I’m looking at a 55’ Panasonic Viera plasma right now, and the picture is superb. It’s a 600hz refresh rate, so the action is positively clear–no blur whatsoever. The lamp is right next to me and it’s reflexion is nearly indiscernible. No reflection problems at all.
I would strongly recommend looking at HDTV’s on Amazon.com–after you’ve done your in-store comparison, of course.
Now…for an anecdote:
I recently ordered an LG 47-inch TV from Amazon. It shipped from Plainview, IN on Dec 4th. It supposedly arrived at the distribution point in Rogers, MN, on Dec 6th. It was supposed to arrive at my place on Dec 8th.
But the trucking company ‘lost’ it. I won’t comment on that.
Anyway, long story short, I called Amazon, and they cancelled my previous order and credited me with 15% of the original purchase price toward another TV. A quick search discovered an LG 50PK550 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV that was marked down from $1099 to $849. With my credit, that brought the price down to $702.00.
Also, I put it on my Amazon.com store card which allows me 24 months to pay it off at Zero percent interest.
Free 5-day delivery, too.
Amazon definitely made good on their promise of outstanding customer service.
It’ll look great in my cabin up north.
Not quite sure I understand that.
A couple of additional items you may want to consider and budget for…
A Logitech Harmony One universal remote.
Unless you buy high end equipment from the same manufacturer, it is unlikely that your components will talk to each other via the dedicated HDMI control channel. Because of this, you have to do all of the cable box/tv/dvd cable switching by hand.
This remote allows you to program a button that spits out a sequence of commands like: “Cable box on” + “TV on” + “TV set input to HDMI 1” + “Cable box go to channel 4”
and then:
“Bluray player on” + “Cable box off” + “TV set intput to HDMI 2” + “Blueray player go to Netflix”
The remote is smart enough to know what state every device should be in, so it handles all of the manual juggling with a minimum of effort.
Another cool device to add to your collection is an IR repeater. These are quite useful when you want to box up your ugly components in some hidden location, but still want to use the remote.
And finally, look into the fancier wall mounting kits if that’s your thing. I bought a special one that is recessed into the wall, so the TV rests about a quarter inch from the wall, and I can pull it out on an articulated arm and turn it 70 degrees right or left. I bought this wall box with this mount. It fits in the wall like a medicine cabinet, between the studs. The wires all go through the wall.
Unless you are just mounting it flat on the wall, don’t go cheap with the mounting kit. The cheaper ones soon get very loose in the joints. And make sure the hardware is matched to your TV—if you have a 48" TV, get a mounting kit that is designed for that.
Wow, what a spectacularly awful deal. I feel so bad for the electronically illiterate who bumble around the store and find something like that and think “perfect!”.
Even if the speakers are a decent quality, there’s no way in hell the wires they use are big enough to get the full quality out of them. I don’t think I’m some audiophile sucker, but the difference between the 22-24ish gauge wires that came with my Onkyo system and the 14 gauge from Wal*Mart was unbelievable.
you can use the TV’s speakers as center channel speakers. On my old TV I used the speaker-out jacks to the phono input jacks of the amplifier. That way volume was controlled by the TV.
As for the speakers, many of the surround sound systems use 6" or 8" subwoofers which are capable of delivering the lower notes but it is at a cost. They do this by under-driving the speaker and by this I mean driving the speaker below it’s resonant frequency. That is the frequency that the cone will vibrate on it’s own. It can be annoying if that happens in a prolonged manner as it produces a droning sound. Test for this by listening to male voices.
If you’re buying individual components I would opt for a good center channel speaker that reproduces the human voice well and a decent sized subwoofer. The front stereo speakers should have multiple tweaters that are angled to enhance imaging (or have an omnidirectional lens).
Spend some time listening to systems with your eyes closed. If you can test them with a known movie then bring it in and listen to dialogue to see if voices sound natural and then look for how well the surrounding sounds are imaged. Good speakers will produce sounds outside of their physical location that are encoded that way in the movie.
I have one of these an I love it. It works with other stuff too – I have a couple of lights and even an air conditioner that can be controlled by IR remote, so I loaded them all on.
Very nice system. You go to the logitec website, and can find the codes for pretty much any electronic device. Each device might have a bunch of controls, some of which you’ll want to use and some you won’t, and you can pick and choose which commands you want for each device, and where to locate the button for it (if you don’t like the default location for some reason). The remote contains a touch screen with as many “pages” of 8 buttons as you want, and you can even make up your own names for each button. Sounds real complicated, I know, and it kinda is, but the website does a cery good job of leading you through the setup. And you can go back later to add or change equipment, or to make changes to your set up if it doesn’t work like you expected.
We should start a Hamony remote thread… I had a scare this weekend with my Harmony 360. It was making weird popping noises, and it stopped working. The screen was fine, but it wouldn’t send signals. Replaced the batteries, and it kept on doing it. I went out today and bought fresh batteries, and it’s fine.
The replacement cost would have hurt - the 260 isn’t around anymore, and used ones are about $80. (I bought it for $45.) I noticed that Harmony hasn’t put out a new remote in quite some time, I hope there are some new models coming out that will push the price on the old models down. But I honestly can’t think of what they could do to improve on the One. Maybe component parts are cheaper these days.
They could make the touch screen bigger, but not so big as the Sony Remote Commander. I used to have one of those, and IMO the Logitec is far superior.
When we try to record a show, we get a message that says, “Recording signal has been blocked by the station.” This has happened on at least three different channels now, possibly four. We have heard rumours that most DVRs don’t do this.
I take it that one should steer clear of Bose?
And, what is the current opinion on the Sharp “Aquos” 4-color LCD sets?
Finally, is there an automatic mute set that will cut off the sound of commercials? I’d really love one of those.
Yes. Overrated and overpriced.
God, wouldn’t that be great!
There is some good news on the commercial front. Congress just passed a law requiring broadcasters to make sure that commercials are not louder than the programs around them. Not sure when it takes effect.