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new HDTV questions

myDeaconmyhand said:
-If you're spending less than a grand: Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera, Sharp Aquos or Samsung are your best bets for quality.

I would not stress the internet capability aspect, as almost all Bluray players have that built in, and it limits your tv options.
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Have 2 Panasonic Vieras. One is LCD (32") and one Plasma (50") and have nothing but positives to say about both.
 
fuheel said:
its not the biggest room in the world (13x17) so I though something around 40' would be more appropriate, but you are making me re-think things...
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Nobody has ever said "I wish I had bought a smaller TV". Ever.

I have a 140" projection screen / home theater that is also our main "TV" (we mostly really only watch movies and / or big sporting events), and honestly ... I could still probably go bigger.
 
true. I got good advice from say hey who said pick out the size tv you want and then get the next size bigger
 
No man has ever said I wish we had gotten a smaller tv. Women have however. I have witnessed this. It's all about fitting in the desire space for some of them. Mysterious creatures
 
My other 2 cents: for my next tv, I'm going to figure out which features I want and buy the cheapest one that has those specs. I spent $1,200 on a 46 inch Sony in 2008. Only has 60 hz, one hdmi input is dead, and for about 10 minutes after its powered on, there's a vertical line running through the tv.
 
tintinisahottie said:
No man has ever said I wish we had gotten a smaller tv. Women have however. I have witnessed this. It's all about fitting in the desire space for some of them. Mysterious creatures
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I bought a 50" for a relatively small room. She was skeptical at first, but now says she misses it when we watch TV on anything smaller.
 
It's not an HDTV. It's just a TV.
 
Went to HHGregg today and they had an open box Samsung UN46D7000 (last year model) for 1100 bucks. I was tempted, but I was skeptical of the Tv being the floor model or something and being on for a year straight.
 
Does anyone see a significant difference between LCDs and LED TVs in picture quality? LCDs are cheaper and some CNET articles I was reading implied that LED and LCD are basically the same, aside from LEDs being more thin.
 
One Answer......Vizio.

The 47” model with all the wifi bells and whistles now cost $469 at walmart or Costo.

I have bought 14 Vizio’s larger than 37” (size hard to find now) only had an issue with one, and Vizio had a repair person at my house within a day and fixed free of charge. Only have 3 in my home, but have bought for my parents and rental properties.
 
I just got a Panasonic Viera U50 Plasma and love it. Got it from Amazon for $599 with scheduled delivery thanks to Amazon Prime. It is a "dumb" tv since all the apps and streaming is taken care of through my receiver. As many have mentioned before the picture is fantastic, but it does use a little more power than an LED and it will glare if the blinds are open, or you're watching TV in the middle of the day. With that said, watching movies on it with the lights dimmed at night could not be better.
 
RaleighDeacon said:
I just got a Panasonic Viera U50 Plasma and love it. Got it from Amazon for $599 with scheduled delivery thanks to Amazon Prime. It is a "dumb" tv since all the apps and streaming is taken care of through my receiver. As many have mentioned before the picture is fantastic, but it does use a little more power than an LED and it will glare if the blinds are open, or you're watching TV in the middle of the day. With that said, watching movies on it with the lights dimmed at night could not be better.
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Good choice. If you have any sort of home theater, chances are it will be able to get the internet apps and renders the smart TV feature useless.
 
LED? They had a great Black Friday deal on the 60 inch for like $700.

Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using Tapatalk 2
 
Red Ranger said:
Good choice. If you have any sort of home theater, chances are it will be able to get the internet apps and renders the smart TV feature useless.
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Yep, my Sony blu-ray player/home theater receiver has YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, etc. included and it has a built in wireless receiver. As many mentioned you could get a Roku box to do it all for a 100 bucks or a cheap blu-ray player that will do the same. That is why I was specifically on the hunt for a dumb TV with a great picture. All I cared about was that the TV produced a great image.

The U50 is not for everyone, as it only has two HDMI inputs, but I run my Xbox and DirecTV box through my Home Theater Receiver, so I switch them all there and am only using one HDMI connection on the TV anyway. The house we are renting already had speaker wiring for surround sound in the walls so I put my wireless rear speaker box in the entertainment center and just wired it to the cord in the walls, then mounted the rear speakers on the wall behind the couch. It all worked out great and now that we have the U50, it is a baller setup. It makes me want to run down to the RedBox and get random Blu-Ray movies because they all look so good on that TV.
 
RD, do you have windows on opposite walls from the tv? Do you have problems with lamps that are across room from tv? Do you have any pics of the tv in action, possibly with some of the reflections/glare? Thanks.
 
dubs21 said:
RD, do you have windows on opposite walls from the tv? Do you have problems with lamps that are across room from tv? Do you have any pics of the tv in action, possibly with some of the reflections/glare? Thanks.
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No pictures, but I could try to grab some later maybe. (I work at home, but I am tied up on conference calls and can't walk away from the computer at the moment.)

In the meantime, our living room has two windows on the wall to the immediate left. Behind the couch and directly across from the TV is one window and the front door. Further down that same wall are two more windows and around the other wall, which is in the kitchen/dining area there are two more windows. At each end of the couch are two lamps.

