CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[perisoft]

Posted in this forum because people actually look here.

My dad has finally had it with his 32" LCD TV and built in speakers (thank god). I think a few movies in my HT did some damage... anyway, he's decided he's going to build himself a mini-HT of sorts. It's going to be for regular living room / TV use too, though, and they have limited space, so it's going to be direct view rather than projection.

Seems like he's ready to drop a couple of K on a display and some reasonable amount on audio - his hearing isn't great, so having some power without distortion is important. He's also an engineer, so there's no way in hell he'll pay for a 'high end' name. As far as audio goes, clean power is important, but absolute fidelity is pretty meaningless for a dude who has hearing aids anyway.

Viewing environment is small; spec for TV size is "big". I think anything over 50" would be ludicrous for the space, though.

We're talking the whole kit here - bluray player, TV, audio, possibly a HD Tivo, etc. He watches a lot of SD DVDs too, so something with very good upscaling is a must, and we don't have a ton of HD stations, so tolerable upscaling of NTSC is important.

So, any suggestions?

[loribates]

May be way out of what he was looking for or too lowly to suffice but for our tv room I wanted HD but didn't want to go the lcd or plasma route. A couple of years ago I bought an LG. HD widescreen tubed tv. It was the biggest I could find in a crt. It takes up to 1080i and we've been very pleased with it. I'd have to go measure to see what the dimensions were but we love it. HD material looks look great on it. The only thing I notice and it always effects the same program. Two and a half men... Their skin tones are never right on that show but I don't know if its the broadcast or the tv.

I don't even know if they make them anymore.
My birth father also had a nice find a couple of years ago. It was a rear projection widescreen hd Hitachi and at first I wasn't expecting much but the thing blew me away when I saw it in action.

[AnalogRocks]

[AnalogRocks]

[loribates]

Good to know. I haven't tried it on the pj because I won't waste tubes on ordinary tv shows but I always see bits of the show when my son is watching it and they always look like lobsters. Like I said otherwise I love that tv!

[perisoft]

No go on that. No space for it depth wise and he wants bigger than he's got, anyway (34" or so). Rptv out for same reason - plus, he's got the budget for a good plasma/lcd. I would assume plasma but maybe modern lcds are better on black level / uniformity now? Hence the question.

[loribates]

Sorry I misunderstood when you said he was tired of the lcd after seeing your pj. Thought he wanted to get away from lcd. Guess you just meant he wants bigger viewing area. That said given the option of lcd or plasma I'd opt for plasma . Either way Its just going to be a matter of what looks best to him. Take him out shopping and let him view different makes and models of each while you point out the downfalls/positives you note since you probably have a more trained eye for the video quality.

[KellenerSptM5]

I still would go with a Plasma in a flat panel. Black levels still are better then LCD, but he might miss some of the brightness he will be losing by going to Plasma. I'm sure you know that the Pioneer Elites are considered the best, but if he doesn't want to pay for the name get him a Panasonic Commercial Plasma. Either TH-50PF11UK which is 1080P or TH-50PH11UK which is 720P. Both models are the same as the consumer models but without tuner and speakers, but since you plan to use a cable box and external speakers it shouldn't matter. They are considered to be right behind the Elites for best picture out of a flat panel.

[ecrabb]

M5... How much different PQ-wise is that commercial Panny than a consumer version? The reason I ask is there's a solid grand difference between that and something like this consumer 50-inch Viera:
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Viera-TH-50PZ80U-50-Inch-Plasma/dp/B00142OHAC

$1000 is a big difference, and you lose the tuner and speakers on top of it!

I agree, though - if he's got good good light control in the room and wants to watch movies at night with the best black levels, he should go plasma. If he has to watch during the day with much ambient light in the room, I'd sacrifice some black level for the better brightness of an LCD.

My inlaws picked up a Samsung 50" last fall, and I'm pretty impressed with the picture. I haven't seen it with a really good source, but decent OTA and DirecTV looks pretty good... and that's 1080i deinterlaced. I'm sure BD would look beautiful.

OTA/cable NTSC is going to look like ass scaled on that size display, no matter how good the scaler is. They'll all just be varying degrees of sh*tty. Just so he knows.

SC

[aenglish]

[KellenerSptM5]

The commerical panny I have has fans, unless they changed things from last year... Now I do know the fans do not run unless the temps in the set get a high so I guess they are passive to a point. From what I have understood, the commerical plasmas are no different, other then the speakers and tuner. It was recommended to me to get the commercial one since I planned to use external speakers. Plus you can get expansion cards for the set, like HDMI, etc.

[emdawgz1]

I'm a Sony Guy, i'm leaning toward the 46 1080p LCD. I know the plasma gives better black level but i like the brightness in the LCD.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665532058


Model Number: KDL-46XBR8
46" BRAVIA® XBR8 Series LCD HDTV
Model features: Full HD 1080p resolution, Motionflow™ 120Hz PRO refresh rate, BRAVIA Engine™ 2 PRO, 10-bit panel and processing, 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, TRILUMINOS® RGB LED backlight, 5 HD inputs

I like this but i'm waiting to see the XBR9

[aenglish]

[KellenerSptM5]

I have always liked the color repoduction of the Sony sets, I just can not get by the nuclear blast brightness

The newer LCDs are getting much better in respect to black levels, especially with the localized dimming LEDs.

I think I read a recent review of the Sony emdawgz1 is talking about and it was mostly positive.
For the record, I have plasmas in non light controlled rooms, living room etc, and I don't have a problem with glare. Most of the newer plasmas have an antireflective coating that does a good job of reducing any glare to me.

[perisoft]

Hmm... interesting. Glare shouldn't be too much of a problem as there are no windows across from the TV. Pretty much anything will be better than the smoking piece of sh*t Westinghouse LCD he's got now... I'd barely trade an SDTV for that piece of crap. No option for an 'expand' mode - so if you're watching any NTSC that's letterboxed, you get a 2.5" border all around the image! Yikes! Its sole redeeming feature is that it has an ATSC tuner, but it's such a bitch to actually find the stations that he never bothers anyway.

It'd be nice to actually see some stuff, but big box stores are worthless since everything's in flashlight mode, and you've got a row of 5000 flashlight-mode TVs 2 feet behind you as you try to evaluate the one you're looking at. And it's playing some godawful compressed-to-hell cable HD; usually a montage of extreme sports with a lot of motion, ensuring that most of the time you see something that looks basically like YouTube.

There's a smallish hifi place around here that has a few panels and might let me bring my laptop and put up ntest and run some of my own bluray, so I'll have to see if they have any of the stuff you guys have mentioned.