Well, my 60″ Sony TV is going back from whence it came.
The picture was beautiful, colors saturated, excellent detail. But that “grainy” overlay (the much lamented “Silk Screen Effect”) was just too intrusive for me. Whenever I sat down to watch, I’d be absorbed in the show, and then suddenly the grain would pop out at me and ruin the effect. I tried it for a month, but it’s a no-go.
It looks like the only way I can go is either Plasma, or LCD. Ken has been advising me, and strongly recommends Plasma. However, currently Plasma isn’t full HD resolution (HD requires 1920 x 1080, while current Plasmas are typically 1366 x 768). But if I can wait until late summer or early fall, the real HD plasmas will be out.
In fact, there’s a nice 65″ LCD at Ultimate Electronics that looks beautiful to my eyes, but for $20,000 I think it’s a little out of my price range!
So looks like I wait a few months until either new Plasmas come out, or LCD prices come down. In the mean time, I am back to my old 50″ standard definition TV.
Sometimes life is hard!
5 responses so far ↓
1 Donna // Apr 10, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Look on the bright side. You have a few more months to enjoy Tivo!
2 Daryl // Apr 10, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Donna,
That’s not true. They’ve already installed the new Dish HD DVR, so Tivo won’t work with it.
However, I can hook up the Tivo to the antenna and at least get those stations, but the new DVR isn’t bad. A few issues, but having three tuners makes up for a lot of other problems.
Anyway, we still have a lot of programs on Tivo, so I have to keep it hooked up until we have watched all of those!
3 Richard // Apr 11, 2006 at 6:29 am
I have followed your comments and Ken’s with interest. At some point we will want to swap out our 26″ standard TV with a HD unit. I have a location where I could mount a unit with overall dimensions of about 55×33. Our viewing location would be about 9 feet from the screen with the center of the screen about 3 feet above our heads. I suppose it could be mounted so it was pointed down at the correct angle.
Any thoughts on an appropriate unit for this application. It needs to be hardy since it will be mounted in a moving, and sometimes bouncing, vehicle. I’m just not sure how big would be too big, and I am interested in ideas about resolution requirements given the close proximity of the viewing location.
4 Donna // Apr 11, 2006 at 8:58 am
Ken’s current plasma screen would probably be an ideal size. Their couch is about 9 feet from it, and the picture quality at that distance is superb. Don’t know what size his is… somewhere in the 40’s”.
5 Daryl // Apr 11, 2006 at 9:02 am
Other than the hardiness issue, I think direct view of some kind would be best, either LCD or Plasma. Anyway, Rear Projection would probably be too thick for your application.
Personally I lean towards LCD just because it is much less susceptible to “burn-in” (uneven aging of pixels causing permanent image retention), though at larger sizes they are more expensive. Many would argue that Plasma has a better picture, but I find LCD pretty good to my eye. A 47″ LCD would fit in that area pretty well, but so would a 55″ plasma. In fact, the outside dimensions of my 60″ RP set was 48 x 34, so you could almost fit something that large.
Panasonic has some new 58″ plasmas that might just fit. Weight might be an issue in your application; not sure what you would mount it to.
Here’s a couple of websites that help you calculate viewing distance vs screen size: Crutchfield and My Home Theater
Check out AVS Forum for all the discussion on Audio Visual equipment that you could ever read!