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Flyboy925 posted:As for size, at 10' your going to want about a 40-47" TV. Its roughly a 2(2.5):1, on distance to size. So you looking at about 4' of tv. I had a 47" in my old apartment that i was watching at about 7'. looked great. In the new apartment I'm about 10-12' away, but havent set it up yet. As for olevia/vizio, they're both lower end screens, but if your using an old busted TV right now, they're still going to look awesome. If your using a decent TV now, itll still look better, but not like a Sony XBR, or similar. I went from a busted old 20" CRT to my Toshiba 47", adn it looked absolutely amazing. Depends on what your coming from.
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Dec 3, 2007 00:35
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I work at Sears and just picked up a used (2 days old) 42" Vizio Gallevia for $900 and I'm having second thoughts. I hooked my 360 up to it and it's just not what I thought it would be. I just assumed the picture would be a lot more crisp than it is. I don't know if I just have high expectations or maybe just a lovely TV but I'll probably return it and pick up something else.
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Dec 3, 2007 00:47
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Fear and Loathing posted:I work at Sears and just picked up a used (2 days old) 42" Vizio Gallevia for $900 and I'm having second thoughts. I hooked my 360 up to it and it's just not what I thought it would be. I just assumed the picture would be a lot more crisp than it is. I don't know if I just have high expectations or maybe just a lovely TV but I'll probably return it and pick up something else.
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Dec 3, 2007 02:09
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I got a 40" Bravia last week and I have spent all week trying to get it to display a nice clean picture. Everything always looks grainy. HDTV looks ok sometimes, but most of the time it is a grainy mess. Even Blu-ray discs are very grainy.I have tried all the TV modes, like standard, cinema, etc, but nothing shows a great improvement. If I use the TVs noise reduction filter, It clears up the graininess, but that just smooths everything over and introduces a lot of motion blur. Can anyone recommend some settings or give me some tips? I tried using photoshop to describe my problem, but it gets much more severe than my example shows. I was expecting a 1080p blu-ray disc to be crystal clear with a crisp clean picture, but every disc I try is grainy, I just don't get it.
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Dec 3, 2007 02:11
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To phoboselement: go to the costco and go through there TV section. You can get soem decent TV's fro around $1300 or so. If you can go a little higher than that, and dont mind a larger tv, look at their DLP line up. Awesome picture, usually about $1800 for a 62" with stand. A little big, but gives you an idea for price concerns and sizes. My parents just got a 52" for thire living room, and they sit abotu 13-15' away. Smaller than reccomended, but they like it, and it fits between the one wall and door pretty well. But go to the Costco and talk to the person in teh TV area. THey are usually pretty knowledgeable about what they sell, as they dont sell the entire store. To Fear adn Loathing: how are you hooking up the X360 to the TV. Are you using HDMI, or Component. The HDMI will look alot better than Component. How is the TV on other HD content, like a HD TV signal? is it crisp, or not? could be the whole TV is borked, and Sears just wanted to sell it rather than deal with the hassle of returning it to the manufacturer. See if you can get a different HD source, adn compare it.
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Dec 3, 2007 02:16
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Atarian posted:I got a 40" Bravia last week and I have spent all week trying to get it to display a nice clean picture. Everything always looks grainy. HDTV looks ok sometimes, but most of the time it is a grainy mess. Even Blu-ray discs are very grainy.I have tried all the TV modes, like standard, cinema, etc, but nothing shows a great improvement. If I use the TVs noise reduction filter, It clears up the graininess, but that just smooths everything over and introduces a lot of motion blur. Can anyone recommend some settings or give me some tips? I tried using photoshop to describe my problem, but it gets much more severe than my example shows. Try turning down teh sharpness. I had a slight graininess on some content, turned down my sharpness a hair, and it seems to have taken care of the problem.
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Dec 3, 2007 02:25
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Flyboy925 posted:Try turning down teh sharpness. I had a slight graininess on some content, turned down my sharpness a hair, and it seems to have taken care of the problem. This. Calibrate your set with a copy of DVE or Avia, you'll be a lot happier.
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Dec 3, 2007 03:46
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Super Ninja Fish posted:I've decided that I'm going to get a 50" Plasma from Wal-Mart soon. Yeah, it has to be from Wal-Mart because I can get a 20% discount there for the month of December. The three available are a Phillips for $1,379 (which comes to $1,103 with the discount), a Visio for the same price, and a Sanyo for $100 less. There's something else that I'm wondering about, the speakers for the HDTVs. This may be a stupid question, but the Phillips has a row of speakers at the bottom of the TV that are about an inch in height, while the speakers for the Sanyo covers the whole bottom of that TV. Does this mean that the Sanyo would have a lot better sound or is it not that big of a deal?
