TWP,

Many people are perfectly happy with plasmas.

The Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42" Plasma HDTV, (amazon, $1.4k)
and larger TH-50PX60U 50" Plasma HDTV, (amazon, $2k)

are both incredible TVs. As far as I can tell, burn in is no longer considered a problem on good plasmas.

You should be able to get away with a system that has:

A good DVD player ~$200
A good "Home Theater in a Box" ~$400-500 tops
A Tivo ~$100
A great remote ~$100
ex) A 50" Panasonic Plasma ~$2k

and still have ~$2k left.

Where you could spend that (if you wanted)?

Wall mounting or getting a really chique piece of tv/equipment furniture.

the "home theater in a box" part of this is about as scalable as you want. you can do "a receiver and seperate speakers" and do pretty well for yourself with $2k. you could add a good dedicated standalone cd changer if you wanted for $150-$200, but that doesn't seem to be a priority for you. for ~$2 you should be able to get a cable to connect your ipod to your stereo. aesthetically not the best, but way better sound-wise than some fm transmitter.

c

It lights up, so you'll never be in the dark. But I understand your point. I've never actually used it, but it looks so cool, that I'd love to try one out.

Various companies make products that stream (via WiFi) from your iTunes equipped computer to a device with RCA ports. The Roku Soundbridge is one such example.

http://www.amazon.com/Roku-SoundBrid.../dp/B000B5UJ5A

TV: Sony KDFE42A10 42" Rear Projection LCD -
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KDFE42A10-Rea...p;s=electronics If I could do it over again for my new space, I'd go with 50" Plasma, but this unit works fine. 8/10 overall. Most of the negatives with this unit are just with space constraints; I'd rather have a unit that hangs on the wall, since I live in a 1500sqft townhome.

DVR - HD-DVR by Comcast (Motorola Unit). 6/10. Buggy but when it works well is awesome.

AVR - Denon 3802. 110w x 7 channels. http://www.avrev.com/equip/denonav3802/index.html -- 10/10. Would buy again, many times over.

Speakers:

Front - Dalquist QX10. 10/10. My speakers are the pride and joy of my setup and I'm really sad to not be able to run my surrounds right now (wiring concerns based on the layout of the house). The full setup is 2xQX10 fronts, 1 QX60c, and 2 QX20r's. I'm looking for a way right now to hook the QX20r's up via Bluetooth or other wireless medium, but I can't figure anything out. Anyone know if there are any adapters that do this?

The DVD player is a decent Sony Upconverting that has worked fine and will continue to be fine until HDDVD is cheaper and more prevalent.

Also have an XBOX360, and an Airport Express used for streaming iTunes. I'd give that an 8/10 as it also acts as a range extender for the wireless network in my house.

Rob

i'm sure you orient your tv so that you are looking straight at it, though. anything less would be uncivilized.

Meh, probably not as bad as what you're referring to, but flame away.

I actually have room for a bigger set if I want to though. It's currently a 42".

It's kind of hard to tell in the picture because it's a bit dark, but the shelf above the TV has the center speaker, and the bookshelf speakers are on either side. I've posted this before, but I bought the SVS home theatre package. Onkyo 803-B receiver, Panasonic something DVD/VCR, which is good enough for right now. It does upconvert to 1080i/720p.

The real challenge was wiring the rear speakers and sub. We have a crawlspace, but with insulation and pipes it's sort of impossible to drill down to go under the floor (and I didn't want to pay someone big bucks to do it). So after I put in the hardwood floors, before I put the moulding back on, I cut a channel at the base of the drywall which I used to hide all of the speakerwire and sub cable in. Turned out pretty decently in the end.

ah, that WAS you. yeah. nice [censored] setup dude.

Sure, but it's more about how it looks when I happen to not be sitting right in front. Say sitting at the computer and keeping half an eye on a game or something. Just based on in-store viewing, those were the areas where the Wega seemed lacking.

