Advice on Buying an HDTV

True for cable and satelite, but fiber optic (which will eventually replace old fashion cable) has way greater potential to produce high quality.

We went with Costco's (48" Plasma) Visio, back before Consumer Reports gave them decent ratings. Nice contrast, brightness & color. I'm wondering since they modified their return policy to 90 days, if folks who bought before that time, if we're grandfathered under the old "return it years from now" policy . . . not that we plan to. I've seen people return nasty/dirty, years old stuff, and it make you wonder if some people have not shame.

 

Isn't there a Costco Warehouse within a reasonable driving distance from Castle Rock? You can get your new TV and have it set up today. Your unfortunate experience only reinforces my reluctance to order such items online. You are very lucky that you opened the box before the delivery man left. Otherwise you would have been in a real bind.

Not every return of a dirty and old item is abuse of the return policy. Seven years ago, I bought a Kirkland stainless steel BBQ, made by DCS, a highly rated manufacturer, at Costco. It was $800, which was a lot of money for a BBQ in those days. Three summers later, every part of that BBQ, save for the stainless steel shell, rusted out of existance. I called the manufacturer's customer service line to order new burners and the related hardware. I was given the runaround and told that the particular BBQ was only assembled by them for Costco and that they do not carry any replacement parts for it. I then called the Costco customer service center hoping that they will help me locate the necessary parts. Costco advised me to return the BBQ. I did. I got a full refund and turned around and bought the then current stainless steel model which was $100 more and which is still going strong four years later.

 

I just got a Sony 46V3000 46inch LCD and it's great. onsale at the military exchange for under $1,800.00 plus no tax..: )
I use the PS3 80GB as the blue ray player.
HDMI cable from newegg.com for around $10.00 each can't beat it.
The 46 LCD is mounted on the wall and with Dish HD "everything" package looks great.
add a rocking sony 5.1 sound / DVD player and your set.

 

I spent my college years working part time at Sears, and the stories I could tell about people having no shame when it comes to returning items are endless.

My fave tho, is the guy who bought a universal charger (from us) to charge his rechargeable discman (not bought from us). He neglected to set the voltage on the charger correctly and fried the discman, which he then brought to us and demanded a new discman because he wasn't satisfied with the charger.

Follow that? In most stores he would have been politely told that it wasn't the stores fault, but we had a "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" policy. And he didn't just want the money back for the charger... he wanted a whole new discman. And after complaining and threatening to call corporate (which at that time was a PITA for any store manager in this chain), he got a new discman.

The all-time low, however, was a customer who bought a PPP (Product Protection Plan) on a cordless phone. Within the 24 months, the phone stopped working, so they brought it in for replacement. Which is fine, that's within the guidelines. I'm sure the guidelines didn't account for grease or fried chicken, both of which were either smeared all over the phone or contained within the various nooks and crannies of the phone (including a nice flap of chicken skin).

Gross, sure... but it got worse.. because all of the grease and chicken led to the phone becoming a roach condo, which we didn't discover until after we took it back (yes, really) and threw it in the stock room.

 

[This reply is a little late in coming... just rediscovered this thread.]

Priusenvy, Now you tell me. Where were you when I bought my TV two years ago and everyone said you don't need 1080p..... ?

Makes sense what you're saying about the "accept" vs "display" resolution capabilities of my TV. My living room's computer's nvidia card resolution is set at 1280 x 768 or something when the screen area is utilized to it's fullest. [Edit: I just checked and it is 1176 x 664 on the nvidia settings. So I guess my TV converts everything to that, then eh? It's a Sony KF-50WE620.]

You can't blame us for believing all the mis-information out there.

Still glad I bought my Sony Rear-projection LCD. It was a cheap price (demo model) and it's been a fantastic 2 years of TV watching. Big bezel and all! Cheers

 

i bought one of these from sams club after christmas but i paid $4200 that includes tax Newegg.com - Olevia Black 65" 16:9 8ms 1080p LCD HDTV Model 265T FHD

 

Isn't this where you graciously offer it to her parents?

When my Panasonic was delivered I insisted on inspecting it before signing. The delivery guy said that was against policy, but I ignored him and quickly opened the carton anyway. Luckily for both of us it was in perfect order.

 

Your TV is 720p native. There is some optical overscan in your TV that causes a 1176x664 pixel area on the microdisplay device to project to the entire viewable area on-screen. So what you do is tell your video card to output 1280x720 timing (since that is what the TV needs for 1:1 pixel mapping), but tell it to position (possibly centered) a 1176x664 active area in that 1280x720 pixel array.

That way your Windows desktop exactly fits the screen. If you did not compensate for overscan, some of the task bar, and the edges of the desktop would not be visible.

