I love these types of threads. The wife and I still have our old sony Trinitron that we got almost 15 years ago. We keep talking about upgrading, but the Trinitron is still so good that we just can’t be bothered.
Still, I’ve been haunting the local department-store Sony sections checking out the Bravia. A friend upcountry, who had a Trinitron as long as we have, if not longer, is a big Sony fan and got a Bravia. His wife pointed out they could have bought at least three sets of another brand for what they paid for the Bravia, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
I figure we’ll get a new set in the next couple of years. Keep the recommendations coming.
I’m a big fan of Sony TVs but outside their Trinitron line (my 150 pound beast of a set that has lasted over 10 years) I’ve had problems. (Still think the picture is outstanding though). I got a 50" Sony Wega LCD projection set in 02’. From the beginning it had overheating/bulb issues that sent it into a standby mode a lot. But I lived with those till last year when developed a stationary screen blotch that is apparently a cracked lens. Sony will not cover it and it costs over $1000 to fix.
My brother got a 50" Bravia set and it died out 1 year + 1 week later. Sony graciously replaced it for him. I also have a 40" Bravia 1 year old and it so far has had no problems.
For those who might be interested in just a *little *bigger picture, I’m going to take a moment and mention the red-headed step child of every HDTV conversation - projection. Both front and rear projection TVs offer fantastic image quality, at a fraction of the cost. Take Tamerlane’s excellent post. For $1400 you can get an excellent 42" Panasonic 1080p plasma set, and not blink about your purchase - because you’re going to end up with a fantastic product. If you do some shopping or wait a bit, you might find it for $1200.
For $1200, you could order a 61" Samsung DLP 1080p rear projection set. Yes, that’s over 5’ in diagonal. If you have the space, don’t need to hang it on the wall and feel a need to have a television larger than most children, why wouldn’t you? New projection sets aren’t the massive behemoths of the past - this set ships at just a mere 7 lbs. more than the Panasonic.
I honestly don’t know much about front projectors, but I do know they throw up an even bigger image, and is what the professionals over the AVS forums use when putting together their dream home theater setups. I think you would initially spend quite a bit less, knowing that a bulb replacement is 5 years down the road or so. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable could expand.
I bought a 52" XBR6 (they’re all “Bravia”, so the model and series becomes important) and I’d agree with him. Considering I was replacing a 13" 16 year old RCA, I decided the price was worth it to get the picture quality as well as the screen real estate.
That said, you can still find a pretty great LCD for much less than what I paid. Some of the other Sony models (I forget now, but the range below the “XBR” series) are still quite nice for at least a grand less, but you miss out on some of the more cutting edge tech like the 120 Hz screen.
Ah, now here’s a question about hanging your flat-screen TV on the wall. I’ve been told that there are little fans/motors in the back of the set that you must be sure are always working, or else the set will burn your wall. Is this true?
Air circulation around the set is probably important but with pretty much any mounting bracket the set will still be an inch or two off the wall.
You could probably mount the thing flat to the wall by hanging it on a couple of massive bolts stuck into studs but I wouldn’t recommend it.
You’re flat wrong. My Samsung is 1366x768 native. Most 720p TVs are NOT native 1280x720. This doesn’t matter much for movies, but it matters a lot when you hook up your PC. So: VGA is a must.
As to why you wouldn’t wan’t to use the native res (even if it were 720p)… gaming. TVs (unlike monitors) typically have really great upsampling. I like to run my games at lower resolutions (like 800x600) combined with SuperSampling (unlockable via nHancer) to have a very smooth, atmospheric image. My video card is GTX260, and I think this looks better than just cranking up the resolution… which I think just makes many games look harsh and naked. (At least some games… RTSs definitely use additional pixels well.)
I have had my Samsun LN46A650 since Christmas and I am very happy with it. As was noted above AVS Forums has tons and tons and tons on information on any aspect of home entertainment you can think of.
I wrote this review for Amazon, but it never got posted.
This is one of the advantages of HDMI - your DVD player will pass the formatting info along to the TV so that it scales to the right setting and you won’t have to cycle through them to get the right one.
I have a 42" Panasonic plasma, and am very happy. I play quite a few games, and while I may notice an after image if I play something like Madden 2007 for a while, but the afterimage goes away very quickly once I switch to some other source.
Well, yeah. If you have external speakers it’s a moot point, but if ya don’t… would TVs even activate the RCA input when HDMI is being used? I thought they only enable the audio for whatever the video source happens to be at the moment… so unless somebody had the foresight to design a HDMI input with an extra RCA/stereo miniplug jack…