I actually don't mind exposed components, which is why I set my system up that way.

The reason I brought up in-wall mounting of components is my wife. She thought that by mounting a plasma on the wall, we'd have a bunch more room in the living room. I pointed out to her that, unless we wall mounted the components, we'd still have a rack with 9 things on it, taking up as much room as a large DLP. So we went with the DLP.

I do think some in-wall mounting jobs look cool. Check out this one:


The beauty of these types of setups is that you hide all the cables from view. Here's the view of the cables:

Thanks, c, astro and others. This is very helpful. I'm thinking the plasma will be less offensive to those whom don't like the TV 'taking up the whole living room' (I am marrying such a person). And I've been pretty impressed with the panny's i've seen in stores (although I know that's not always indicative - and would consider the Wegas if people had said they really blew the plasmas outta the water).

Thanks, guys. As I said, very helpful. I'll post pics in a few months when I get set up.

the sxrd is $300 cheaper and 1080p. the plasma is more svelte. nothing beats a side-by-side comparison to see which one is for you.

either would be a fine choice for the budget and respective technology.

gus,

jesus, that mounting job looks heinous to me. i don't even know what those top few components are? as for hiding the wiring:

1) there aren't really that many wires in that set up
2) unless you have in wall speakers, you're going to have to run the speaker wires out anyway
3) i've always found the body of my stereo to be a good enough object to block the view of the big pile of wires behind it.

I believe the top components are power amps.

The reason there aren't many wires is because the amps are in the foreground. They only have one input and one output. Look at the bottom right of the picture and you'll see where all the wires go.

And yes, you usually run the speakers in the wall with this type of setup. It's a dedicated home theater I got from this page:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=775209&page=6&pp=50

Lots more interesting setups there.

a downside of rear projection sets (lcd, dlp, etc) is that they have lamps that need to be replaced. it doesn't look like my set has an internal counter that tells you how many hours it's been powered up, but i'm curious. it's been on a ton for 2.5 years and the lamp hasn't popped yet. a replacement will run about $180. i guess i should buy one pre-emptively so that i'm not waiting on an order when the inevitable occurs.

For the record, when I say I would mount my electronics in the wall if I could, I meant specifically that I would build component recesses in the wall beneath the flat panel wall mount, not litterally "hide" them. I would do the same with the speakers. Hell, I would probably recess the TV flush as well. The only concern I would have would be what you addressed earlier, about being restricted by the size/shape of that type of "built in". But if I have the kind of cash flow where I'm building [censored] into the walls in the first place, I can have it redone if I need to.

But I am a floor space nut. If I had a fishtank I would build it into the wall.

Totally agreed. Stainless steel looks so damn sharp. Why hide it?

Because most adult women disagree with you.

You should see the crazy [censored] they do to blend subwoofers as furniture...

J

"Gosh, Bob, you sure do have one thumping Ottoman there."

And for the record, my wife loves stainless steel appliances.

Hello All......

Lot's of interesting posts in this string.

Some of them are fact and accurate: some are opinion and inaccurate.

FWIW, what is being discussed is the business that I've been in since 1970.

I'd be more than happy to share with anyone some 'no bs' info regarding almost any questions surrounding the issues that have been brought up here.

At this moment, it is the last day of the month, and as a sales weasel, I don't have the time to post anything of length here at the moment, but I would be more than happy to attempt to answer any questions that you might have.

One of the things that I will do when I have the time is attempt to address all the misinformation going around out there in regards to plasma/LCD screens; there is much 'bad' info, and it needs to be addressed.

Very quickly on plasma 'burn-in'.....The newer generation plasma sets are not as bad as the early ones in this regard, but they can still be burned in.

Depending upon which screen you might have, burn-in CAN occur in as little as three hours!

If you've run into this, don't fret, as there is actually an inexpensive way to deal with this, and I'll share it with you later on.

Right now, I've got to get to the office.....Business awaits!

