Howdy DMark!!! We use the remote that came with the TV we havent gotten digital cable yet… we keep forgetting to call… one of these days 
Dewey Finn, No I dont really care if it is true HDTV or not. It has a really great picture and suits our needs for now. We will upgrade it in the future when the top of the line stuff comes down in price. We just call it a starter plasma, something cool for now.
I saw two DLP television at Costco. The images looked as good as the nearby LCD TVs.
Are DLP television generally considered inferior? Are all DLP units “projection televisions”?
I have a 55" Sony HD LCD, and love it. I don’t watch TV much, I’d rather be reading, but when I do watch it - it doesn’t matter what it is, I enjoy it. Perfect picture
I thought I would regret buying it cause it was pretty expensive, but I haven’t regretted it for a minute!
Dewey Finn, I have the prior generation of LVgeogeek’s TV, and I think it’s fantastic. At the distance I watch from (and the size of the screen), it’s difficult to tell true HDTV from the lesser resolution. The HD versions were way more expensive, and I couldn’t justify (or afford) the extra expense. HD channels still look great.
I had a plasma just recently. The problem i had was with burn-in. I absolutely hate watching fullscreen TV with it all stretched out and people all fat and stumpy. So I watched it with black bars on the sides. After about a year, i noticed that the colors where the black bars are were a bit sharper than the rest of the TV. This created two slight verticle lines that become really annoying after awhile.
After that, i just watched TV zoomed in. Nothing really happens on the top and bottom so it was ok - just a little blurry. But i don’t watch all that much TV, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.
LCDs don’t have burn-in problems, so take from this what you will.
When choosing the size of the TV you want, you have to keep in mind three things: How far back you sit from the screen, how big the screen is, and the resolution of the display and source material.
For every given screen size and resolution combination, there is a ‘sweet spot’ where the picture looks best. For standard definition (NTSC) broadcast and a typical 32" 4:3 TV, that sweet spot was about 8-10 feet from the viewer. Sit any closer, and you start seeing artifacts like scan lines, pixels, MPEG artifacts, etc. That causes eyestrain, and makes you want to move back. If you sit too far back, you get that feeling that you’re not seeing everything you should, and you’re not, because the eye can’t resolve all the detail the screen is presenting you.
So it’s no surprise that in the past 30 years, the average family room had a 28-36" TV, and people sat 7-10ft back from it.
Enter widescreen and DVD. A DVD has much higher resolution, and widescreen means you’re losing a significant chunk of screen real-estate on a 4:3 TV. For a ‘sweet spot’ the same distance away, a DVD looks best on a widescreen display 42-65" in size. That’s why so many people have been driven to buying TVs in that category.
But the future is HDTV, and full HDTV resolution implies a very large screen if you want to sit 10’ back. In fact, for a ‘sweet spot’ 10’ away, you want an HDTV screen that is at least 80-90" wide!
Another issue is viewing angle. There is also a sweet spot for viewing angle. Too small, and you get that, “Watching a show in a box” feeling. Too wide, and so much stuff is happening out in your peripheral vision that you feel overwhelmed. If you sit 10’ away, SMPTE says the minimum screen width is 74", and THX recommends 90". Or looked at another way, if you have a 32" widescreen TV, the minimum viewing angle is had at about 4.5’, and to get the THX recommended viewing angle, you’d want to sit about 3.5’ away. So if you want that ‘movie’ experience from a 32" widescreen display, put it on a desktop and sit in a comfy chair in front of it.
Given all this, in my opinion, if you want a ‘movie’ experience and plan on watching HDTV (and everything will be HD in a few years), then this is the minumum size of screen you want for these viewing distances:
Viewing Distance(ft) Screen Width
--------------------------------------
6 48"
7 55"
8 60"
9 70"
10 80"
11 90"
Anything less than that is a compromise. Those sizes also correspond pretty closely to where the ‘sweet spot’ will be with a good display showing HDTV (actually you could easily go another 10-20% larger).
