Yeah, the 59 was a typo. I had even put 50 in my phone when I was taking my notes at the store but somehow managed to mistype things once I got them to my PC.
Since you have the exact TV, have you tried connecting a PC to it?
-Joe
No, I haven’t tried that. I almost bought a DVI to HDMI cable to hook up our DVR, but I went with component video cables instead. I would test it out for you, but I really don’t feel like dropping the coin on a cable. The product information on Sony’s web site says it’s PC compatible though.
Well, hell, now I’m confused. Looking at their page it lists this as a port:
• Input(s): PC Input (D-sub 15) + Audio Input (Stereo Mini) 1 (1 Front 1 / 0 Rear)
I sure didn’t see a connector that looked like this on the model at the store. It’s possible the card on the shelf didn’t match the model I was looking at, I suppose.
Do you see one on YOUR unit?
As a matter of fact, looking at the manual PDF
they even make it look like there’s an XGA connection on there. Definitely not the manual they had there at the store.
Hrmph.
So, anyone have any thoughts on a better time to buy, before or after The Big Game?
-Joe
I’m kind of in the same boat. I’ve had my Series 1 TiVo since 1999 or 2000, and I love the thing to death. I’ve upgraded the drive to rediculous levels, networked it, modded it, and it’s a super box. But… it’s about to die. I can sense it, plus it does strange things sometimes.
Additionally, I have DirecTV plus Comcast for the local channels (free with internet).
So I’ve future-proofed, and built my own replacement system. It’s almost complete. I’ve wired the house with ethernet, added an electrical outlet to the office closet, extended the cable tv runs, and built a super MythTV backend box. It’s got two x two DVR-500 receivers, meaning I get 3 cable tuners plus a S-VIDEO for the DirecTV, plus a non-broadcast-flag HD tuner that happily gets the Comcast QAM selections (not too many in my area though). So… that’s five video sources. The processor’s only a 2.5 Celeron, but all the cards have hardware encoders. RAID on media drive, NSF exports allow me to put iTunes and iPhoto on the backend (more on that)… and now I can use MythTV front end on the Mac in the office. But the real key is XBMC or Xbox Media Center. That’s what screwed with me the most. They make perfect little front-end systems for MythTV, and they support HiDef and have 5.1 onboard. In fact, it was a fellow 'Doper who suggested I look at the XBox as a front end. It was a lot more work than I expected, but I know I could do it all again in a day now. 
Plus Myth and XBMC have allowed me to have access to all my iTunes over the network and my Photos. Plus they play Xbox games and lots of emulators (although I’m not a gamer, it’s kind of cool to bring up “Adventure” from my Atari youth onto the screen). Plus I’m now in the process of compressing every DVD I own so that I can browse them on the backend. Because the “skins” are all modifiable, you get the look and feel that you want.
The only thing I’ve not done is gotten it to think up and record suggestions. Yeah, that’s a big bummer, but I think there are projects to make that happen. I’ve just not gotten used to it.
I did a lot of research on avsforum.com before I bought a Panasonic LCD projection TV. I got it for the fact that my teenage kids would be using it for video games (no burn in on an LCD) and I would be using it for HD Football and movies. Very pleased with the choice. I’m not recomending the LCD projection TV because I think that you need to do an assesment of your viewing needs and budget before you choose.
Lots of user forums on the AVSforum site. Techies wade in and try to help the newbies get around. I recomend it for anybody who wants to take a good technical look at today’s equipment.
Some thing to consider when you buy a TV is EXACTLY where you will be viewing from. LCD’s and DLP’s have great wide angle viewing but some are very week on the verticle axis. That could make a difference if you mount your screen fairly high but you occaisonally watch it on the floor(rugrat viewers). That’s why you need to get to a show room and look at the screen from all kinds of angles.
Plasmas don’t have the angle problems but they cost more and could have burn-in issues if you watch a lot of letterbox or play video games.
Good luck
Well, I looked at the back of our TV. It does have the 15 pin video (PC) input. I’m guessing you could use the DVI to HDMI thing too if you have DVI out on your video card.
