I checked my bank account a few days ago.
:eek:
I need to go shopping!
The thing is, I want a new tv. I’ve wanted once when I payed 90$ for my current crappy one. So I went to Best Buy…
I found this REALLY nice tv… 42 inches, wide screen, flat screen HDTV… great picture and good sound.
But here’s the kicker, I don’t know anything about HDTV or TV purchasing in general.
Can anyone offer some advice?
Heres about all I know about TV shopping:
After running all over town, checking prices on the set I wanted, its turns out they were all within about $20 bucks of each other, with Best Buy being cheapest (and they had some free thing too, but I forgot what it was).
I’d would say, pick a set you like and plunk down that cash! Sounds like a nice one, so enjoy it! You cant go too far wrong with Best Buy.
Overheard at the Shakespeare play: “Those people don’t look remotely alike. Are we supposed to believe someone mistook them for each other. I mean, come on! She has huge tits! And he’s a DUDE!”
Picture in Picture is a wonderful thing.
That is all I know about TVs.
Is it (1) a flat screen plasma (i.e., the “hang on the wall” type), or (2) direct view (i.e., weighs, at 42 inches, about 400 lbs. - if they make them that big), or (3) the rear projection type (i.e., takes up the equivalent space of stacked top opening freezer coolers)?
If it’s any other than the first, you should wait, because the prices on plasma are dropping fast, and either of the other two are not nearly as good tvs. If it is the first, then go for it (but be prepared in a year to find out that your bud bought a better screen for less than you paid!).
Also realize that true HDTV requires either (i) a special tuner, receiving signals over the air, just like the old, old days, or (ii) a satellite dish receiving one of the HDTV signals put out by the likes of HBO and HDNet. The plasma screens I’ve seen are spectacular, and make DVDs look amazing.
Ok, here’s what I’m looking at:
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11123514&m=1&cat=24&scat=1470
Lets see if that works.
Shelbo: I’ve been looking at the plasma screen tvs. But even if the prices drop 80% they aren’t worth purchasing.
Here’s what I’m looking at.
my current tv is ok… except it has pretty crappy colour representation (the reds are godawful)…
I’d like a new tv. I’d like one a little bit bigger and I’d like one with a very good picture in it, not one I have to tweak all the time.
And I recently checked my bank statement and realised that I can pretty much pay in cash for any of the 5 or 6 tvs that I’m looking at.
I do have a question about the widescreen tvs though, if the video feed isn’t a wide screen image does the TV distort the image to fit? or does it just crop the sides?
Go to this site:
Very helpful people there, more information than you could ever want re TV.
CRoex there are different formats when it comes to HTDV. Does it do 1280I 12280P 780P 720I and I have no idea what any of those mean, but These people do think of them as the Straight Dope version of TV Guru’s. Get youself over to that board, read the threads make some posts, so you don’t kick youself when the HDTV format changes again in a few years and you have to buy a new TV
Well, I wouldn’t exactly call $1,500 an obscene amount of money.
Ok when you’ve been out of college for 1 year and you’re ready to write a check for it… then yes it’s obscene!
Ahhh, gotcha.
Well, in that case - congratchylations! 
Most TVs will crop the sides. Many will allow you to distort the whole picture to fit the screen. Some of the newer ones have a special feature that stretches the sides of the picture more than the middle, so that the primary viewing area is not distorted – I’ve heard that this method works fairly well.
As for plasma – you can get a 42 inch set, right now, for under $3800.00, and those prices are going to be coming down fast over the next 2 years. Once these get under $3,000 many, many more people will begin to consider them, and once the production runs begin increasing dramatically, and new manufacturing capacity comes online, the price will fall even further. In 10 years (or less), I doubt that there will be any “picture-tube” sets left on the market.
