I hated avsforum at first, but then I spent several hours reading through a few threads. It's not too bad. And, once you start to know you way around the site and have a pretty good idea what you're interested, it's quite easy to keep up on the latest happenings. I check in there once or twice a week to keep up on a few things.

I haven't purchased my TV yet, but I've narrowed it down to these: Samsung 5064, Panasonic 50px75u, or Samsung 5084. The 5064 and Panasonic are both 720p and the 5084 is 1080p. The picture quality on 5064 is better than on Pany's 75u. However, the Samnsung is known to have issues with judder. I have witnessed this first hand in a store on a large panning shot. I could see it getting annoying, especially watching football. I am going to hold out a little longer while Samsung claims to be working on a firmware upgrade to fix the judder. As far as I know, there are no issues with the 5084, but I just don't really think I need 1080p and don't want to pay the extra $600-700 for this set. That being said, it is a very reasonable price for a 1080p 50' plasma with very good picture quality. I didn't mentioned Pioneer here. I'd love to buy one, but they are just too expensive.

Nice summary. I'll add that standard DVD is passable on bigger screens. Obviously not as good as real HD, but usually much better than broadcast SD.

I'll add the following:

* Dish Network has 39 national HD channels (plus HD local channels in some markets)

* DirecTV has only 9 national HD channels as of the time of this post. However, they will have 70 national HD channels by the end of October (at the latest), and 100 by the end of the year. They launched a new satllite in July that they are currently testing it. Testing is supposedly almost finished, so the DirecTV boards are abuzz with news of when the new channels go live. You'll need a newer HD box (the H20 or the HR20) that's capable of receiving MPEG 4 signals.

Yeah, those are pretty decent speakers. I have them hooked up to my PC for playing games. They sound great with Doom. Doom was a pain to install because I had to shuffle through 6 diskettes, but now that it's finally on there I'm really glad I didn't skimp on the speakers.

Well I didn't want to bog down here with noob questions, but thanks I'll take you up.

Yes, displays. Or more generally, formats. Since there are so many formats, do you have to be careful with all the upsampling, downconverting, sideswiping, whatever-the-hell? Is a modern digital HDTV going to handle it all? Or do I have to go through reams of fine print for every model I consider to determine if it will support the myriad permutations of signal types it will have to display? Like some funky situation where it will play all "widescreen" DVDs from any DVD player, but will only show "regular TV" DVDs from certain DVD players that are "compatible". (Completely made up scenario because I don't know what I'm talking about.)

Furthermore, let's assume they can actually display all the signals. Am I going to get screwed with one TV that will show "bad signals" really well and another that will show them badly? For example, someone recently said "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV.

I would be glad to buy a 42" plasma, but my girlfriend really wants to stick to something smaller.

Any moderm HDTV should be able to braodcast all common signals. It is true that some TV's are better than others at displaying non-HD content. I would say that only a few of my channels look bad and that is because their signal has too much compression. Overall standard cable looks fine on a good HDTV. One reason most people think it looks horrible is that their TV's are not calibrated properly. The factory settings will definitely not make your content look the best. They do make a HD picture very eye catching, but they are not the most realistic and definitely hurt the picture quality of non-HD.

Are you saying you should switch settings depending on HD or non-HD channel? Is there usually an easy user preset you can switch among to do this? Or is this a feature I should look for in a TV?

Modern TVs handle it all. As you probably know, the primary formats are 480i, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Any digital TV you buy today will be able to automatically convert signals in any of those formats into the native format of the TV. So any DVD player you plug into an HDTV will work. You probably will have to setup the DVD player first. E.g., on the DVD players I have, there is a setting to switch from 4:3 to 16:9.


There are a few reasons "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV:

1) An HDTV is bigger than most regular SDTVs. A picture that looked fine on a 32" TV doesn't look so fine when blown up to 61".

2) You have an HD reference for comparison. If all you ever saw was SD, you'd probably think it's fine. But once you see HD, you'll think that SD looks like suboptimal.

3) Compression. Cable companies and satellite companies compress the hell out of the SD signal in order to fit your 500 channels. This is why a regular, SD DVD generally looks better than broadcast SD. (They compress HD signals also, but not to as large an extent).

Oh, I should have put in a link to Setting Up Your Home Theater 101

If I could find the video equivalent of that, that would be cool. Thanks for the help so far, it's helping.

OK, so next question is, is native resolution important? I see TVs that list native resolution, then list resolutions supported. Here's an example I saw when comparing 2 TVs.

TV A) resolution: 1024 x 768
"compatibility":
1080p: direct input
1080i: yes
720p: yes

TV B) resolution: 1920 x 1080
"compatibility":
1080p: conversion, direct input
1080i: yes
720p: yes

So, does "resolution" mean "native resolution"? If so, is there any degradation in picture quality if you "convert" from a resolution that is not native?

For example, I understand Blu-Ray is 1080p. If I play Blu-Ray on TV A, will there be any degradation in picture quality compared to TV B? If I play a standard 720p DVD on TV B, will there be any degradation in picture quality compared to TV A, due to converting from native resolution?

Why does TV B say "conversion" as well as "direct input" for 1080p?

The 2 TVs are Panasonic TH-42PX75U and Panasonic TH-42PZ700U, both 42" plasmas, at $1,300 and $1,800 respectively. The $500 price difference is essentially what I described. Is it worth it?

It depends how far away you're sitting. You won't tell much of a difference after about 8' away (if you have good eyesight).

We all know what resolution means, and the word can be ambiguous; it can either be describing the resolution of a signal or the display device. When you see "native resolution," you know they're talking about pixels on the display device.