Does anyone know the minimum sitting distance from the screen for a projected image of say… 50inches across? I found a pretty nice projector hovering around 1000 dollars but my living room is pretty small. Are there projectors that are made for less than humongous screens? I’ve read that the mininum throwback distance for most projectors make a 80inch screen or more but that’s too big for me. I was thinking of something like a 40inch screen or less.
Also, what’s the deal with LCOS and SED? I haven’t heard much information about them except that SED is supposed to be the ultimate format, if it ever comes out.
Just checking, but do you have your DVD player set for a 16x9 TV? I’m surprised you’re disappointed by DVDs. On my set (Samsung DLP), DVDs look fantastic. Anamorphic wide screen DVDs are just shy of HD to my eyes. Setting the DVD player to 16x9 mode makes a huge difference if you have a widescreen TV.
I’ll go ahead and kick in my 2 cents.
I just got a 50" Plasma (Zenith made by LG) for $2600 out the door. The price was right, it can be used as a PC monitor (1024x768) and will look good in the bedroom when it’s time to leave the living room comes up. That last point was actually the deciding factor for me. The manual stated that plasma burn typically happens only during the first 200 hours of use, so I’m just careful not to leave it on one PC screen for a long time (no biggy).
We have an upconverting DVD player even. It’s not that DVDs look crappy on the TV. It’s that DVDs don’t look as good as HDTV. Just look at the numbers.
and
HDTV just has a lot more resolution than a current DVD. If you’re happy, that’s all that matters for you. Me, I’m looking forward to the HD-DVDs.
Understood, and I agree. I misinterpreted your post to mean that DVDs looked crappy on your HDTV. Although DVDs are not as nice looking as HDTV, anamorphic widescreen DVDs are FAR better on my widescreen HDTV than they were on my previous non-HD TV, where the DVD player was throwing away 1/3rd of the resolution in order to generate black bars for the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Something I haven’t seen many people talk about, and might have changed my recent purchase of a 42" plasma if I had researched it properly is the actual screen resolution of the TV.
I love my new plasma – it’s got an awesome picture, is highly configurable, remembers it’s presets for each of it’s inputs, and has 8 inputs to boot. (2 Coax, 1 HDMI, 1 VGA, 2 composite, 2 std RCA) No more switch box for me! That was a great feeling!
But what I didn’t take into account was that it had a resolution of 1024x768. Since I was going to be using it as a very large monitor, I saw those very comforting numbers and felt happy.
But stupidly, I forgot that 1024x768 was a 4:3 aspect ratio and that TV was widescreen, meaning:
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The pixels on the screen are rectangular, wider than they are tall. Any 1024x768 image I display on them will look fat without some special processing.
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The TV won’t ever have 1 to 1 pixel matching for an HD broadcast. It has enough vertical lines of resolution but not enough horizontal ones… So a 720p broadcast at 1280×720 will be resampled and rescaled to fit my resolution. Like I said my picture looks great but it still bugs me to know that I’m missing about 25% of the picture clarity because of the downsampled image.
Now I don’t know about other types/styles of TV’s but the 1024x768 resolution is standard for TV’s 42" and below, so if I wanted the full res I would have had to go 50".
Anyway, from the research I did (from the aforementioned avsforum) about the latest gen plasmas increased lifespan and reduced burn-in danger, plus extensive first hand at various stores steered me towards the plasmas. I’ve had it for about 2 weeks now and have been thrilled.
The other thing about HD that I wasn’t aware of is that if you live in a decent sized market you will get most or all of your local stations broadcasting over the air digital HD broadcasts. I put my old set of rabbit ears on my new set and can pull in ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, UPN, WB and the independants all in HD digital, as well as 24-hour weather stations from the big 4. I had assumed that I would need some kind of “digital” antenna but the rabbit ears/UHF antenna works great and gives me plenty to watch. I’m guilty of watching network prime time programming now just because it’s in widescreen HD and it looks GREAT!
EZ