HDTV Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > HDTV Megathread

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Zero Jesus posted:

FYI Pioneer has a deal running now that if you buy that one you get a free 50 inch 720p Pioneer plasma.

Um...what? This doesn't make any sense.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2007 07:49

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 02:52

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

oops nm

# ¿ Mar 21, 2007 19:13

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Miko posted:

In terms of HD programming, assuming I have an HDTV and basic cable, is there any way to get HD content without having to buy a box and pay for a HD subscription, when all I want are just the channels I watch already in HD?

Alternately, can I just buy a HD settop box and get HD content through my existing coax? I really want to see this Sony Grand Wega in action.

If your TV has built in ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuners, all you need to do is buy a set of rabbit ears and/or plug in the coax line from an antenna. I dont know about your cable.

ScootsMagoo posted:

Has anybody heard anything new about laser? I remember hearing last year about laser TVs coming out sometime this year and they sounded promising. Apparently, it's a flat-panel unit with CRT picture quality that's 30% less expensive to produce than an LCD.

ilikegrapejuice posted:

I remember hearing something about Sony doing a laser-based SXRD, but I'm not even 100% sure if that's the same technology.

Yes, I have heard Sony is looking into this for their RPTV lines. AFAIK it isn't as thin as flat panel - it's going to replace DLP/SXRD/LCDRP and is accordingly thinner than those existing sets.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2007 00:22

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

unorthodoxender posted:

I've been looking at buying an HDTV fo when I graduate and I've been looking at the 46" Sony XBR-2. I've done a lot of comparison with other models (Samsing, JVC and Panasonic) and In my opinion, the XBR is one of the best (and priciest) HDTV's on the market. what do you tech-savvy goons think?

Sony makes high quality sets and the price reflects that. I doubt you'll be disappointed except with your bill.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2007 01:45

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Bozart posted:

Also, is pioneer playing catchup to other manufacturers - Sony, etc? Is there a better offering from one of them for the same size?

To clarify here, Pioneer is the plasma manufacturer. They flat out make the best plasmas, and that's all they do. Meanwhile, Sony does not make plasmas at all - they focus on rear-projection (lcd) televisions and flat-panel LCDs. Sony is generally highly respected for their efforts, perhaps as the best LCD manufacturer.

Both are essentially overpriced as you can get very very impressive pictures from other brands without paying a brand-premium - but if cost isn't an issue, you might as well go with the best.

If you're looking to choose between LCD and plasma, well, that's a whole separate can of worms.

Oh, and 50" is worth it unless your viewing area is small. We sit around 9 feet from the TV and could use that extra eight inches on our 42" Panasonic plasma.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2007 00:09

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Count Von Count posted:

If you think that it's not worth it, is there a similar TV/cost that you know of?

I would never buy a television I hadn't looked at first. Additionally, if I'm going to buy something, I'm going to buy something fairly nice - I'd rather be without than be with crap. And that tv looks like crap. I mean, 800:1 contrast ratio? What the gently caress? Just get a used CRT.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2007 00:13

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Wood for Sheep posted:

I haven't seen the TV but I saw the Polaroid one which looks the exact same and I am good with the picture quality.

Have you seen how it handles fast movement? Pixelation would drive me nuts.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2007 01:32

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

G-Hawk posted:

So, my old crappy TV exploded yesterday. Now i'm in the market for a new one I guess.

I'm looking for a budget HD from 27-32 inches, $700 being absolute max but i'm really looking for $500 or $600. It can't be too heavy or bulky(so LCD probably). It would be a huge bonus if it can be used for PC as well but that isn't a requirement. From what i've gathered 720p is fine at this size as long as it upconverts 1080i.

Downconverts 1080i.

quote:

After looking around, the best I've found fitting this stuff is the Olivea 32" 232V, for $600. Any comments on this tv? Or Olevia in general? Any other suggestions? Based on what i've read and seen, Olevia seems to be the best of the budget HD tier? Is this the case?

Yeah, so thats about it. Any input would be helpful.

Olevia makes decent budget panels. They occasionally have a funny "two eggs" shaped outline in the screen, where the two vertical halves of the screen have an egg-like outline. Not a terrible brand.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2007 23:59

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Don Corleone posted:

So will 720p sources not be distorted by the non-square pixels, or is the distortion just not as noticable as it would be with 1080i or 480 sources?

