HD Tvs

I own a Pioneer Elite 74" rear projection (but I don't have the $2500 HD card to put in it's mainframe in back). It's the pre-LCD/Plasma wide screen TV. Huge and heavy. Detail in DVDs looks incredible.

Even at nine years plus in age it holds up extremely well. My understanding is, the receiver and the TV had been designed for Steven Speilberg's THX specs as the first TV Home Entertainment system capable of it. I've been vacillating for quite some time on either getting a new one, or the HD card (if they can be found for this beast that is).

If I could afford it again, I personally wouldn't go with anything other than a Pioneer Elite. The newer HD series of Elite's couldn't be less in quality, and the picture quality of my old Elite without HD still blows away many LCD TVs for standard definition wide screen I've seen in stores (although not in brightness for the plasma tv's). Actually, almost everyone I know that owns an HD TV, after seeing mine, think mine is also an HD TV when watching standard definition DVDs.
 
It is difficult to judge a TV based on what you see in a store for several reasons, e.g. Store lighting, signal feed is split up and varies from TV to TV, and TV settings are never optimized. These three combined can make any TV look far worse than it can. The best way to judge is to read and read user reviews. avsforum.com is the most extensive review site I found. They have reviews and user comments on almost every tv.

In my opinion Plasma produce a better image than an LCD due to the contrast ratio. LCD have a difficulty in replicating black. But LCD are light weight and require less power. DLP have a better picture but they are larger than both LCD and plasma and may have issues with the bulp. I tend to steer clear of a DLP set. My choice today is plasma for TV viewing and LCD for video games and computer viewing.

As for brands, in Plasma, Pioneer is king and you will pay top dollar for that. Panasonic is the best of the rest. Samsung is also good. Top 3 would be Pioneer, Panasonic, than Samsung. For LCD I believe its Sony, Samsung, and Sharp but I am not to up on that.

Looking forward I think the Sony OLED technology will kill all. As light as an LCD, less power hungry than Plasma, and as close to CRT in picture quality than any set out there today. Though as of today an 11" OLED will cost something like $2,500 so we will have to wait a few years for an affordable 42"-50" model.
 
ugafan said:
i have a sharp aquos and i love it. high def stuff looks outstanding, but the analog stuff isn't that great. my wii looks bad on it as well. but for the high def programming and movies, it's definitely worth it.
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Make sure you're running through a component cable (got mine off ebay) so you're seeing 480p, much better than the RCAs at least.
 
A word of caution --

In theory, a 120 Hz display should be ideal for viewing both 24 fps and 60 fps material.

But the 120 Hz displays I've seen demonstrated all have the same EXCEPTIONALLY fatal flaw -- they make 24 fps material look and move like 60 fps. The upshot being, of course, that every movie looks like video, not film.

Who in their right mind wants that?
 
Andrew McCarrick said:
Not to stray from the topic here, but I'm looking for a 1080P in the 23-27" range.... anybody know of anything.... that is either out now or will be in the next 4 months?
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it depends on what you are using it on, but i would save the money and go 720p. on that size tv there is NO benefit to having a 1080p TV IF you are using it as a TV (Movies, HD content, DVD upscaling, broadcast, etc.), now if it's doubling as a computer monitor, there's an argument there.

At about 1.5x screen WIDTH you can start to see the individual details/pixels of a 1080p display. At about 1.9x screen width then you should go with a 720p display.

So, a 23" tv is probably about 20" wide, you'd have to be 30" from the screen to see pixels in 1080p and 38" to see 720p pixels.

Regardless, Sharp has got your back.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/29/sharps-aquos-p-series-of-tvs-worlds-first-22-and-26-inch-1/


EDIT*** - for comparison's sake ... I'm sitting approx. 40" away from dual 19" 1440x900 monitors. I'd have to be 10" closer to take advantage of more resolution if it was a TV.
 
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ilauzirika said:
Today I was looking for some speakers and I came across with sony tv set that has a pcmcia slot.... What is that for? direct P2 viewing experience from a tv set?......
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Technically, that was probably a Cable Card slot, although I think that was heavily based on PCMCIA. The idea was to have cable companies make tuner cards that would slide right into the TV, doing away with the cable box. I thought I just saw something in the news where more companies were announcing support for it.
 
Captain Pierce said:
Technically, that was probably a Cable Card slot, although I think that was heavily based on PCMCIA. The idea was to have cable companies make tuner cards that would slide right into the TV, doing away with the cable box. I thought I just saw something in the news where more companies were announcing support for it.
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Upgradeable TVs, with add ons like computers.
 
bill totolo said:
I'm glad this topic came up, I'm really curious if it would be completely stupid to use a 32"1080p Sharp Aquos as a computer monitor?

Would it be a poor performer for say, color correction?
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As a computer monitor, might not be the best choice, simply because a similar-sized or even smaller -- and much less-expensive -- LCD display will get you higher resolution.

For using as a color-correction monitor, it should work. No, not the same as a dedicated studio monitor, but workable.
 
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