Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Opinions on widescreens....I cant decide!

Im looking at getting a "small" widescreen tv. The room I have will allow for one in the 42"-46" range.

My three choices are:
Toshiba 42H83
Samsung HCL473W
Sony KP46WT510

I think they all look pretty similar picture wise to me. Anyone have any of these TV's or one by the same company a year older or newer.

Almost all the reviews I've read for these online seem to be pretty positive, but most our just from ppl who just spend $1500-2000 on something...so no matter if its good or bad, its the best thing they've ever purchased =)

Thanks in advance for the help...hopefully I can decide within a couple days.

pecker,

What are the price ranges for those 3? you might want to consider one of the Mits line, their smallest I believe is a 48in. RPTV. current model include ws-48311, ws-48411 or ws-48511 (integrated tuner) and these could be had for 1500 or less since they have the new models coming out, ie. ws-48413 if I'm not mistaken. the Mits widescreen RPTVs WILL give you the best looking RPTV (quality/image wise) at that price range after a professional calibration. Best thing is to look around and see for yourself. Advice: Don't be fooled by the way the TVs are shown @ the retail shops b/c they'll turn the contrast all the way up to make it look nice and bright.

ps: not Sony bashing or anything, but I'd stay away from a Sony when it comes to RPTVs

boohk it!! ;-)

Aside from myself, i believe jbz also owns Toshiba.
Our model is the 50HDX82.
I've been very satisfied so far to date but knowing how to get into the service menu and perform some extra tweaks has been very helpful.
You may want to head over to Hometheatrespot.com to do some browsing in those forums.
I found it extremely helpful in solving some common technical issues. The forums are separated by individual brand to make it easier to find info on a particular name.

These 3 tv's are all in the $1400-$1600 range (sale prices and what not).

I looked at two mitsu. today. Both the same size, but totally different in quality. The cheaper of the two (in my price range) looked horrid. The one that was about $800 over my price range looked beautiful....but not another $800 worth of beautiful.

And why anti-sony for rptv? I was very impressed with picture quality on the one I saw.

The mitsu. TV I checked out in my price range was the WT-42311. Like I said...I was not impressed.

pecker,

I'm not familiar with the WT-42311, I'd have to look into that one. Why don't I recommend Sonys? If Sony sells a widescreen RPTV, they most likely spent $300 on R&D and the rest on marketing, while with the Mits they spend almost all of that into R&D. Then again, it's your hard-earned $$, you're free to spend it any way you wish ;-)

just my $0.02

Pecker,

I've never seen Mitsubishi RPTV looking good in stores, but at trade shows I've seen some impressive sets. And Sony RPTVs have greatly improved in the last couple of years. The KP46510 looks very good, and it just received a good review by Shane Buettner in a magazine whose name escapes me.

That's nonsense about Sony's marketing vs. R&D. This is the codeveloper of the CD format together with Philips (Philips did the optical disc technology, Sony the electronics.)

For huge expenditures on marketing and mediocre performance, the all-time champion is Bose. But Sony has a long list of impressive technology.

In that widescreen size and price range, I've also seen a 47-inch Panasonic RPTV that was quite impressive (don't know the model). It had less light falloff at angles away from the screen than the Sony. Toshibas used to be poor in this regard, but I think they've improved.

Regards,

I don't know much about Apex, I've heard good and bad about them, but seen them for as little as 900.00 for a 42". Have you checked out the Phillips? Those usually are about that price range, I have two Phillips CRT TV's and quite happy with them, I saw one at Walmarts a 48" I believe for about 1300.00 that looked really nice.

Sony's R&D expenditures are some of the largest in the world. They spent about $3.6 BILLION on R&D and about the same on Marketing last year.

I've had horrible experience with their quality control on non-televisions, but questioning their innovation is absurd.

When I was shopping for rptv last November, my short list was Mitsubishi and Sony, both were excellent rptv's. I bought Sony because its picture was sharper than Mits. I am still enjoying my Sony.

I own the Sony 43HT20, which is Sony's 43" 4:3 rptv, and it is outstanding. Starting about 2 years ago, Sony started stepping up with their rptv's, and their new lines have been highly regarded. They are certainly considered comparable to the Toshibas, Mitsubishis and Pannys. All of them have their pluses and minuses.

