[Wrathblood]

We're thinking of getting a flatscreen TV for Christmas (current TV is 6 years old and pretty small).

Anyone have suggestions for Plasma vs LCD vs LED?

[Deceax]

For brands I would have to recommend Samsung. I've gotten all my computer lcd's as well as tv's from them and have never been disappointed. As far as LCD vs LED the major deciding factor at this point is going to be price. I haven't really kept up with LED technology but from what I understand it is still somewhat in it's infancy and will be more expensive and maybe not all of the minor issues have been ironed out. An LCD tv will give you excellent image quality with technology that has been around for many years without fear of some kind of catastrophic failure. My recommendation go with a 46"+ Samsung LCD. Oh and plasma blows; take that off your list.

[Sobeyet]

Deceax, on 19 November 2010 - 08:00 PM, said:

For brands I would have to recommend Samsung. I've gotten all my computer lcd's as well as tv's from them and have never been disappointed. As far as LCD vs LED the major deciding factor at this point is going to be price. I haven't really kept up with LED technology but from what I understand it is still somewhat in it's infancy and will be more expensive and maybe not all of the minor issues have been ironed out. An LCD tv will give you excellent image quality with technology that has been around for many years without fear of some kind of catastrophic failure. My recommendation go with a 46"+ Samsung LCD. Oh and plasma blows; take that off your list.

Agree on the Samsungs, that's what I use for my monitor and tend to recommend them for TVs. Solid on the features, well built, and good value.

How about a projector? If it's for a large room with white walls, the image quality is superb and you can get some obscenely large screen sizes for a comparable price. Bluray + 80" screen ftw.

[Wrathblood]

Well, its a relatively large room (basement getting remodeled) and I think its going to have light colored walls (unless Mrs Wrath and the contractor have been conspiring again), but our current TV is like 26" (its staying in the family room), so anything over about 50" feels absolutely gigantic. I was originally leaning towards a plasma, but was a little disappointed by what we saw. We ended up going with a Kinnect, and this is what its going to be connected to, so we're kinda leaning towards the LCD/LED (saw a 46" Sony Bravia that was on an impressive sale, but it was a 60 MHZ which made me nervous, though perhaps unreasonably so. Just was going in with the 600 Mhz of a plasma).

[Deceax]

Hertz shmertz. 60hz is more than fine. Plasma has the problem of burn in. If you are on a channel that has a little logo in the bottom right or if you are playing a game that has a HuD then there is a risk of that image being permanently "burnt in" to the screen; meaning if you change channels you will still see a ghost of this image. The only reason back in the day that plasma was better than LCD was the fact that LCD's require back lighting. LCD's have a white light that shines from the top and the bottom of the screen. This can cause "bleeding" of the white from the top and the bottom of the screen which is of course undesirable. This also meant that LCD's were inferior in recreating black or off pixels. Since the display is constantly lit by a light a pixel can never be as "dark" as one on a plasma. However, this was in the early day's of LCD's and these issues have mostly been resolved.
If you get a half decent lcd you will not notice bleeding and the blacks will be black enough. Again, these were concerns like 5 years ago when LCD's were still primitive. LED tv's are superior to LCD's for most of the reasons plasmas were back in the day. To have a truly "black" pixel in an LED tv you can eliminate the light source while LCD's remain to be backlit. However, I feel like for the premium you would pay for this it would not be worth it. As far as a projector goes for gaming I wouldn't recommend it because of the input lag that might be noticeable. If you were going for a big screen for movies and such in a very light controlled environment then a projector would probably be the way to go. My vote is still for a Samsung LCD. Happy shopping and please post any more questions

[Sobeyet]

I think the burn-in on plasmas are a bit overstated. I know about a half dozen heavy tv users with plasmas (+40 hours a week) and none of them have had any issues. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely to happen on a unit you'd buy in 2010? Not really. To me worrying about burn-in is a bit like worrying about dead pixels in LCDs (read: don't worry).

And if you want to try bleeding edge, there's always 3D TVs. I'm not buying in until they get rid of the dorky glasses.

[Rohanna]

Samsung Plasmas burn really easy actually we had one set up for a week at work with the life documentary. And we have life burned into 2 of the 4 of them.

From my Walmart guide on tvs

Plasma
advantages:
- better contrast ratios
- excellent colour reproduction
- excellent life expectant
- excellent viewing angle

disadvantages
- they are heavy take large wall mounts
- very susceptible to screen burn in (therefore worse with households with children)
- cannot produce deep black levels accurately
- fragile
- use alot of power

LCD
advantages
- good colour reproduction
- thin and lightweight
- perfect sharpness at native resolution
- excellent longevity

disadvantage
- fixed resolution
- notorious "screen door" effect on lesser models
- very difficult to preduce deep blacks
- weak pixels are common
- lower refresh rates

and apparently we dont have LED in our list yet, however we have sold a few LG LED of about 50" everyone has come back and said how much they love them. However I am not sure they have been out long enough to know the amount of disadvantages as the others.

[Voodie]

My parent's just bought a Samsung LED; they went with the fancy-schancy new one with the high refresh, 3-D capabilities and all that jazz. Everyone they've interacted with who knew about TVs, from sales associates at various stores to the independent contractor who hung it on their wall, said that is their "dream" TV. They also got the 3-D glasses, a new Blueray system and something else (can't remember what) thrown in when they bought it from Best Buy, who is apparently having a massive sale on their TVs.

[Wrathblood]

Thanks, Rohanna. What's the "screen door" effect?

Cuddle,

So, do they like it?

