What are the best TVs to get ?

[vlydog]

Looks good to me T; Thank you!

The wife will love the price. I just added the package to my cart on Amazon and with cables and Blu-Ray the total came to $969.00

Restraint...Restraint...

[Guest avitt]

Excellent! Happy to help!

But unless you have an immediate need, I would hold off for the holiday promotions. Maybe the return of the Blueray bundle...

[vlydog]

No immediate need. I will wait and see.

BTW, what pushed you toward Plasma over LCD?

[Guest avitt]

I've owned both for quite some time now, and I've been happier with my Panasonic plasma than I have been with my Sharp LCD. The blacks are blacker, the colors are bright, and the picture just looks sharper to me. Plus plasmas can be viewed from extreme angles.

I've had my Panasonic for 6-7 years now, and I haven't experienced any of the downsides that people speak about.

If you do get this set, be sure to calibrate the picture for your room. The factory sets the brightness setting way down, so they can claim a lower power draw.

[Dudemeister]

i could NEVER watch a DLP set without seeing that damned rainbow effect! DLP also seemed to have poor contrast and focus imo. perhaps it was ahead of its time for awhile, but i guess it became undeveloped and abandoned. I use to agree plasma yieled the best picture, but these new LCD sets have fixed what i disliked about lcd and the screen door effect is still there on plasma but now LCD looks just as good with out the screen door. OLED and SED TV are the future technology for tvs. currently SONY makes an 11" OLED set with a price tag of $2,500. i dont know WHO would buy it tho.

I'm afraid that your information on DLP i a bit out of date. If you get a chance, you should take a look at the Samsung DLP models which use LED for a light source.

Because they do a way with the quartz light and the color wheel, the rainbow effect you speak of is gone. You also get the following improvements as a by[roduct:

1. Occasional color banding artifacting is gone

2. The "short" life of the lamp and cost associated with the replacement is history (current life of LED module is in excess of 60,000 hours)

3. Warm-up time is now approx. 4 seconds

4. Brightness is 40% higher than traditional HDTVs

5. Contrast ration is 10,000:1

6. There is no "half-life" brightness, the brightness stays the same throughout the life of the LED array.

7. LED has substantially lower power consumption, so the TVs qualify for EPA Energy Star rating.

8. No longer requires noisy fans to coo the lamp, so it's virtually noiseless.

9. Slim designs that are less than 12" deep for a 60"+ screen

10. Last but not least, better color purity, deeper blacks, brighter whites.

For me, it was a choice of either Pioneer Kuro plasma, or the Samsung LED DLP. I'm a big Pioneer fan, but after looking at both models side by side, I couldn't justify the high cost of the Kuro. Besides, I really loved the lack of "screen door" effect when looking close up at the DLP. The images is basically continuous, unlike the LCD or plasma screens which close up the look grainy because of the pixel coarseness.

Anyway, I'm sorry to see manufacturers drop the DLP format, as I feel that a superior image format was lost simply because most consumers fell in love with the idea of a thin TV which you can hang on a wall at the expense of a better image.

I can only hope that technology will advance to a point where the current shortcomings of LCDs and plasmas will be overcome, before I have to buy a new TV to replace my Sammy DLP.