720p feeds will look fine. Odd resolutions from a PC (etc) will look not fine.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2007 02:47

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Chemmy posted:

I run 1360x768 into its VGA port and it looks great.

Yeah, and some resolutions don't work/look hosed up, correct?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2007 04:35

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Jaketeck posted:

The only lcd line up so far with no huge issues(banding, clouds, and so on). I watch lots of SD, play xbox360 and Wii mainly.

fyi SD looks pretty awful on HDTVs.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2007 17:54

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Finding an HDTV that does SDTV is pretty hard, because no one wants to talk about it. Seriously, go ask this at AVSforums and you'll get GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT as your general reply. Then there is the added delight that is subjective gauging of what exactly constitutes a good picture (especially when it comes to SD).

# ¿ Mar 26, 2007 23:03

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

furushotakeru posted:

I would think it a fairly safe bet that the bulbs won't be $150 in three years. At least that is my fervent hope since I am looking into buying a DLP TV.

What happens when they cut down manufacturing of current-tech DLP bulbs because the format gets abandoned in a couple of years?

*ring ring*
hello, thank you for calling samsung support, how can i be of service?
YOUR GOD drat BULBS COST MORE THAN MY TV IS WORTH
buy a new tv, sir. have a nice day!
*click*

(not saying this will happen, but i am saying it is loving tops to have a tv that has a brightness half-life of 60,000 hours.)

ail fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Mar 27, 2007

# ¿ Mar 27, 2007 00:34

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Taco Avenger posted:

The Pioneer plasma kind of weirds me out with its 768p resolution. I'm also worried about burn in.

fyi burn-in isn't really that much of an issue with current plasmas. just don't leave a static image on overnight. avsforum loving freaks out over it, turning brightness down to -15 and changing sources every 30 seconds; it's ridiculous. all you have to do is moderate your source on occassion and you'll be fine. it's something to be aware of, not to panic over.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2007 18:16

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Bozart posted:

The thing you get nailed on though is with channels like CNN and other news stations. They have tickers with the same static images all day long, so if you leave that channel on for too long it could result in damage.

Yes, but it would take hours for this to get permanently burned in (you might get image retention sooner but that poo poo goes away).

What kind of loving idiot watches CNN for five hours straight? GET A drat LIFE. Or hell just watch some Golden Girls reruns or something after a couple of hours.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2007 01:41

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

ilikegrapejuice posted:

1080p, 720p, etc. are just resolutions. Basically, levels of detail. Plasma is a display technology (like projection, tube, etc.) As for resolutions, most plasmas will be more or less 720p, and a few are 1080p.

If you're looking at a flat panel, you have a choice between LCD and plasma. As a general rule of thumb, plasma will give you better contrast and more accurate color, but tend to have a lot of glare, while an LCD will give you a very bright, vibrant picture with minimal reflections. This isn't set in stone, however. LCD's have made pretty big leaps in color and contrast recently (I'm a big fan of Samsung's new lineup), and there are some plasmas coming out now with anti-glare screens (i.e. Panasonic's new models, although I haven't personally seen one yet) As for price, LCD's tend to be a little more expensive, as they've just recently gotten up to the larger sizes (46" and up).

Glare varies directly from set to set. Samsung's LCDs have worse than than my Panasonic plasma due to their "piano black" bezel. So, check out the individual unit.

quote:

For DVD's, as long as you have at least a decent progressive scan player, you'll be fine (any HD set will upscale whatever you are watching to the appropriate resolution). Whether or not getting a DVD player that will handle the upconversion really is debatable, but I'd say a good quality one is worth the extra cost (I've heard good things about Denon's players, and I think it was Chemmy who said his Oppo was fantastic).

To clarify, if you hook up your current DVD player, you will get 480x resolution - no "upscaling" is done (whether you get 480i or 480p depends on whether or not you use composite or component cables).

Personally, I'd buy a nice surround system before buying an upscaling player; audio will bring you into the movie more than just the picture will. 480p will look very good.

samurai slowdown posted:

DO NOT gently caress AROUND IN THE SERVICE MENU. SERIOUSLY.