I've been mulling over the big screen purchase for a couple of years now. Here's my $.02: get the biggest HD capable, REGULAR shape TV you can afford (or that your room will allow).

Why not widescreen? Because you'll have to reverse letter-box your picture for standard TV signals, or worse, stretch or zoom the picture to fit the screen. DVD images should fit nicely, but a letter-boxed DVD image on the old shape screen (50"-60") will still be as big or bigger than the image would be on the widescreens you're looking at.

In reply to:

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but a letter-boxed DVD image on the old shape screen (50"-60") will still be as big or bigger than the image would be on the widescreens you're looking at.

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With less resolution.

A front projector + screen will take much less footprint than a small 42"-46" widescreen TV (essentially zero footprint, if ceiling-mounted).

Just my usual $0.02. HAHAHA...

I have the 50H82. I would only trade it for something bigger. I'm extremely happy with the brand. I second Chess' hometheaterspot.com advice. That is where I did all my research.

Actually, Semi_On, if the 4:3 TV has a 16:9 squeeze mode (as many do, including my Sony 43" RPTV and my 27" Wega), the DVD image will have the same resolution as on a widescreen set. Not to really start a 4:3 vs. 16:9 debate, because they both have their merits, the fact is, my 43" RPTV produces approximately a 40" 16:9 picture with exactly the same resolution as a 40" widescreen set would produce when I am using the squeeze mode with anamorphic DVD's.

Why less resolution? I'm suggesting an HDTV that is traditionally shaped, not a low resolution RPTV. To me, it seems like a no-brainer - you get a large, high resolution DVD image (albeit letterboxed) and a huge TV image that neither needs cropping, stretching or zooming.

My personal opinion is that the new TV format may never catch on, but if it does it will be far further in the future than 2006. So why bother with the inconvenience of a widescreen?

I haven't really looked into this, but just assumed I was getting a widescreen for my next TV when the time comes. The wide fits the DVD's properly, and TV will either have the bars on the side or will be stretched to fit. I would expect the picture quality doesn't differ much on traditional vs. wide with a similar quality TV. Those black lines on the top and bottom have always annoyed me during movies....it seems like so much of the screen real estate is lost.

If those black bars annoy you while watching movies now, wait until you have to choose between "cropped" or "stretched" mode on a new $3000+ TV. Cropped you will have massive vertical bars on each side (and a small picture in the middle). Stretched you will have fat, distorted images and a decreased picture resolution.

My brother has a widescreen and I hate it. It is good for watching two football game at one though - via splitscreen. Both games take up half the screen with only a little bit of vertical compression. Good feature for gamblers.

Gem, you're right, IF the TV has a sqeeze mode. Not all do.

BigWill,

Both 16:9 and 4:3 have the same vertical resolution. However, in the case of a 4:3 aspect screen, many of those lines are being used to display a big black border. The actual portion showing the actual movie has fewer lines of display because they're showing the black bar.

Squeeze mode, as I understand it, refocuses for anamorphic video on just the 16:9 content, thereby providing full resolution.

This is the entire purpose of Anamorphic.

Wading in here.. (Will leave the technical side to others)
I own a big Mits, and have high regard for Sony's RPTV, as well as their tube sets..
Ok, you want the hauling ability of a truck and the comfort of a nice car.. Do you compromise and buy a station wagon or buy a truck AND a car.. Nothing can do it all..
You want a 'knock yer socks off' picture, you get a big screen.. You want nice clean analog t/v shows, you get a tube set.. OR, buy one of each, and use them accordingly...
Don't have the money or the room for that ? Decide which features are more important to you..
Analog on a RPTV is not its strong suit.. You need to get further back from the screen for the image to improve..
Did I buy my Mits for watching reruns of I Love Lucy? I think not..
Do you buy a sports car because it gets better gas mileage ? No, you buy it to enjoy it for what it was made to do best, and you except the fact that it's not the perfect ride for all occations.. But on those warm sunny days, none of that matters..
Do the leg work, check out the stores, decide what will work best for you.. Ain't nothing gonna do it all..