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Dec 3, 2007 08:46
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Super Ninja Fish posted:There's something else that I'm wondering about, the speakers for the HDTVs. This may be a stupid question, but the Phillips has a row of speakers at the bottom of the TV that are about an inch in height, while the speakers for the Sanyo covers the whole bottom of that TV. Does this mean that the Sanyo would have a lot better sound or is it not that big of a deal? The speakers are most likely all the same, usually 10wx2 or something, they're all going to suck rear end.
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Dec 3, 2007 13:46
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Don Lapre posted:have you set up your xbox360 to output the native resolution of your set? I actually just realized I had to do that after I posted, and also found some settings on CNET that work pretty well. It's amazing how much difference a few menu options can make.
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Dec 3, 2007 15:35
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Just chiming in to say I bought a Samsung 40" 720p LCD set yesterday (model LNT4042H) and couldn't be happier  The best part is, hooking my HTPC up to it worked without a hitch (when I built it 6 months ago I made sure to make it HD-compatible). Now I just need a proper surround sound setup and I'll be good to go.
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Dec 3, 2007 16:42
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So after striking out on Black Friday and with the Philips Outlet deal, I'm starting to get desperate for a television. Just noticed the Staples deal going on and my local Staples had about 5 of them, so before I pulled the trigger I was hoping to get feedback on this 'not so name brand' television. It's an 42" Envision LCD Flat Panel (L42W761). I haven't found any reviews on it at all and just by looking at the specs, it looks like a decent 720p set. The specs can be found here: http://www.envisiondisplay.com/products/specsheets/l42w761-specs.pdf It's on sale right now for $799 and there is a 12% off coupon rolling around to bring the total after tax to around $750. Hopefully someone has seen this television in action.
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Dec 4, 2007 00:29
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boo posted:So after striking out on Black Friday and with the Philips Outlet deal, I'm starting to get desperate for a television. Just noticed the Staples deal going on and my local Staples had about 5 of them, so before I pulled the trigger I was hoping to get feedback on this 'not so name brand' television. Usually if something is too good to be true, then it is. $800 seems way too low for a 42" LCD that will be anything close to reliable/worth the money.
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Dec 4, 2007 00:34
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I was in my local Sam's club the other day and I spotted this HDTV. It is a Sony Bravia 52" model KDL52WL13, with a contrast ratio of 18000:1 and a 10-bit panel, 1080P res. But i cannot find any information when I googled it. This TV had the most amazing color I have ever seen on a tv. The price was a bit high at 2900. I was wondering if anyone has seen this tv. I am trying to find info about this HDTV.
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Dec 4, 2007 03:31
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comdgp posted:I was in my local Sam's club the other day and I spotted this HDTV. It is a Sony Bravia 52" model KDL52WL13, with a contrast ratio of 18000:1 and a 10-bit panel, 1080P res. But i cannot find any information when I googled it. This TV had the most amazing color I have ever seen on a tv. The price was a bit high at 2900. I was wondering if anyone has seen this tv. I am trying to find info about this HDTV. It's probably a store specific model number, which is why you can't find any info about it for that specific model number. It may be one of the TV's that Sony makes especially for WalMart - although I hadn't heard much about those ending up in Sam's Club.
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Dec 4, 2007 11:46
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Newbie question: I went to the electronics store today to look for a HDTV. I immediately went over to the biggest and baddest I saw and it was playing the Ice Age DVD. Now, I assume DVD should be a reasonably high quality source, but the image, while mostly clear had some major artifacts. This appeared mostly on the subtitles and on edges of moving things. It looked grainy and had a clear shadow. I've seen this on plenty other TV's too with supposedly good sources. What causes this and what do I need to look for in a TV to avoid it?
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Dec 4, 2007 15:12
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zapateria posted:Newbie question: On a HDTV, you are going to notice the compression artifacts on DVD's a lot more than on a SDTV. DVD's aren't really as high quality as you think and HDTV's make this visible. It is very strange that you were noticing artifacting around the subtitles though as those are not encoded as part of the video on DVD's. It sounds like the sharpness setting on the TV was too high. Turning that down would probably make the DVD look a heck of a lot better to you.
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Dec 4, 2007 18:11
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I'm trying to find a decent HDMI cable for less than one thousand dollars, but I'm confused. I went to monoprice.com and they have tons of cables listed, ranging from $3 to $50+. What should I be looking for? All I need is a simple HDMI cable to connect my HD-DVD player to my television, just a foot would do. Could anyone help me out?
