Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater which TV would you get

Hey Mike:

I bought the same TV (54ps14) from the local Futureshop here in June for my upstairs living room. I got it for $1299 Cdn which I consider to be quite a bargain. I agree that it has a great picture and I'm very happy with it considering the price!

72Mustang if you want to get it from futureshop just order it online and pay for the delivery...the box it comes in is huge and believe me you don't want to drop it!

So... finally got a tv. I really looked hard at the Panasonic Plasma's. I really wanted to like these. Yes, they have "richer" colors. Yes, they would be better in dark room. But I could NOT get use to the "grainy" aspect of alot of scenes even in HD and Blue ray. This would bother me everytime I seen it. One example is the Earth Hour Blue ray. The scene from the plane looking down at a pack of horses and the flock of birds flying over the land. The land was grainy as hell on the S2 54in Panasonic. Many other scenes when compared side to side to a LCD and/or a LED were just too grainy for me. And dont start talkin about grainy when watching non HD stations. So I went for a Sharp 52in Model 78u LCD. Visions had a one day sale last saturday for $998 down from their sale price of $1588. Of couse they have the listed price of $1999 which is bullcrap. I compared it to a 55in Samsung and could not really tell the difference in picture, so I save myelf $500 and went with the Sharp. Lets hope it plays out well. Thanks for all the advise though from everyone.

That should do you just fine. That's a great price, too. Now, just sit back and enjoy!

Nice! Enjoy that big screen.

I wonder about the tint that has been described on some of these monitors as being a characteristic of that particular manufacturers models or just the one that was purchased. I am sure anyone who has one of Joe Kane's DVE calibration discs knows how he constantly talks about how manufacturers play around with the color decoders in their sets to give them a certain unique "look".

Today I think to avoid these variations it probably would be better to spend a little less on the monitor and buy a piece of equipment like a VIDEO EQ(which I own) or one of the new DVDO IScan Duo Processors with the built-in multi-point grayscale and color management systems, some software like Chromapure and a meter and you can calibrate your monitor to an accuracy far superior to anything you could do with the set on its own.

Is there a DVD that one can by/use that can calibrate the TV? You know... like the THX on the higher end tv's? Adjust the contrast till all circles look white, ect... DVD?

It was mentioned above, called "Joe Kane's DVE calibration disc". I have one of these, although after using it for a while I tend to loose interest and revert back to one of the Samsung's built in medium intensity settings instead.

If you are not going to use a professional to calibrate your TV, there are several online sources for calibration numbers, here's the site I primarily use ... TweakTV.

With any of these calibration discs the whole purpose of them is to calibrate the picture of your display(color,tint,contrast brightness etc.)to reproduce the source material as close as possible to the original, in other words, to what is referred to as the "reference standard". I can't recall any Blu-Ray discs yet with the feature but for quite some time any THX DVD usually had test patterns in the menu that you could use to set up your monitor to reproduce, as close as possible, the original movie picture settings. However, in the end, this reference standard may not be appealing to all, hence, do what you did and use an internal setting in the monitor you find more appealing when watching television and/or movies.

There is no problem with that, however, always keep in mind that the picture you are watching in relation to reproducing the source material and based on how the majority of these televisions come out of the factory, without using the test patterns in the disc, more than likely won't be as "accurate" as it could be.

Joe Kane now has a Blu Ray version of DVE Essentials. Or you can pick up any Pixar flick and use the THX test patterns found therein to do some tweaking. Don't worry as much about the colors as the brightness and contrast settings. You can tinker with the colors until it looks right based on your eye (reds not too vibrant, greens not glowing, etc.)