How bout plasma...doesn't that do both? It's too expensive at this point, and I've heard rumors of longevity issues (they die quicker then regular TV), but if they can fix that in the next couple of years and the price continues to come down it would seem that would be a good option for a bigger screen that can look good regardless. Let me know if I'm off on this assumption though, as I've said, I haven't done the big screen research yet.

Are you saying that a 4:3 HD RPTV is not capable of showing the 480 (?) or 720 (?) resolution that DVDs put out? They have line doublers and allow you to use progressive scan, right? I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I gather your knowledge is second hand as well. IMO all that technical mumbo-jumbo is used to confuse consumers and make it easier to sell them overpriced crap they don't need.
A progressive scan DVD image on a 4:3, HD, 60" RPTV will look just as good, or better, as the same image on a 42" widescreen.

Mikey,
How about a BMW M5?

Which I'm guessing is what the Plasma correlates to...a very expensive option that does both.

That's not what I'm saying at all. Here's some quick math for you:

If both a 16:9 and a 4:3 set are showing a 480p image, they're showing 480 lines of vertical resolution. In the case of the 16:9 screen, all 480 lines occupy the range used by a 1.78:1 image. Obviously, that's a little less common than 1.85:1 so a little of the screen will be lost to display the entire thing or it will be stretched. That space is approximately (1.85-1.78)/1.85 or 4% of the 480 lines of vertical resolution wasted.

In the case of a 4:3 screen, the 480 lines of vertical resolution occupy both the image space and a larger portion of the screen not displaying an image. In the case of 1.85:1, that's (1.85-1.33)/1.33 or approximately 28% of the 480 lines of vertical resolution are wasted by not showing anything.

If you're still confused, you may find this helpful:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/

Except that, for the money, you can get a significantly better picture than Plasma offers whereas more performance than an M5 for the money is pretty hard to come by outside of heavy aftermarket modification.

Plasma's picture is pretty poor to me. There's a lot of artifacting, the contrast isn't great and colors don't look as life like. The only real benefit of Plasma, to me, is pure aesthetics and space savings.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the money for a home theater room and wanted something nondescript for the family room, I'd probably mount a Plasma over the fire place and move all technology out of there otherwise.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think I mixed up my denominators. It should be closer to 4% and 40% respectively.

I'm going back to my marketing work...

Anyone ever feel like their thread as been hijacked? =)

Just kidding...I an enjoying all the good info. I know so little about the video side of home theatre its sad. Im happy "watching" a movie with my eyes closed as long as the audio is done right.

Thanks for all the info everyone

Alright then....for picture quality, size being secondary, what would be the best thing out there? A widescreen HDTV non projection (tube) tv around 36" or however big they can get them now without going to a projection?

And then if size wins over quality, the biggest rptv widescreen (or front...had to throw that in for sushi )

I always assumed plasma was a better picture then either from the little I have seen, but maybe that's not a correct assumption, so we can throw out the plasma option if that is not better in either case.

Is this the general gist, or am I trying to make this too simple and this is all still open to debate as well?

Naaah, how about an Audi RS2? Station wagon that hauls!

I'd recommend a Volvo V70R, but I've got an 850 Turbo and it's costing me a fortune.

Plasma has it's draw backs as well.. Colors are not as strong in many cases, and they cannot produce black with the same depth or richness as a RPTV.. In my none-tech term, they just dont make a believable image.. It's like I'm watching a playstation or X box screen ?
Sonys new LCD RPTV's seem to be heading in a do it all direction ? Not to be out done by Toshibas 1080p LCOS, or Liquid Crystal on Silicon ! Sounds like fun to me..

Nice ride, but I'm more of a Porsche man myself.. Hard to beat the sound of an air cooled flat six approaching redline !!
Not that I have anything against beamers.. Get this, I test drove the little 1600 when back in '68 ! Man, I was impressed.. The salesman even had us drive it off road !!?
Cars were a whole lot simpler back then.. Ohhhhh yeah...

I'm gonna have to try one of those things sometime. From all that I've read, they (Porsches) sound like a blast!