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Dec 4, 2007 19:23
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benedict arnold posted:I'm trying to find a decent HDMI cable for less than one thousand dollars, but I'm confused. I went to monoprice.com and they have tons of cables listed, ranging from $3 to $50+. What should I be looking for? All I need is a simple HDMI cable to connect my HD-DVD player to my television, just a foot would do. Could anyone help me out? As it has been said recently, anything that will reach, male to male. Update I'm fixing to drop $1,500 on the Panasonic TH-50PX77U. For this price range ($1,500 and below), is this the best bang for the buck?
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Dec 4, 2007 20:54
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benedict arnold posted:I'm trying to find a decent HDMI cable for less than one thousand dollars, but I'm confused. I went to monoprice.com and they have tons of cables listed, ranging from $3 to $50+. What should I be looking for? All I need is a simple HDMI cable to connect my HD-DVD player to my television, just a foot would do. Could anyone help me out? If you dont mind ordering online, just get the cheapeast one you can find off monoprice, if you want something locally, ive gotten a cheap one at biglots before, or the apple store sells 6ft cables for $20
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Dec 4, 2007 21:56
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http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-HPT5054-50-Plasma-HDTV/dp/B000NEKORW Ordered this today after much research, this thread helped a lot. I got an OTA HDTV antenna and a capture card as well, I'm going to turn a spare Shuttle PC into a DVR (probably with mythtv, we'll see how it goes)
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Dec 4, 2007 23:26
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completely deck posted:As it has been said recently, anything that will reach, male to male. Yes, buy it. I have the 42 inch version and it's glorious. I would have went with the 50 inch if I had room for it, but my living room just isn't that big.
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Dec 4, 2007 23:28
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My Panasonic TH-42PZ77U arrived today. I'm in love.
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Dec 4, 2007 23:44
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kylej posted:My Panasonic TH-42PZ77U arrived today. I'm in love. There is a no love like new TV love.
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Dec 5, 2007 00:31
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I own this TV: GEM 56 Inch DLP RPTV(GDT-56DRP) The lamp (UHP 100W AC Lamp) went out last night (according to the error code). Based on the sound it made when it went out, I think I agree with the error. Is there a retail outlet that would sell a lamp for this TV? I called Fry's and the guy there told me that they only sell lamps for Mitsubishi TVs and that I have to order directly from the manufacturer. Is that the only way? I would like to go purchase one tonight, but I get the feeling that won't be possible. edit: Just got a look at the lamp. On the bulb itself, it says UHP 100W 1.3, and under that, PHILIPS E23. edit2: Ordered the bulb from Discount Merchant. Is that a reputable vendor? Jayzer fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Dec 5, 2007 |
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Dec 5, 2007 00:53
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LordOfThePants posted:Yes, buy it. I have the 42 inch version and it's glorious. That's what I was thinking, thanks.
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Dec 5, 2007 03:31
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Is there a free guide to calibrating an HDTV? I didn't even know calibration existed until a couple days ago and now I'm curious, but I don't want to spend $50 on Avia if I'm probably only going to use it once. Is there maybe a "pass around a copy of Avia from goon to goon" sort of thing going on anywhere? Also if it matters I have a 60" Sony KDS-60A2000 DLP/Projection TV.
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Dec 5, 2007 05:39
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The poor man's set calibration is a THX DVD, such as the Star Wars DVDs or Terminator 2. There's a THX logo on the main menus that will bring up audio & video test patterns so you can level things out. The real way to do it is either with Avia or Digital Video Essentials (the latter available in SD and HD formats). You can rent both from Netflix, and some video stores will have them. If you're calibrating a sound system you may also want a decibel meter (sound pressure meter) from Radio Shack. It'll set you back 30 bucks, but they're pretty nifty tools to have around the house, come in handy way more often than you'd think (dishwasher shopping, for instance). Calibrate your A2000, it'll make a big difference in overall picture quality.
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Dec 5, 2007 07:12
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My girlfriend has offered to buy me a new TV for Christmas, and I am really excited. Problem is, I have absolutely no which one to buy. I've done a bit of researching and browsing, and came across two sets which I think are pretty good. Could you please tell me which of these two is better? http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/sto...7&category_oid= http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/sto...4&category_oid=
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Dec 5, 2007 09:17
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Hanpan posted:My girlfriend has offered to buy me a new TV for Christmas, and I am really excited. Problem is, I have absolutely no which one to buy. I've done a bit of researching and browsing, and came across two sets which I think are pretty good. Could you please tell me which of these two is better? The Samsung has a higher contrast ratio and an extra HDMI input.