Myrtle, where the heck were you when the last hundred or so HDTV threads hit OOT?

This contribution alone may be justify EDGD's existence.

myrtle i'm sure we all welcome any corrections or insight, but you could just post when you've got the time and let the facts speak for themselves instead of citing credentials. your post read to me like a kind of presumptuous "i'll clue you in after i'm done being a professional" announcement. please don't take this as a personal assault, i'm just saying i think it's a bad approach. imagine if somebody went to a strat thread and said, "i'm a pro holdem player, and most of you have it wrong." especially if they didn't claim what or why.

Doesn't anybody have projectors?

I throw a standard TV 100" diagonal image that looks great as long as the signal quality is there. HD is literally jawdropping and I don't even have that great of a setup.

You can pick up a nice 720p projector for about $1000 now and a standard manual screen is roughly $100. You can pick up a ceiling mount off ebay for $50.

For less than the price of a 42" HDTV, you can be shooting a really nice 100" image and everybody will think you dropped five or ten thousand on it.

If anybody is interested www.projectorcentral.com is the best reference on the web and www.avsforum.com has an excellent forum on projectors.

Just as an example this image is on a 9 foot diagonal screen.



edit: Had to add this one because it gets the message across.

Anybody willing to spend 2-4k on an LCD would be better off spending that on a high-quality projector that will put up an HD image 2-3 times bigger.

I have an HD1000U Mitsubishi and am just gaga over it.

I made a 100in screen myself using this technique, but i painted it on a 4x8 piece of dry-erase board and had it framed. Total cost was just under 200 bucks (130 was for the frame).

I have an Onkyo 790 boxed audio setup

And an oppo 971 Upconverting DVD player.

I'll put up some shots of the setup later if anybody wants. I can say without a doubt that this is the best purchase i have ever made. For the price, it's unbeatable (about 1k for the projector), as the only downside are the blacks, which are still quite amazing. However, movies like Dark City don't look as good as they would on an LCD (though i'm largly nit-picking, as they are still very presentable)

The only downside is that you really need to control the light in your room, you just can't watch anything with sunlight in the room. Ambient light from any bulbs is acceptable, but you really want the room to be as dark as possible, so i'd really only recommend getting a projector for movie watching (though I use it for TV watching with no problems)

I got the Harmony 670 for Christmas and it is awesome! Super simple to program and customize - burns through batteries as noted, but I just picked up a bunch of the 15 minute charge ones and it is not a problem.

Logitech has good customer service as well - the screen stopped functioning (think the kids dropped it) and they sent me a new one by DHL within a couple of days.

Other stuff in the home theater:

TV - Vizio 50" Plasma - Couldn't beat it for the price ($1499) - picture is great! Also has 2 HDMI ins which came in handy. Remote sucked - plan on getting an all in one if you don't have one.

DVD - PHL DVP5960 Philips Up convert DVD Player with HDMI - Bargain at $60 and I don't need to worry about the format war going on.

DVR - Scientific Atlantic Time Warner box with HDMI.

Stand - Techcraft Plasma Stand - Sturdy and lots of access in the back to wire things up.

Surround Sound - Sony Home Theater System (HT-DDW700) - This was pretty cheap at $180 but sounds good and is plenty for my space. The speakers are pre-wired and the sub isn't powered, but overall a good starter. I did spend quite a bit of time and bought good speaker wire and fixtures and ran the runs from behind the home theater to the back of the room through the walls so I can upgrade the system in the future and don't have any exposed wires.

Games - Regular Xbox and Wii with Component cables. Love the Wii - Wife, kids (3 and 4), and I have a ball with bowling.

I got everything except the remote and Wii at thanksgiving. I am not sure why I decided to replace everything I used to have, but it was fun doing it myself, not too expensive, and it is plenty for everyday TV with the occasional DVD marathon.

Orange

I just toured a new visualization-wall facility last week that is 14'x10', 6400 x 4096 resolution. It's fairly impressive.