Fixed lroflmao

# ¿ Mar 31, 2007 06:00

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

The Royal Nonesuch posted:

Hey, popping in to thank all you guys for the advice. My parents had pretty much decided to go with the Panasonic 50" TH-50PX75U, but at the last minute a friend directed them towards a website selling the Pioneer Elite 50" for some low price. They printed out the ad, took it down to Best Buy and haggled around with the salespeople. Anyway, I now have an Elite 50" sitting in my living room, for $3400

I had instructed them not to buy any monster cables/etc pushed at them, and they followed my advice. So I am now tasked with getting the necessary hookups ASAP.
I'm planning on getting everything from Belkin.com, due to the discount code kicking around the internet. So now we come to... tell me more of what to get!

Isn't Belkin overpriced too? Monoprice.com

Your dvd player supports component output, which is better than S-Video. Get some component video cables and if you have a receiver, an optical cable for sound from the DVD player.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2007 05:15

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

The Royal Nonesuch posted:

Yes, Belkin is overpriced but there is a discount code that takes off 40%. I was thinking that would make it more reasonable. I'll compare prices at monoprice, thanks for the link & component info.

I assume by receiver you mean a separate box that controls audio to speakers etc - I don't have one yet but will be getting one when I figure out what sound system to get.

Also, how important is the ~100 hour break-in period on plasmas? I was planning on running one of the color spectrum type DVDs as much as possible for a week or so.

Yeah, not really that important. People at avsforums are loving nuts about this but you can, quite frankly, ignore 99.9% of everything said at that place; too much money, not enough brains.

Generally, be careful how you use your display but don't let it dictate your habits completely. I'd recommend, just for peace of mind, that you vary sources at least every 5 hours - note that this means changing from a movie with black bars to something that fills the screen for a couple of hours to 'cycle' phosphors. Just don't leave it on a static image for a really long time and you'll be okay.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2007 19:40

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

You can probably use the "zoom" scaler to fill the television's screen completely, so no reason to worry about that. Might look a bit off, dunno.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2007 22:49

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

bull3964 posted:

I know amazon has been shredding prices like mad on 2006 model year TVs. I got my Samsung LCD for $800 off normal store prices.

It looks like that holds true for Panasonic plasmas as well.

http://tinyurl.com/257kvj

For what it's worth, they're actually charging more than I paid at Circuit City three weeks ago for the 42px60u. The 600U for $1200 isn't that great of a deal either considering tax & shipping.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2007 17:55

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

If you're going to buy from the net, buy from Vanns.com. No sales tax (Montana-based company), free shipping, very competitive prices.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2007 19:21

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

LeonardSkinnered posted:

Quick question that I didn't think deserved another thread...

I wear glasses, and recently I've been noticing a "rainbow"-type effect on my Panasonic TH42PX60U plasma. I see yellow or blue colors at the edge of white images, especially if the white is in contrast with dark colors. (Sin City is an example.) It's especially bad if I turn my head suddenly, or if my eyes aren't looking directly at the screen. This only started becoming noticeable over the past few months... I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience, and if so, what they did about it.

Your best bet will be to do a model search at avsoforums. If there's a problem with a set, I guarantee they'll find and bitch about it. I know there are color issues with some Panasonic plasmas (do a title search for "purple snakes") but your specific problem isn't familiar.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2007 02:27

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Undersold: I too own that TV and am very pleased with it. My one complaint is the lack of a VGA port (the 600U model has one).

A fantastic set for a great price.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2007 02:29

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

FitzyG posted:

really.. ?? every tv salesperson I work with thinks lg > panasonic. But I dunno.. maybe our environment just sucks. I think the panasonics have bad contrast and tend to oversaturate alot of colors.

try turning off vivid mode, heh. sets can be calibrated to change appearance from the factory settings (which are almost always overly bright) you know.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2007 08:57

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 02:52

ail: Jul 8, 2003; by The Finn

Lt. Jebus posted:

While I have no real knowledge of Plasmas (and thus am not agreeing or disagreeing), is there any way to quantify that other than "In my opinion..." or "The boys at AVS say..." ?

Surely you don't mean to imply price isn't the way to determine quality?

# ¿ Apr 10, 2007 06:18

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