Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Which 37" or 40" LCD

I would love to have a plasma too but I occasionally play games. I read and hear conflicting reports on burn in despite years of advancement.

Another thing to consider is standard def quality since not all programming is in HD yet. The sony I had did an acceptable job with it. Acceptable is the best rating for SD programming on a lcd or plasma tv in my book. Only the discontinued CRT hdtv do a great job. The sharp I have I would say is below average for SD personally.

Another thing to keep in mind is the signal that you see at the store. Even the feed at different parts of a store could be different. With this its hard to tell the true video quality of the tv. I usually shop different stores and have different looks at several models.

I didn't like the toshibas and visio's for the same reason and that I thought the images were a bit softer than the sony's, sharps and samsungs.

BTW, Samsung and Sonys use the same lcd panels, the imaging processors are the big difference in terms of HW determining video qualities.

Jason,

Costco has the best prices on LCD's right now. If you have a membership its worth checking it out.

Here is a good article from Sound and Vision that explains if you have a 46" set you need to sit less than 9 ft away to realize any benefit from 1080P over 720P.

Maxing out Resolution

That being said, when comparing 768 plasma next to 1080P LCOS side by side in store, I did notice some better depth in the 1080P sometimes. Some scenes looked better on the 1080set while some looked better on the 768....not enough to really say the 1080 was necessary.

9 ft from a 46"?!?!? I sit 10 feet from a 92", if I had a 46" I would probably sit 5 feet!

There is somewhat of a general thought that you should sit 2 times the diagonal length of your screen away for HD content and 3x for SD....the nice thing about that article is it tells you maximized seating distance per diagonal length of set and display format.

Wait till you get to be old Robb....like 35 Then you may have to move back a bit.

Latest thing I have seen on plasma's is they are now coming with antireflective coatings/glass to minimize/eliminate glare and the pixels(the proper term escapes me)are now rotating to prevent burn in.

Looked at a Phillips LCD yesterday and was quite impressed with its PQ.

yeah, the new panasonics have some kind of anti reflective coating.

In another year or 2 the 1080 plasmas with anti-glare coating will probably be standard and cheaper than the current 720's. Hopefully my CRT will be dead by then.

Jakewash, how picky are you with video quality. That will help us give you proper advice. Buying a tv is very similar to buying speakers in that you want to buy the best that your money can go for. At the same time you may not want to spend more money on a tv where you personally don't see much difference in quality. As far as glare, I wouldn't watch any movies with glare on the tv b/c it washes out the details, protective coating or not. The coating will help. I'd just wait until the sun goes down. Just my opinion.

I agree with Hutzel that Costco is a great place to buy tv's for cheap. FYI, their online catalog and in store products maybe different and the model numbers maybe different even though the sets maybe the same so that its harder to compare prices to places like BestBuy.

As far as sitting distance from your tv, I believe ctown is giving out good advice. Sure sitting 5' from a 46" is nice but not all of us have the cash to buy a front projection that would fit the best viewing distance or a proper room to have a projection tv.

That's right. You can sit as close as 5' from a 46" 1080P set that is displaying a HD signal, or with a 720P set 9' or farther which is more than often the case. That is why saving some $$on a 720P set rather than 1080 right now is a good plan.

In my case it was only an extra $200 for my 61" 1080p set and I still sit 14 ft away, but the nice thing is it can be watched closer, so if somebody is sitting on the front of the loveseat in my living room at 9 ft...its still not gonna show the pixels.

Jakewash, is this TV for the basement HT?? I'm sure you can go as large as 50" from your couch there, but 42-46" would still a great size set for the space.

Al, this TV is for my bedroom, I am making up to my wife for my future sub purchase[smile}. For the basement HT I am going 55" and up, as I have the room over the fireplace to get up to a 63". As these sizes are still quite expensive I am waiting a little longer to make that purchase.

Since my wife watches more SD programing I am looking at those that have comb filtering and the Sony's look really good in SD and they are currently $200 off at Costco. I was really against buying Sony again after my 8yr old 32" needed to be worked on recently, I also had a 27" that went dead after 9yrs, and I have had many other TV brands much longer than that and still no problems. I have 21" Mitsubishi that is 18 years old and still going strong.