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Dec 5, 2007 12:27
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kylej posted:My Panasonic TH-42PZ77U arrived today. I'm in love. I just got the th-50pz77u (I think that's the model, the 720p panasonic plasma) and the only problem I have with it is that it didn't come with diapers. I keep making GBS threads my pants when I walk in the room and look at my giant beautiful tv. Call of Duty 4 on this tv is comparable to when I accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. I got mine from Crutchfield on black friday for 1399. That included no tax, free shipping, and white glove delivery where they set it up in your house. I am very very pleased with this tv.
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Dec 5, 2007 16:07
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miggiddymatt posted:I just got the th-50pz77u (I think that's the model, the 720p panasonic plasma) and the only problem I have with it is that it didn't come with diapers. I keep making GBS threads my pants when I walk in the room and look at my giant beautiful tv. Call of Duty 4 on this tv is comparable to when I accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. That's the TH-50px77u. The pz series is 1080p.
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Dec 5, 2007 17:45
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fahrvergnugen posted:The poor man's set calibration is a THX DVD, such as the Star Wars DVDs or Terminator 2. There's a THX logo on the main menus that will bring up audio & video test patterns so you can level things out. Keep in mind that the THX calibration is for that specific movie, so calibrating from two different THX discs can produce different results, neither of which may be ideal for other sources.
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Dec 5, 2007 19:23
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moravec posted:Keep in mind that the THX calibration is for that specific movie, so calibrating from two different THX discs can produce different results, neither of which may be ideal for other sources. True, but if he's too cheap to shell out $25 for a loving copy of DVE, I didn't really want to invest much in discussing his picture quality, since he wasn't willing to invest anything in improving it.
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Dec 6, 2007 01:01
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fahrvergnugen posted:True, but if he's too cheap to shell out $25 for a loving copy of DVE, I didn't really want to invest much in discussing his picture quality, since he wasn't willing to invest anything in improving it.
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Dec 6, 2007 02:17
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dexter6 posted:Can I send you a $25 money order to take the stick out of your rear end? Sorry, my rear end only accepts Paypal. Unlike your mom, who'll even take Discover.
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Dec 6, 2007 02:45
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kylej posted:My Panasonic TH-42PZ77U arrived today. I'm in love. I just got the 42PZ700U a few weeks ago from Fry's for $1200 and like you, I'm in love. The Panasonics are the best value in my opinion. The Pioneers look slightly better, but not a $1000 better. Somebody mentioned that their Sony LCD showed too much grain. I also agree that you need to make sure that your sharpness is turned way down, like into the negatives. On a scale of -30 to +30 on my TV, sharpness is set at -15. It really helped from the factory settings. Signals like cable and DVD's are already so sharpened that any more sharpening from your tv will make them look terrible.
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Dec 6, 2007 03:12
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I need a recommendation for a plasma screen around the 30"-40" size. It doesn't need to be 1080p, 720p is a good enough step up for me. I'll be using this mostly for video games on my Wii and Xbox360 if this helps. These are the features I would like on it: - 16:9 Widescreen (of course) - at least 2 HDMI ports - some form of A/V output (even stereo composite will do) - Good contrast ratio - Absolutely no lag (but it's a plasma and as I hear it would not have the same problems that plague some LCDs) Other things it doesn't need, but I would really like: - Native 720p resolution (if possible) - DVI input for video card output (I don't know how likely this is) - The price is an issue, but if I can't get it for around $900 I'll just wait a bit, but it would be nice what to keep an eye on for now. Whoever can help me, thanks in advance!
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Dec 6, 2007 16:21
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OK OK OK so I'll shell out for one of these calibrator discs. Are there any major differences between Avia and DVE? From what I've read, DVE seems to be the better choice, primarily because it actually comes in widescreen, but also because it's cheaper. Will my PlayStation 3's DVD upscaling affect using one of these DVDs? Do I need to turn the upscaler off before I calibrate, or should I leave it on since that's how I'm gonna be watching DVDs anyway? Am I correct in assuming that once the TV is calibrated using a DVD, that Blu Ray playback will be unaffected by it (as in I don't need separate settings for Blu Ray playback)?
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Dec 6, 2007 16:45
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Chief Rebel Angel posted:OK OK OK so I'll shell out for one of these calibrator discs. I've never used Avia, I went straight for DVE. There's a blu-ray edition of DVE supposedly coming in March, although the HD-DVD edition was delayed so many times I wouldn't count on it arriving on time. Once your PS3 is calibrated with the DVD, you won't need to re-calibrate for blu-ray unless you watch DVD & blu-ray on separate TV inputs. You should be able to use the standard DVD edition with the upscaler on your PS3 no problem, and you can always turn the upscaling off if you want to for the duration of the configuration. Note that both disks are incredibly difficult to navigate, and poorly documented. You'll want to use a guide from the avsforum for either one.
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Dec 6, 2007 17:24
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