Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Advice on new TV

Hey all, been a while since I have been here. Im looking to buy a new tv and this was the first place I thought to ask for advice.

Im looking for a 42-46 inch tv (doesnt matter if its LCD, LED or Plasma). Only catch is price Im only looking to spend $1700 tops.

So I found these couple tvs and was wondering what your thoughts and opinions were, or if you had any other sugestions.

LCD
LG 47" 47LD630 $1500
LED
Sharp Aquos 46" LC46LE700UN $1699
Sharp Aquos 40" LC40LE810UN $1699
Somny Bravia 46" KDL46EX703 $1699
Plasma
Panasonic TCP46G25 $1699

I look forward to hearing all your thoughts! Your advice is greatly appreciated

My 52" Sammy 6 series LCD has worked flawlessly so far. I don't think you can lose with any of the leading brands although you might want to consider customer support as part of your decision process here....some manufacturers are known to be lacking in this area.

Thanks a lot for your info. What did you pay for the tv if you dont mind me asking. I didnt even think about the 6 Series cause I thought they were on the higer end of the proce scale.

Zeddy,

I am not familiar with the models you have listed, but I am fully confident in recommending Samsung products. I have two 58" plasmas, one 42" plasma, and one 32" lcd, and have had no issues with any of them. See if any Sammy models fall into yor price range.

I've owned plenty of sony products in the past and never had any problems. Currently own a XBR4 46" and has been working flawlessly for over 2 years now. If LCD or LED, stick to Sony, Samsung or Sharp, if plasma, Samsung or Pioneer.

Zed, if LCD and plasma are both acceptable, the Panasonic plasma should be favored. That model, or a similar one, should be available at a bit lower price if you look around.

A year and a half ago I paid about $2350 CAD which at the time was very good, but the prices came down to about $1700-1800 less than a year later. Now, they have introduced the LED's and 240HZ (mine's 120) in an effort to boost the prices back up. I haven't been keeping up with the $$'s on TV's lately, so I'm not sure what's a good deal or not at the moment though.

I've been also looking to buy a new tv for the basement.

Everything I see keeps pointing me back to a Panasonic Plasma.

The 46" that you mentioned is $1118 with free shipping on Amazon.

I have been thinking about getting last years model and going with the tcp58s1 which is about $1400 or I can get the tcp54g10 for $1400. Still deciding if the G10 and thx is more important to me or a larger screen.

I love my 58' Panasonic S1 and from what I can remember the 46" version is exactly the same quality. I think Panasonic is the only company doing Plasma justice right now and IMO it looks better than LCD and if you are worried about burn in, don't be. My son plays his Xbox on it for hours at a time and I have had no issues what so ever, not even a little image retention.

I have had three Panasonic plasmas and I will have a very hard time buying anything else. My current living room TV is the 50" S1, been about ten months, no issues.



Buy the 58" S1, all I hear about the THX mode on the G/V10 is that it is way too dark, meaning you have to watch it in a pitch black room, and you cannot adjust anything on that input... Not to mention you're giving up screen size also. You will think it's freaking huge right away but after a week it will be normal.

I can't get over the price of these things, I paid $3800 for a 42" Panny 4.5 years ago (lol) and even the 50" S1 ten months ago was $1600 I think. The 58" for $1400 is ridiculous. I can remember Panasonic charging $6000 or so when the 58" panel first came out.

I paid $2000 for mine at Christmas!!

For the 58??

I hate you all. That $1400 is in the US though, but still... So cheap

Yay Panasonic Plasmas! As long as glare isn't a big deal (upstairs living room with big window) they are the way to go.

Most of the new ones have anti-glare anyway. It's not quite as good as LCD, but better than a few years ago.

True enough!

Hi Zeddy,
I'm not sure if you have any Magnolia Best Buys near you, but you may be able to find an open box or display model Pioneer Kuro Elite 101-fd for a little over $2000. It's a 50 inch monitor, but the Elite Kuro's are still the best displays out there. You need to run your sound through A/V receiver, because these displays are only monitors. You have to go in the store and check, because the website can't sell elite products (weird Pioneer rules). There are some decent Samsung plasmas for around a $1000 also. The Samsung PnB650 was one of Cnet's 5 best tvs of 2009. I got one for my parents for a little over a grand. That's a 50 inch plasma. Although Samsungs tend to have a bit more image retention than some other plasmas. I believe LG's have a tad bit of image retention too, but I've never seen one to confirm.

Hi Zeddy,

I'd place Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony in the top tier for image quality, whether plasma or LCD. LG is awfully close but not quite the equal of the top three, and Sharp is a distant third, partly because the loss of color and contrast of Sharp LCDs off-axis is much worse than other brands of LCD above and Sharp reliability is dubious.