Here is what I run into:
If you watch TV in the middle of the day (i.e. a noon football game) it can be bright in my living room. Even with the blinds closed you will get glare from some windows, especially those two on the wall to the left of the TV. Of course if you are directly in front of the TV on the couch, you don't see it, but if you sit in the chair that is off to the right or you walk into the kitchen, you do.

If you watch TV at night (which is most of the time for us) and you sit in the chair off to the right, you will sometimes see a reflection of the lamp that is at the other end of the couch.

Typically if I am watching movies I turn off all the lights in the living room and turn on the lights over the kitchen island. Makes it dim in the living room but plenty bright enough not to run into anything. It's more like theater lighting. For when we're just watching football or something, I don't even bother doing that.

It does glare, as it is a plasma. It probably doesn't deal with ambient lighting as well as some of Panasonic's high end plasmas, but seriously, it is not that bad, and it is certainly manageable.

I'll see if I can get some pictures and I am happy to share my picture settings as well. You can combat some of the lighting issues by getting the TV bright enough. (A plasma will never compete with a LCD/LED for brightness, but you can adjust this a bit.

In my opinion, it really all comes down to what you want to do with the TV and what picture you like best. If light is a serious problem, a plasma is probably not best. If you can manage the light more, then I feel like the plasma has by far the most lifelike picture. It is my absolute favorite type of display to watch films on.
 
Thanks for the review. In my room, i don't have any windows opposite the tv. But there are two on a perpendicular wall very close to the corner and there are windows on either side of the tv on the same wall and some above the tv, as the ceiling is vaulted. My parents have the 54" G series from about 3 years ago. I just realized a couple weeks ago that it was a plasma. Fore years i thought it was an lcd because it handles glare so well. I know the ST/GT/VT models have the anti reflective louver system which apparently works really well. The price on the U series is just so nice. And i don't need the smart features or tons of hdmi inputs, as iI run everything through a/v receiver and ps3 for streaming content.
 
dubs21 said:
Thanks for the review. In my room, i don't have any windows opposite the tv. But there are two on a perpendicular wall very close to the corner and there are windows on either side of the tv on the same wall and some above the tv, as the ceiling is vaulted. My parents have the 54" G series from about 3 years ago. I just realized a couple weeks ago that it was a plasma. Fore years i thought it was an lcd because it handles glare so well. I know the ST/GT/VT models have the anti reflective louver system which apparently works really well. The price on the U series is just so nice. And i don't need the smart features or tons of hdmi inputs, as iI run everything through a/v receiver and ps3 for streaming content.
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Very similar to my setup.

So here are some pictures from about 15 minutes ago, so midafternoon in Charlotte, NC:

This one is dead on, with all blinds closed and all lamps off:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6fb3u6w1kxtfu7/2012-12-05%2014.59.09.jpg

This one is dead on with lamps on behind me and the window to the immediate left open (You can see the glare from the little window in the front door in the top left corner of these first two pictures):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnlbdfyx3txiulg/2012-12-05%2014.59.37.jpg

This one is with every window in the front of the house open and me standing at an extreme angle in the kitchen. (This is always the worst case scenario in my house.):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f3g0sxjbid5c901/2012-12-05%2014.59.59.jpg

This one is with all windows open and me standing right behind the easy chair that is a slight angle off to the right. Much better, but keep in mind the screen was white/bright when I took this picture:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/74oyj2gdzibvtnz/2012-12-05%2015.00.58.jpg

Finally, this is my standing at more of an angle off to the right of the TV with every window open and every light I can turn on. (Sorry about the focus...)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5423gr02k240k6/2012-12-05%2015.01.08.jpg

Let me know if you can't see those images and I'll go back to my old image posting ways. Also note that on the "glary" pictures, I am purposefully showing you the worst I can make it so you know how bad it can be. Personally, I think it's pretty easy to manage and I have my plasma in a room with 8 windows, two doors, two lamps and multiple overhead lighting. Actually all the different ambient lighting makes it easier to manage at night...
 
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RaleighDeacon said:
I just got a Panasonic Viera U50 Plasma and love it. Got it from Amazon for $599 with scheduled delivery thanks to Amazon Prime. It is a "dumb" tv since all the apps and streaming is taken care of through my receiver. As many have mentioned before the picture is fantastic, but it does use a little more power than an LED and it will glare if the blinds are open, or you're watching TV in the middle of the day. With that said, watching movies on it with the lights dimmed at night could not be better.
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If you haven't already, I would switch the video settings to "Cinema", as most of the Internet recommends it for the best picture.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
If you haven't already, I would switch the video settings to "Cinema", as most of the Internet recommends it for the best picture.
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I completely agree. My main setting is Cinema, with some tweaks I picked up online and then tweaked further for my own liking. Custom will actually produce a slightly brighter image, but I couldn't agree more that the Cinema setting is the best overall. It's not bad on Cinema right out of the box. I reset mine to the specs that CNET used in their review and then mostly left it alone, although I think I might have backed off the contrast just a bit.

Should also note that upping the contrast and brightness is recommended in my opinion, but it will slightly shorten the life of the TV. Most estimates said the settings I am using would reduce the life of the TV by a couple of years, but the screen is rated to last something like 30 years anyway, so I don't think that will be an issue.
 
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