The Samsung DLP's are about the best I've seen, even rivaling plasma. Price is a little prohibitive yet, but the picture is outstanding. They come in 43, 50, and I think 60 inch now.

I saw one of the new samsung dlp's in my search for a tv....he is right, they are amazing. I had to slowly walk away when I saw the price tag though =)

Interesting that you bring that up...I just saw my first DLP over at Best Buy. On first glance, it seems like the best of both worlds...bigger picture with better quality and a 20 year lifespan (at least according to the sales guy). Does anyone with more knowledge know how DLP compares with other options out there? They also mentioned that LCOS was coming out, and it is supposedly going to be even better then DLP. Any input here?

I own a 50" Mits...about 3 years old now....and I love the picture quality. I believe it is a silver series. I can't recall the model number at the moment....W55051..something like that.

Anyway, I purchased the Mits for 2 reasons:
1. I got a good price ($700 used from my buddy)
2. I had heard that the RGB guns in the Mits will generally outlast the competition and have much more longevity. To put it short...Mits uses better guns than most and they will continue to provide the color and picture quality longer than 'Brand X'. My friend basically told me that 7-10 yrs down the line I will be glad I purchased a Mits and not another brand....because mine won't fade over the years like most other brands.

I guess I will find out if that is true or not with time.

Rule number one, never, ever, ever believe anything a Best Buy sales person says. I've heard Best Buy sales people say the strangest BS. When I bought my Xbox the other day, one actually told me the Xbox has better video capabilities than the PS2 because it has a Hard Drive. WTF?

That aside, DLP does present a fantastic picture. The major drawback right now is that the IC behind it doesn't do 1080i and is limited to 720p (which still looks fantastic mind you). I've heard there's new gear coming out this fall that will change this situation as well as LCOS based sets that do 1080p so I'm waiting to see what new models come out Q3.

I need a quick newbie tv guide here....the 1080 and 720 numbers are related to the resolution I assume. I don't know what the difference is between i and p or which is better. I need to start doing a little research just to get the basics down. Never was an issue with my current 25" tube.

I agree about believing what they say...Best Buy salesman or otherwise, take anything any of them say with a big grain of salt.

Scratch the first part...I'm doing some reading...got the i (interlaced) vs. p(progressive) and the pixels as well.

Semi_On was too gentle on that one!

I would rather say, never, ever believe ANYTHING told by a salesperson from ANY stores, B&M or online, low-end or high-end. Period. The quality and quantity of information available in these forums and other internet resources are FAR SUPERIOR than any opinions told by an (even highly knowledgeable) salesperson, who may have tons of other agenda that have nothing to do with your own best interest as a consumer.

From reading posts on avsforum, some Samsungs are only getting about 100 hours on the bulbs, and they are hard to find. That's about the only bad thing I've heard about them. 20 yr life span is laughable at best, I'd of told the salesman to go bother somebody else at that point and leave me alone. Now if it had a 20 yr warranty then I'd think twice about that statement.

I would agree with that...I'll talk to them to get different opinions, but certainly not believe what you hear. That's what places like this are for...to get more input from more sources and make an informed decision when the time comes.

I too have seen the Samsung and was planning to purchase one myself because its smaller depth footprint and picture quality vs RPTV. In a room with ambient light it has a great picture. Yes pretty good but not as good as vivid as a plasma. But in a light controlled room I have seen DLP projectors that can rival and best the Samsung rear projection DLP TV in picture quality and contrast. You also loose PQ if you view the Samsung at greater angles.

Saturn

But it's ok to get advice from techs who happen to work for companies that might potentially sell you something, right? *grin* 'Cause I usually try to have my clients as my main concern, except when I might be able to sell them something I want to play with....

If another of those sales people make that comment about 20 years again, ask them how it was determined. The technology from TI behind it is only a little older than a year. Making claims like that when the technology has been available for such a small time smells of outright lying to me.

Yes, I agree. I wasn't too concerned about it at the time, since I was just browsing anyway, but I did think of that after the fact. I'm guessing he just heard the 20 year number from someone else, and on it spreads.