 

I finally plunked down the cash for a big-screen TV. Big screen in my case is 46", a Samsung LCD (LCD wins over Plasma because our room is rather bright in the daytime). I turned down the backlight already for a reduction in energy usage (need to put my Kill-a-Watt on it and see what it draws, that's a pretty cool little device) and better image. We've had it for all of 5 hours so far, I think I'll log off and watch a late-night movie.

Cool part is it came with a superbowl package where they threw in a Blu-Ray player for $50. I thought they were going to try to get a couple hundred from me, and was ready to turn it down, but a DVD player (upconverts other DVD formats as well) at that price can't be turned down, even if it goes the way of beta-max. Plus, as a Mac user and video editor (Final Cut Express), at some point I'll be making DVDs with HD content, and Mac is part of the Blu-Ray consortium. Total price was a little under $2000.

The box fit in the Prius with the seats down, but I wouldn't try to put in anything bigger than a 47" in the back. A 50" might make it, depending on the packaging of the box (take measurements). Not heavy at all, probably lighter than our 28" CRTs.

 

Holy cow. I just read all the posts in this thread and I can't believe I will actually have to understand all this stuff just to buy a freakin' tv set.

I have a 27-inch Panasonic tv set that I bought more than 15 years ago and I'm perfectly happy with it. I have a small living room in a small 1BR condo so I don't have room for a giant tv and the picture quality of my current set is good enough for me. I also have old-fashioned non-digital cable because it costs less and I don't need all the extra channels, plus with analog I don't have to pay extra for a converter box.

But since analog signals will go poof next year, I will be forced to upgrade to digital cable, so I assume I will have to also pay the cable company for a converter box if I keep my old tv. So I figured I would upgrade to a new tv that will work with digital. But after reading this thread I'm wondering if I will need a converter box even if I get a new tv.

Plus recently I was watching my brother's new hdtv and within minutes I got a headache and felt nauseous, similar to when I watch an IMAX movie (but fortunately not as severe). Which concerns me, because I don't want to spend all that money on a new tv only to find that I can't watch it without getting sick.

If anyone out there has advice for me (ideally non-technical since I have no clue what most of the posts here are talking about) I would hugely appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

As a cable customer, you most likely will not need to do anything. If a new box is needed because they won't have an analog signal to pass-thru anymore, and your current box wasn't capable (or you didn't have one before) they'll provide all the hardware.

If you received your TV signal OTA with an antenna, you'd be advised to pick up one of those $40 off coupons for a converter box. But you said you're a cable customer, so this doesn't apply.

 

Philips is introducing a "green" HDTV. Looks like it will be out this year--uses only half the power of other flat panels and comes in a carton made of recycled CFLs! (Just kidding about the CFLs.)

What's new in HDTV

 

Holographic TV's

Some of you may know that LCD panels are actually fully transparent.

There's aluminum foil on the other side to reflect light back.

Now image 50 LCD panels, sandwiched together. For depth.

You now have a 50 pixel depth for creating true 3D images.


Since the panels are becoming dirt cheap - and bendable - a true 3D image w/o require special glasses or eye-strain.

Now of course you won't want to over spend with Monster Cables on such a setup . . .

 

Re: Holographic TV's

That would be amazing.

 

Do you think that I don't see the full image from my cable box and XBox 360 feeds -i.e. that there is some edges being cut off or is this something that only my computer does?

And also, being only a 720p native TV that can accept 1080i signals but not 1080p signals, am I unable to see the true quality pouring out of my HD-DVD Xbox drive (connected to the TV via component cables).

I do notice a quality difference between viewing HD-DVDs and reg DVDs both played on the XBox, and I think the XBox upscales reg DVDs.

 

You're losing some of the edges of your TV picture as well, but it's less noticeable since most content is shot for TV assuming around 10% overscan or so. The overscan is very obvious with the computer because you're used to being able to view and use the entire picture area on a computer monitor, whereas you're not with the TV picture.

Since your TV is 1280x720p, and your HD-DVDs are 1920x1080p, you are losing a lot of spatial resolution. However, depending on your display size and viewing distance, this could translate into anything from an obvious difference to an invisible difference. Big display + close viewing distance == big difference. Small display + distance viewing distance == minor or no difference.

Regular DVDs are sufficiently low resolution that your display is able to show you the difference in spatial resolution between the two sources.

 

Someone on AVSForum posted a link to a recent HDTV technology shootout article in Home Theater magazine. Quick summary is that a Pioneer "Kuro" plasma display won (wasn't even a 1080p model), and LCD flat panels took two of the bottom three spots.

Home Theater: The 2008 HDTV Technology Face Off

 

Cool!