This is why there’s a new boom in home theaters with front projectors. It’s really the only way to get a 100" screen in a room. And because a front projector needs perfect light control, these theaters are either dedicated rooms or multi-purpose rooms with a secondary smaller TV for casual watching and a pull-down screen for movies.
If I were looking for a TV for the family room, I would not buy a 32" widescreen LCD or Plasma. That kind of TV would be fine for putting at the end of the bed in the bedroom, or for putting beside the computer desk. The main display in a typical family room should be at least a 55" RPTV, in my opinion. If I had to go smaller, I wouldn’t spend the money on an HDTV set, since that higher resolution is wasted from 10’ away anyway. I’d just make due with a good quality 36" 4:3 set until I could work out something better.
All you people are good for is making sure I go broke! :eek:
(Side note on the DLP issue that won’t die: They are projection tvs, but much smaller as they project off a small lense/chip/whatever. Finer, smaller, slimmer…yet still ‘appliance-ish’. I want a sophisticated room, with a tv that sits atop - not in- a lovely piece of furniture flanked by other tasteful furniture/ cabintrey. Being a half decent carpenter, I might make the piece my future LCD tv rests on ---- it won’t be plasma, after reading this thread. It looks like it will be 40+ inches. Imagine a nice LCD TV sitting atop a short chest, possibly with some drawers or storage.)
Informative post, Sam. I thought you had a DLP projector in a custom home theater that you hand-built.
What’s your opinion on DLP TVs? I’ve seen them side by side with LCDs and can’t tell a difference in image quality. Like Philster says, they aren’t as streamlined as LCD/plasma, but the picture is amazing.
Yeah, I’ve got a 1024 x 768 DLP projector. My whole theater was an exercise in what can be done on a low budget. I bought the projector five years ago for $1800. You can buy the same projector now (NEC LT-150) for around $500 bucks on eBay. I built the screen for $75 (92" wide by 52" high). I’ve had people over to watch movies, and they universally claim it’s better than being at the theater. So you don’t need megabucks to do home audio/visual right, you just need to be creative.
The only real drawback I can see to DLP is bulb life - typically 3-4 thousand hours with newer machines, and then it’s a $300-$400 replacement. My LT-150 is worse - the bulb only lasts 1000 hours, and I just spent $400 on a replacement.
But DLP, in my opinion, generally gives a better picture than LCD. More contrast, and contrast is just as important as resolution in perceiving picture quality. You can’t tell when looking at them in a typical Best Buy or similar store, because the machines are generally not calibrated and often fed a horrible signal and displayed under bright flourescent lights. You really need to see them properly calibrated, side by side in a dim viewing environment.
That said, I believe LCD has come a long way in the past couple of years, and is really giving DLP a run for its money now - so much so that which one is ‘best’ usually comes down to the implementation by various manufacturers. In other words, a good LCD is better than an average DLP.
What I know about them comes from studying front projector technology. I really don’t know how the current crop of direct-view and RPTV’s stack up against each other.
I have had a Sony Grand WEGA 55 inch LCD Rear-Projection TV for 6 months.
On the Plasma vs. LCD Q I have no specific info on your question. After weighing both (and I know you have the basics) what kind of tipped me to LCD was a Tech savy friend who said that when you have HDTV (note as you know not most DVDs or older programs) it is a better picture than Plasma. He was right.
Screen size I think really depends on your room size, if the room is small enough to accommodate both about equally, I would say that 50% more would be about my limit for 5 more inches …70% (IMHO now) would not be worth it.
Having said that as a general rule, again I think ultimately it depends on your room size if you think 32 inches is too small then I would go with my gut – how horrible to spend untold thousands on the new room and TV and then cheat your self out of the full effect to save $850 on 5 inches – pennywise and pound foolish I think it is called. Try your best to see how the 32 will look in the space. THAT to me is your answer: is it acceptable? … too small a space can actually be overwhelmed by a too big TV too…