Seeking Television Advice

What are you using it for? I have a 1080p plasma, 1080p Lcd and a 720/1080I lcd.
For pure tv watching just get the best deal 40" and below which will be a lcd. Plasma aren't that small anymore 42". My Pioneer Plasma looks better than any TV I've ever owned. But for just Football no gaming which sound like you are doing just get one with the picture and price you like best. JME
 
Guyon said:
Plasma or LCD?

720 or 1080 pixels?

Also, how do I connect my rabbit ears to an HDTV? :p





The first two questions are serious.
Click to expand...

I bought a Sony Bravia 1080p a few years back and didn't bother getting an HD feed through my cable provider. The picture pretty much sucked and I wondered what the big deal was. I stumbled across a TV setting and found that the HD signal was coming in already and it made a huge difference. The TV then lived up to the hype and more.

Since then, I've observed the same sort of thing with friends and relatives. You need the right feed and the optimal settings or you won't love it. On turkey day, for example, my mother-in-law had here very nice TV (also a Sony Bravia) set to full screen instead of HD, turning the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders into Oompa-Loompas.

I think Plasma was once the better option, LCD had burn-in issues and weak blacks, but have since improved. I don't think many companies make plasma anymore.

I liked the Bravia so much, I bought another one. In between, I bought a Magnavox that was higher rated, but didn't compare to the Bravia we already had, so we brought it back. From what I can tell, Pioneer seems to be the lead dog in the TV biz with Sony on its heels.
 
I made the same inquiry around 3-6 months ago. There were some good links in that thread, if you can locate it.

I ended up with a 46" Sony 1080/120hz. Basically, the middle-priced model. I couldn't tell much of a difference between it and the 240hz/LED models BUT I could see a significant difference between it and the cheaper models.

I liked the matte Sony screen a bit better than the shiny Samsung screen but that's just personal preference.

Got mine from Amazon on a special. Delivered on time, in perfect shape, no sales tax. I had it on the pedestal and running within a few minutes. Really easy to set up and connect---and I'm not usually good at that sort of thing.

DancesWithKnives
 
As someone who sold TV's a few years back, I chuckle when people talk about how a plasma set has "better blacks" Traditionally, NONE of the fixed pixel sets, be they DLP, LCD, LED or plasma could come close to a CRT set in that department. Now they have gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, but the best non-CRT picture I have seen to this day was the ridiculously expensive Sony Qualia gear. That was the first consumer grade (!) fixed pixel product that I ever saw that matched the picture quality of the original $8000 34" Sony CRT HD set that came out in like 1999 and the projector wouldhave given something like a Madrigal CRT projector with a monster scaler a run for its money. But for $12,000 for a 72 inch rear projection set and $30,000+ for a projector, they had BETTER have good blacks. A lot of that technology made it into the Bravia line, but you really have to buy a more expensive set, preferably a rear projection one (if they are still making them) to get the best picture. Of course, if and when the prices come down and the screen size goes up on the OLCD sets, this may all be moot. With that said, BluRay is probably more of a paradigm shift than most of the TV technology because now you can get a better picture out of a good mass market player than you could back in the day with a high end DVD machine and a $5000+ scaler. If you have a crappy front end, it doesn't matter how good your TV is.
 
I did considerable research two years ago, and bought a 42" Panasonic Plasma.

No regrets at all.
 
The thing that I have always liked about Sony TV's is that when you play movies on them, they actually look like movies as opposed to an eyeball scorching "look at me" demo disc.
 
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