Converting has to be done with a video processor. Good video processors do a fine job of scaling down images, and you would be hard pressed to actually notice any degradation. Upscaling is different. When the amount of information provided by the original signal is less than the native resolution of your TV, the video processor has to guess how to enlarge each frame.

I wouldn't say you would notice any degradation on the 720p television (TV A). In other words, the downscaling of the 1080p to 720p would basically look the same as if you were simply playing a 720p signal on the TV. That said, the picture would probably look (slightly) better on the 1080p TV just because it has the capability of displaying the entire 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Also, standard DVDs are not 720p. They are 480p. So, both televisions would have to upscale the standard DVD signal (or if you have an upscaling DVD player, the player use a built in processor to do this). Either way, you're still upscaling and you will notice the ill effects of this procedure. It should be noted, however, that usually the DVD's 480p signal will look quite a bit better upscaled than a standard definition television signal, which is 480i.

I'm not sure. Maybe it's just saying it accepts signals from an upscaling DVD player or a stand alone video processor, which some people have.

As I said earlier, it depends. How far are you going to be sitting from the screen? Also, I said 8' is my cut off point where I can't tell a difference. Well, that was for a 50 inch plasma. Honestly, you would have to sit very close to the TV to notice much of a difference between 42' plasmas. Generally, I would say it is not worth it to jump up to 1080p on anything smaller than 50'. Most importantly, however, is which looks better to you.

If it fits and looks OK on a wall or stand 42 inches isn't too big from the length of a typical bed plus a few feet. Plus 42 to 50 inches seems to be the sweet spot on price of a flat screen.

Cliff notes: Bigger really is better.

~ Rick

I snapped off a nice lil tourney win last night, and am thinking about getting that 42in panny. Any recommendations on where to get it? Seems that Costco's still a good choice even without the super return policy...

costco's version is the slightly upgraded 42pc77u, which has slightly different speakers and anti-glare screen (which, depending on your setup and viewing area, will either be noticiable or not)

I got my 42px75u from BestBuy on a pricematch against Fry's ($1099) about 2 months ago. Haven't seen it cheaper in any B&M since.

Try Amazon.com. Great price, no tax, free delivery. Why go with anyone else?

So i've looked at amazon and agree they usually have great deals, especially with the shipping, etc.

Then I saw this ad:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...CCODE=WEM1461BY

pretty big tv...panasonic...pretty reasonable price....and yet the guy in the video does not instill confidence in me....

thoughts?

I did a little measuring... 42 inches is simply too big for the room (we're in a tiny apartment).

DirecTV now has 30 national HD channels (they it up the first 21 of their new HD channels today).

In case you're curious, here are the 21 new channels:

A&E (Channel 265)
Animal Planet (Channel 282)
Big Ten Network (Channel 220)
CNN (Channel 202)
The Discovery Channel (Channel 278)
The History Channel (Channel 269)
The Movie Channel East (Channel 544)
NFL Network (Channel 212)
Showtime West (Channel 540)
Showtime too (Channel 538)
The Smithsonian Channel (Channel 267)
The Science Channel (Channel 284)
Starz Comedy (Channel 519)
Starz East (Channel 522)
Starz West (Channel 540)
Starz Edge (Channel 520)
Starz Kids and Family (Channel 518)
TBS (Channel 247)
TLC (Channel 280)
Versus / The Golf Channel (Channel 604)
The Weather Channel (Channel 362)

The only completely new channel is Smithsonian. Aside from Versus/Golf, all the other channels are simulcasts of previously existing SD channels. As you can guess, Versus/Golf is some kind of amalgamation of the Versus channel and the Golf channel.

I miscounted. They had 10 channels before so they have 31 now (I forgot to add Showtime because I don't subscribe to it)

And here are the 17 HD channels scheduled for launch in October:
Bravo
Cartoon Network
Cinemax East
Cinemax West
CNBC Food
Fox Business
Fuel TV
FX
HBO West
HGTV
MGM
MHD
NBA TV
National Geographic
Sci Fi
Speed
USA Network

Continuing with the "Basics" posts, here is a good article explaining aspect ratio, and why HD DVD and Blu Ray movies still have black bars:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/H...ars_Go_Away/764

Ok so its tv time. I figure going with a panny from amazon is a good idea. One thing that bothers me though is that this tv:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det...ER&v=glance

has 720p in its title. Yet, reading more into it, it looks like it can handle 1080p?

Its just strange to me as other tv's i've seen from panasonic, like the 600u, are advertised as 1080i.

I'm normally into gadgets and [censored] but i've done so much research i'm starting to not even get excited about it. So EDF, whats the plasma i should get from amazon for $1700 or less?

edit: someone's comment on amazon made some sense...

" This TV is not 1080p. It is 720p/1080i. It can handle 1080p but I think it is still showing in 720p mode."

So even though it shows 1080p as one of the available modes, its not actually true? Damn liars...

It means it can accept a 1080p signal. A lot of TVs wont. It's resolution is still 1280x720 pixels. So you can give it a 1080p signal, and the built in video processor will scale it and display the image. But, it wont magically add more pixels. Also, I believe all 720p televisions are capable of accepting 1080i signals, which have video processors that scale and deinterlace it to a 720p image.

Thought I should point out the recent release of probably the most highly-anticipated HD DVD this year: Transformers. No, it may not be a great movie, but it's supposed to have among the best video quality of all HD DVD.

I picked it up on release day, something I've never done on an HD DVD, just because of the hype. While I haven't seen the whole movie yet, the few bits and pieces I've seen are really incredible.

Here's a full review of the HD DVD:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/1110/transformers.html

Just a quick note to those looking: just got my panasonic 42in plasma setup and its gorgeous...A+