[Bearforceone]

Wrathblood, on 21 November 2010 - 12:05 AM, said:

Thanks, Rohanna. What's the "screen door" effect?

Cuddle,

So, do they like it?

Deff go with a 1080p TV first off.

The screen door effect is when the picture is bad and it looks like your watching it through a screen door. Screen burn-in is a thing of the past so you don't have to worry about that. If gaming, action packed movies, 3D and sports are going to be the majority of what's going to be displayed then I would defiantly recommend a plasma television because of the much smoother picture due to a better refresh rate then LCD. They also have a much better viewing angle. If you're looking for something lighter and thinner as well as something that consumes less energy I'd recommend a LCD.


.... I feel like I am at work.

[Wrathblood]

Bear (or Rohanna or anyone else for that matter), I take it the "screen door" effect is when the refresh rate of the LCD has trouble keeping up with fast moving action, like if you're watching a basketball game and the camera pans around quickly to follow the action? Any idea how much of this gets fixed by upgrading from 60 to 120 or 240?

Also, we stopped by Best Buy (they're expecting to sell a LOT of TVs this holiday season if floor space allocation is any guide) and the LCDs generally seemed to have "better" pictures than the plasmas, but the sales guy said it was because of the lighting (huge, warehouse like space) but that in our basement we'd have different lighting and the plasma would probably look better. That seem right?

[Rohanna]

Ya, in our little store the plasmas look much nicer.

[Bearforceone]

Wrathblood, on 21 November 2010 - 10:12 AM, said:

Bear (or Rohanna or anyone else for that matter), I take it the "screen door" effect is when the refresh rate of the LCD has trouble keeping up with fast moving action, like if you're watching a basketball game and the camera pans around quickly to follow the action? Any idea how much of this gets fixed by upgrading from 60 to 120 or 240?

Also, we stopped by Best Buy (they're expecting to sell a LOT of TVs this holiday season if floor space allocation is any guide) and the LCDs generally seemed to have "better" pictures than the plasmas, but the sales guy said it was because of the lighting (huge, warehouse like space) but that in our basement we'd have different lighting and the plasma would probably look better. That seem right?

Not exactly, the screen door effect is whenever you see the lines in between each pixel so instead of seeing a nice smooth picture you see all these little dots. If your room is going to be darker at all or you like to watch movies in the dark, deff go with the plasma.

[Sobeyet]

Wrathblood, on 21 November 2010 - 10:12 AM, said:

Also, we stopped by Best Buy (they're expecting to sell a LOT of TVs this holiday season if floor space allocation is any guide) and the LCDs generally seemed to have "better" pictures than the plasmas, but the sales guy said it was because of the lighting (huge, warehouse like space) but that in our basement we'd have different lighting and the plasma would probably look better. That seem right?

None of the TVs in the department stores will look exactly as it will at home:

• Some stores don't tune their TVs so the settings aren't optimized - color balance, brightness, contrast, etc.
• Some stores tune their TVs but do so in a way just to make them "pop" more - turning up the brightness/contrast level will tend to draw the eyes of customers, but isn't a true representation of the original image.
• Like the sales guy mentioned, lighting plays into it. Also viewing angle and even the size of the room - a 40" TV might look huge in a smaller bedroom when you're sitting down but not so much in a giant showroom.

My general method of buying electronics involves doing some research, browsing at the stores, then buying it from the internet (even with shipping it can save a couple of hundred bucks from a brick-and-mortar store). But the Best Buy/Walmart prices can be competitive with the holiday sales, and some people just prefer picking up the TV and bringing it home.

Some decent places in terms of reviews are Cnet and Crutchfield. Not quite as specific or technical as a website dedicated to home theater, but it's a good starting point and they don't throw as much jargon at you. If you happen to see a reputable home theater mag while you're Christmas shopping, I'm sure all the Nov/Dec issues have some sort of gift guide with recommendations too.

Speaking of cool tech / gifts, my friend got a Sonos (http://www.sonos.com) for his wedding and it's frickin' awesome. You can control the music in multiple rooms with it, so he has all his music on a computer upstairs, and uses his iPad and iPhone to play one song in the living room, another in the bedroom, another in the computer room, etc (can also play the same song in all the rooms). Amazing for entertaining since you can have different rooms blasting different genres and you can control it all via wireless through your phone.

[Wrathblood]

Funny, Crutchfield is actually HQ'ed in Charlottesville, and its one of the places we checked for pricing, etc. but apparently the family that owns it is a significant player in local conservative politics so Mrs Wrath doesn't like them.

We ended up settling on a good sized Aquous that was open-stock at a store selling at a pretty phenomenal price. We were still debating the plasma vs LED thing (I was leaning towards plasma but Mrs Wrath was pushing for LED) when we came upon it and it kinda made up our minds for us. Thank you to everyone for the input, it was of great value to us.

Mrs Wrath was just showing me something on a Sonos the other day. It looks really cool.

[Sobeyet]

I'm trying to find a 27-30 inch monitor with a TV tuner that can also do 2560 x 1600 resolution, anyone know of one? I was using my LCD TV as my monitor before, but being that close to a 40 in screen gives me a headache and it's stuck on that weird 1920 x 1080 resolution. My room's not big enough for 2 big ass screens, so I want to move the TV to another room and get a monitor that doubles as both.

I just got a Radeon 6950 2GB (going to unlock to 6970) and another 8 GBs of RAM, so want to put this beast to the test. (Don't tell my boss the only reason I came into the office on the warmest day in 4 months is for the UPS guy)