Pioneer Kuro is an odd brand for me. Despite praise from some fellow journalists, the Pioneer Kuros at CES shows in Las Vegas always looked disappointing to my eyes, while other brands looked stunning.

Don't overlook Toshiba, whose flat screens are sometimes excellent and priced lower than others.

Also keep in mind that if you and others are going to be viewing the set from angles to the sides, plasma screens suffer no loss in image quality, unlike LCD viewed from an angle (Sharp being the worst). If you view LCD from mainly in front, then it doesn't matter.

Regards,

Alan

What you saw at CES is part of what killed plasma. They simply don't stand up in a brightly lit environment like a showroom floor. LCDs are brighter all around, including their black levels.

In a normally lit living room the Kuro is a superior display.

Albeit obsolete in terms of marketing...

My plasma is in a fairly well lit room I have 4 windows that feed light into it and I have no problems with the screen brightness and luckily only one seating position receives glare from any of these windows

But if you had an LCD sitting next to it, it would look brighter, and thus attract the eye, and make you want to buy it instead.

It's the same as when comparing audio, and louder seems better.

I know, I was always telling myself that the LCDs are just in extreme mode while the plasma's lack that kind of output, yet I was surprised at how bright the picture actually is on this particular set in comparison.

I was shown a side by side set up in one of the stores when I was looking for my TV, that had one TV setup for normal viewing(not calibrated) and a properly calibrated set. The difference was very noticeable. The salesman asked me to pick the calibrated one, I being savy to the whole idea, knew the softer picture was the calibrated one. The salesman was actually shocked I picked it out. The calibrated picture even looked soft compared to the nearby plasmas.

I'll give another vote to Panasonic plasmas. I've had last year's 65" S1 model for about 9 months now and couldn't be happier! My room has no outside light whatsoever, so I can't comment on any glare from ambient light. Paid $2100 (US), but I think the price is lower now.

$2100 for the 65", amazing, I was looking at it on Boxing day up here for $3000+ I would have bought it for ~$2100 without hesitation. The 58" works in the room but as always for HT bigger is better (let the comments begin )

I was not satisfied with the S1 after viewing comparisons with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the store, then immediately afterwords at home. I had read several reviews that says the S1 casts a green tint on everything and that can't be adjusted out. This proved to be the case in my examination also.

For example, at the beginning in the square concrete chamber with the lights where they are attacked by dementors. The S1 showed greenish lights, the Samsung it was yellowish lights with just a slight tint of green.

Then again when Harry was walking down the hallway of his godfathers house. The S1 showed greenish walls, the Samsung it was brownish and gray.

Jay-

My wife and I were originally going for a 46" plasma (our old TV was a 46" CRT rear projection). When we went to the store to make a final decision, she decided that 46" was too small, but liked the 58". We continued to walk around, and pretty soon I noticed that she was no longer with me...she was standing mesmerized in front of the 65" S1. She said that she loved the picture and asked if I thought it was too big (like I was going to say "Oh, yes dear, it is FAR too big for our HT room!") I "worked" with the salesman for awhile and got him to give me the 65" S1 and a Panasonic BluRay player for $2100! Shortly after the TV purchase, we bought our Axiom setup. My wife said that she didn't care what kind, size, or number of speakers I bought as long as they weren't black. She left all the decisions concerning the construction of our HT to me and said she would go along with anything...God I love her!!!

So do I..... !

I love her too!

Cat, after my initial research I discovered that there are faults with all the TVs out there, a slight green tint here and there doesn't bother me (I have Red/Green color deficient sight, my wife doesn't seem to mind this is green tint issue) and I couldn't justify the cost differential to jump to the G/V series which appear to have problems of their own.

The Samsung's were reported to have P/S issues that would hum and some other people had mentioned some problems with the display itself and poor CS from Samsung to repair it. I'll take my green tint and seldom reported failures over that any day.

What is P/S issues?

P/S = Power Supply

I haven't seen them, but last years panasonics lose their black level over time due to a defect. Panasonic reported this year that the problem has been fixed. Panasonic also has the pioneer plasma technology now, so hopefully their v20/25 model this year shows some of that and they can be on their way to matching the kuro. On a side note, the LED samsung unb8500 was very close to the kuro in picture quality and black levels, but you have to be watching it from the sweet center position and not off axis.

Not sure where you saw that Panasonic 'fixed' the problem. I've been following the anal retentive AVS threads and tech blogs on the floating blacks issue (among a few others) that have been reported. The only response from Panasonic is that they acknowledge the issue and that the new 2010 models slow the rate of the increasing brightness, but it'll still happens.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/10/panas...+%28Engadget%29

I'm sadly aware of this because I too want a new plasma but I can't really put Panny on the list until this is addressed. There is a rumor on AVS that the 2011 may have a solution, but that'll take time to confirm. Yes, I'm kicking myself for not getting that NOS Kuro 50" for $1200 last November.

