Buying a TV

[MSPAviator]

Buy your HDMI cords on eBay. Huge scam at retail stores.

Monoprice.com is way better than Ebay.

 

[Palmpilot]

Also worth noting is that the advantage of 1080p is lost on any DVD, off the air, cable, or satellite viewing. IOW a BlueRay disk is the only source that supports 1080p AFaIK.

As far as I know, that's true about 1080p. However I just checked, and channels 5.1, 9.1, 11.1, 44.1, 48.1, and 66.1 were transmitting in 1080i off the air in the SF Bay area. On at least one of them, the improvement over 720p was pretty easy to see.

 

[pilot_dude]

LED. Samsung. That's all you need to know other than size.

 

[Skip Miller]

That's what I did, figured the tv I wanted, then shopped around. $1000 give or take 50 everywhere but Costco, Walmart and Vizio. Costco wanted $1950, while Walmart and Vizio were asking $850, Vizio included two extra pairs of glasses and shipped for free with no tax.

Also try www.abt.com

-Skip

 

[Piloto]

If you are of the old vintage you will also need High Definition eyeglasses. Otherwise you are wasting your money on all this HD technology.

José

 

[gismo]

As far as I know, that's true about 1080p. However I just checked, and channels 5.1, 9.1, 11.1, 44.1, 48.1, and 66.1 were transmitting in 1080i off the air in the SF Bay area. On at least one of them, the improvement over 720p was pretty easy to see.

Yes, OTA signals are often in the 1080i format.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Pilots don't cuddle.

This one does!

If I thought for one second that was true I'd quit flying.

Yeah, we should be manly men and not admit such things in public, or something...

 

[flyingcheesehead]

When buying a LED backlit TV you should know that there are two different technologies available and many retailers don't understand the difference or even try to pass the lesser one off as the same as the better one.

One type simply replaces the CCFL backlights (originally used with almost all LCD displays) with LEDs which provides very little if any improvement. The other uses a large number of leds with each led individually controlled. This allows the display to operate with a much larger contrast range across the display.

Yeah... I think that an LCD TV with local-dimming LED backlights is what I'm after, but it's difficult to find that listed among the specs anywhere.

The latest thing in LCD TVs is "3D without special glasses" but I'm told that the current versions aren't very effective and the result is adversely affected by changes in the location of the person watching as well as any head movements.

I'm really not looking for 3D. Today's 3D technology isn't good for much, IMO. I'd also need to try it out to be sure it doesn't make me sick anyway - Seeing Avatar 3D in the theater (pretty close to the screen) really made me feel awful.

Unless you intend to watch TV from less than 2ft away, 1080 resolution is a waste of time on anything less than about 36 inches on the diagonal. Also worth noting is that the advantage of 1080p is lost on any DVD, off the air, cable, or satellite viewing. IOW a BlueRay disk is the only source that supports 1080p AFaIK.

iTunes does too, that's where a lot of my content will be coming from. Not sure what Netflix streaming is, but it's "good enough." If the content isn't engaging enough to hold my attention at 720p, I should probably be doing something that doesn't involve the TV anyway!

Also, is there really a noticeable difference between 1080i and 1080p content (such as the over-the-air TV stations that are 1080i)? Heck, old-school NTSC was interlaced too, and at 60fps there shouldn't be much difference visible to the eye, it's more a matter of how the TV has to draw it.

Finally, there's a lot of content out there that's only available in 480i (NTSC) or 720i/p and the quality of those images as rendered on a higher resolution screen is very much affected by the type of signal processing used to upconvert the images and that varies considerably between models and manufacturers.

True - It's awfully hard to get a good idea of that, though. Any suggestions?

Stan - Good call on Flanners. Maybe I should just head over there, they are good.

 

[denverpilot]

For movie content it doesn't matter that the TV does 60fps, unless the movie was shot at that speed. Most are 24fps and the content provider does a 2:3 pull down to get to just below 60fps.

I think you're going to be happy with just about anything that does decent black levels, Kent. The sheer number and scope of "HD" standards is mind-boggling.

Peruse this if you want to go cross-eyed thinking about it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

I think you may have linked to this ARSTechnica article previously but it's a good comparison and read if not. The third gen AppleTV does show things slightly sharper with the 1080p support.

The Mrs has been joking that she wants an Apple TV in the bedroom. The Gen 2 may end up in there with a Gen 3 downstairs. Perhaps if we do that I could temporarily hook both up to the living room TV and see if there's a noticibly difference between the two in a side by side comparison.

I've also got an SD Wii hooked to the living room TV via discreet video (which sits mostly unused) but I did do comparisons between it and the 2nd Gen AppleTV streaming Netflix. (Long ago the Wii was our primary Netflix streamer.) It's bad. Really bad.

Some TVs now are providing frame rates that are perfect multiples of 24 so BluRay doesn't have to go through the pull down process. Just multiply the frame rate up from 24 and voila. It's probably not worth hunting for those sets unless you're building some videophile home theatre in a basement or similar, though.

If you have the time, check out the back catalog of Revision 3's "HD Nation" video podcast. Robert Herron is a rediculous HDTV über geek and goes so far in depth (and seriously has the stuff memorized) into HD tech it's mind-blowing. I subscribed for a while, and couldn't possibly keep up with it.

 

[kimberlyanne546]

This one does!



Yeah, we should be manly men and not admit such things in public, or something...

That's OK, Kent, I asked your friend Bill if I could see his man card when he was in my plane and used the word "mauve." I told him men should not know what mauve is. Or periwinkle.

 

[Palmpilot]

That's OK, Kent, I asked your friend Bill if I could see his man card when he was in my plane and used the word "mauve." I told him men should not know what mauve is. Or periwinkle.

I know the words, but I couldn't pick those colors out of a line up if my life depended on it!