If you’re in the US, please, please learn about DVI, Firewire and copy protection before putting any money down. There’s a small chance that any TV you buy today could be obsolete in ~3 years due to an ongoing battle concerning Hollywood and pirated movies. If you’re like me, you’ll still go ahead and buy the TV but at least you’ll be aware of what’s going on in Washington DC. And don’t expect the people at BestBuy to help, they know less than nothing.
That said, if you’re going to put it in a small room or one with lots of windows, get a smaller direct view that you can see from different angles.
All widescreen (16:9) TVs have a number of formatting options for what to do with a 4:3 picture (different TVs may use different terminology for the same things):
Normal (aka narrow, aka window-boxed) mode, meaning that the picture retains its natural aspect ratio, and there’s empty space (aka black bars) on the sides of the widescreen.
Zoom or wide mode, meaning that the 16:9 screen is filled by zooming in on the 4:3 picture, cutting off the top and bottom.
Standard mode, meaning that the entire 4:3 picture is uniformly stretched horizontally to fill the 16:9 screen. This makes things (especially people) look unnaturally short and fat.
Stretch mode, meaning that the 4:3 picture is non-uniformly stretched horizontally. The middle area is left in 4:3 aspect ratio, and then the sides of the picture are stretched to fill the widescreen, the amount of stretch increasing as you move to the edge. This is the compromise between narrow and standard; the middle of the screen looks normal (i.e. people aren’t short and fat), but the sides have to be stretched even more than in standard mode. Don’t believe anyone who says that “most people won’t notice the difference” after watching for a while. I keep my widescreen in stretch mode most of the time for normal broadcasts, because it is true that the middle of the picture is what you watch the most. But people near the edges of the picture look really fat.
And before you’re tempted to just leave your new TV in narrow mode, read carefully what the owner’s manual says about the potential for burn-in.
To address the actual OP, here’s a really good page that will probably tell you everything you want/need to know, and in fairly non-technical language:
One thing … your model is not capable of receiving HDTV, only displaying it. You’ll need an external tuner for that. Shouldn’t matter much for a while. Almost nothing is currently broadcast or cablecast in HDTV format.
Second thing, just about every piece of Samsung gear owned by everyone I’ve ever known has crapped out shortly after the warranty runs out. Samsung and Gold Star are on my Enemies list just after Denny’s. But I don’t know anyone who’s owned one for years. Maybe they’ve gotten better.
I’ll say this. It seems a very good price to me.
One more reason not to buy it… no VGA or SVGA input. If you have a high definition monitor, it’d be nice to run your computer thru it.
mmm thanks folks, lots to think about.
I was wondering about the whole wide screen thing, cause it looks really nice for movies. But at the same time I wouldn’t want to try to play video games on it if the image is all stretched out 
So it’s nice to know that I can toggle between stuff 
yojimboguy: While it would be cool to have stuff appear on my tv from my computer, it does add almost 2k to the ticket price. However the repair history for samsung IS important… If I’m buying any electronics for more than 75$ I expect them to last for a few years.
Well thanks guys I’ve got a few months of research on this whole thing before I decide anything.
Heck, and if I don’t still want a new tv in 3 months then I’ll be glad I didn’t buy it
Buy a regular ol’ TV, but bigger than your current one–
Then send me the leftover money, 'cause I really got a hankering for a nifty all-aluminum case in a purty color! 
We just virtually the sam ething not three months ago. We didn’t go with Samsung, ours is Hatachi.
Watch the upsell, the extended warranty, the surge protector etc. That’s where the price will go up dramatically and where you will find real price differences between stores.
Also, I don’t think the Samsung is on wheels. Ours is and what a difference, ease of cleaning and redecorating. Small feature that’s a big plus.
Make sure you get the plastic or protective overscreen too. On some it’s included and on others it’s extra.
Just what we learned while we shopped.
Considering how many hours of use you’re going to get out of it, and how entertained you’re going to be when you’re watching it, the amount of money you spend on a TV is kind of trivial. Compare it to a vacation. You spend $1500 on a trip to Disneyland, you’re there for a week. You’re going to be watching this TV for YEARS.