I’m a projector guy, and haven’t paid much attention to TV’s in a while. I set up a Samsung LED / LCD for a friend a year ago and thought it put up a great picture, but that’s about my limited experience with them.

My friends have convinced me I need to put a TV in my great room for the odd occasions when we get together and the timing conflicts with a game or event they want to watch. I have refrained from putting a TV in the great room as I would rather visit than watch the boob tube, but I’m going to cave and get one…..

So considering it will not get much use, and will be mounted on the wall above a large bay window (the only place I can mount one) and the great room has a bunch of windows with natural light….. It will be roughly 7' above the floor. I’m looking for input on what I should look at. As far as size goes, I have room for a TV that is 36” in height. I’d prefer one that’s pretty slim for no other reason than esthetics. The LED Samsung is pretty darn skinny, but I have no idea what else is out now, so I’m assuming the Samsung isn’t the only game in town anymore.

I’d like to put a cap of $1500 on whatever I get. I do not need the latest and greatest for this TV, as I watch movies in my theater. 1080P / 120 is plenty good.

The only problem with LCD (probably LED also), is the field of view. If you are not looking at it dead on, the contrast ratio suffers the more you move from center. If it's mounted that high up and it's not angled at the seating position then picture quality will go bye, bye. I'd recommend a plasma, although plasma's aren't as bright, which could also present a problem.

If your room has lots of light, avoid Plasma and stick to LED or LCD. LED will be better but will be out of the $1500 range. For LCDs, Sony, Samsung and Sharp are the 3 leaders so you should find great TVs from either.

Nice cave decision!

I think the Samsung LCD is a pretty solid choice. They look better to me than the Sharp and seem to be cheaper than Sony.

I'd get a nice, articulating, swiveling wall mount thingy.

36" in overall height is going to be a rather large TV, like in the neighborhood of a 55-60" viewing screen?

We just bought our son a 40" Samsung LCD and I'm impressed so far, the price was killer from Best Buy (believe it or not!) and it got very good reviews ... I really like the ease of setup and operation.

We just received a new Samsung plasma (PN50C550 50) and it has a great picture. With the new anti glare there's not much, if any, difference between this and the other styles in a lighted room.

Panasonic plasmas have anti-glare coating now as well.

The Panasonic anti-glare is excellent. And they offer very good TVs for the money. You can easily get a big 1080p one for under 1500. The biggest and best (and now the 3D models) cost a bunch more, of course, but there are 50s for well below that amount.

Thanks for the tips guys. It sounds like I should target LED/LCD or anit-glare plasma. It looks as if Best Buy has the LED Samsungs on sale. A 46" is about $1200.

Some newer LCD displays are using LED back-lighting or edge-lighting as opposed to fluorescent one light as the back-lighting. The ones with LED back-lighting can arrange the lights in zones to get a much better contrast ratio than having one florescent light. There is no benefit to contrast ratio with the edge-lit LED lighting on the LCD TV's. The main reason for that option is that they can make some really thin displays with edge-lighting. Having issues with the field of view is a problem with the LCD technology and cannot be fixed no matter what kind of lighting is used for the display. The only way to really fix it is to turn the display on torch-mode, like they do in the store to mask this problem. This is the biggest reason why I went with a plasma display. Even though the LCD's with LED back-lighting can now get contrast ratios in the same league as plasmas, there still isn't a way of fixing the viewing angle problem on an LCD.




Many Samsung LCD's have a reflective screens not anti-reflective to get a slight increase in contrast ratio. This is fine for a dark room, but if there is any light at all it would be a bad choice. If you are checking out some Samsung LCD's in the store make sure that you turn the set off and see how much reflection you are getting. I had one in my house that was almost like a mirror. This thing gave off more reflection than an old CRT display, which nobody wants to watch in the middle of the day without the shades drawn.