Not an LCD fan and though Samsung and LG make good plasmas, I still prefer the Panny PQ (before the 1000 hours).

My V-15/50 blew out cells in the first month. Had whole new screen put in. I still love it. And I figure that my WET-MD oughta kick in just about in time for the blacks to go funny, so I'm thinkin' I'll still be good.

It's been 10 months and way more than 1000 hours. It still looks great. (Unless I just forgot to make a follow-up ophthomology appt.?)

I am not as picky about my PQ as most and I figure there will always be some sort of problem that pops up, you could be waiting a long time if you want perfection. If you wait long enough there just might be a holographic room with floating black levels

waited 25 years for perfection, then found a pioneer 141 last year :). I was so close to getting a panny though. It took me 5 days to decide on a house to buy, it took me 3 months to decide on a tv, so I'm a little screwed up.

But as long as you are happy with whatever you're wathing that's all that matters.

A coworker and I had a similar discussion last year. We're engineers that are big gadget hounds. But we have to do the research in order to have the data to make a sound decision. So it may take 3 weeks to buy the right digital camera, plasma, laptop, etc. But then it gets skewed when you buy a house in the SF Bay Area. Granted, we're REALLY skewed (or is it screwed...) In certain areas, it's not unheard of to buy into houses around 2000 sq ft that start at 7 figures and go up from there. And if it's in a popular zip code, you have multiple bids. So if you visit a house on Tuesday (broker's tour), it shows on the weekend, and you have until the next Tues (or Thu if you are lucky) to submit a bid. In those 7 days, you may actually spend about 60 minutes in the house before making the biggest financial decision of your life. How's that for fair? We're in our 3rd house since 1999 and I don't think I've bought a house w/ more than 7 days from first visit to offer. I think my HT decision took about 6 months the first time I bought Axioms.

My friends Samsung (stunning picture) had a power supply problem, the "clicking issue". A call to the number in the manual led me to a very pleasant lady in the US. She took down the details and sent the details to my local repair shop in Hamilton, Ontario. Withing an hour we got a phone call from them. Three days later the board was replaced.

I know everyone has different experiences but I have to say Samsung's CS was on par with Axioms.

At the bottom of the barrel for bad service has to be Bell, took about 2 years for them to remove my late wife's name from their mailing list. What I had to do could fill a novel.... well maybe a novelette

You really DO belong here with the rest of us. Welcome home!

Hi Club Neon,

Actually, no, the Pioneer plasmas were always exhibited at CES in a dark room when I viewed them, and while the color, detail, contrast, and blacks were very good, the overall image wasn't as outstanding as I'd been led to believe by some of my colleagues.

Plus they were dramatically more expensive than plasmas from Panasonic or Samsung, and, in my opinion, not worth the difference in price. Several of my reviewer friends have always had difficulty separating performance from price (especially with loudspeakers) and I'm convinced that the $5,000 price of the Kuros at the time was a bias they were unable to shed.

Regards,
Alan

Bell Canada, indeed! Mismanagment and horrific customer service at its finest. Eventually most Canadians have to deal with their incompetence. My issue dealt with crossed telephone lines between the upstairs and downstairs apartment/house and I was getting charged for the 5 students long distance calls living above + the standard monthly charges. Seems like a pretty standard resolution is to bring out a technician, fix the lines and take the charges off the bill. It wasn't that easy

That's what ultimately forced them out of the market. Pioneer was spending so much on R&D, and the building the resulting technologies which came from that research, that the $5000 price wasn't that far off. But the market wouldn't bear it, so they finally slashed prices to $2000 for the 50" TV. Right around this time, the US economy fell, while the Japanese was still strong. So $2000 US wasn't even turning a profit in Yen. So they exited the display market before the losses cut into their other divisions.

I've heard of this green tint issue with the S1's before but personally either I don't see it, or it's not an issue. I've never heard of anything about black levels having issues either but then again I steer clear of AVS now because the guys there are just insane when it comes to this stuff. I was finding I wasn't enjoying movies or anything anymore because I was too worried about calibration setting and what not.

Mind you, it's not my main HT display so I don't care so much with it, either. It looks great and has been reliable and that's all I ask. When it comes to most electronics, for me it's Panasonic or Toshiba and I don't really deviate from that, unless you're talking something they don't build, such as (real) receivers. Mind you, I did buy an Epson projector rather than Panasonic, but that was solely based on Panasonics pricing in Canada on the projector line, which is a joke.