killed me... we get 24-bit color, but "deep color" goes out to 30 and 48-bit color depths. The human eye can't perceive a difference beyond 24-bit color depths. So we get extra colors we can't see. Actually from what I recall where this may help is viewing scenes where there are gradations/gradients in colors - it will reduce or eliminate the banding effect. You won't exactly be blown away by it.
I was under the impression that there were some color ranges that our eyes can perceive that RGB doesn't display well. Deep color still seems a bit overkill though (especially up to 48 bits). Again, not really sure if it would be all that noticeable, although like you said, it should reduce the banding effect. Found some examples: Not sure if this one is specifically about deep color, or just about the color ranges provided by laser systems compared to current LCD and plasma displays:
The new model LCD's have a neat feature named pixel mapping. I'm not sure how important this is for movies etc, but for video games, you can see the game exactly the way the developers do - pixel for pixel. I believe only the 1080p hdtv's have this feature.
As I said earlier, I saw the Blu Ray movie on 1080p and was able to tell a big difference from standard 1080i HD (TV HD).. Only a 1080p can perform like that.. That TV was a 40" or a 42".. not a 60".. It's true TV programming now is limited to 720p or 1080i, but that doesn't mean 1080p's are the "same" as 1080i's.
i have a pioneer plasma currently, and i absolutely love the thing. i haven't had a problem with it after nearly 2 years, and the picture on it is gorgeous. pioneer makes an awesome set, but then again my parents have a sony at home and it looks great as well. honestly, i dont think you could go wrong with either one, so it's really up to your order of importance when looking at features.
anybody uses their HDTV as a PC monitor? I've hooked mine to my PC but can't get it to display in widescreen mode. Is it a display monitor setting or a video adapter setting?
I notice the difference between 720p and 1080i. If TV stations ever had a channel with 1080p, there'd be a reason to upgrade, but the difference isn't because people can't tell. I guess the expensive new TVs would matter to people who own a PS3 or loves HD movies.
Plasma is better for people who watch movies. LCDs are more functional for games/computer interface. PIONEER ELITE does say that you bought something high end tho. like if you bought a BENTLEY.
I have my Samsung 32" LCD HDTV doubling as my PC monitor. I just set the TV to PC mode and it works fine.
