So I've been sitting on the fence for quite a long time regarding a new TV. Currently, I do not own a TV.
Yes, I know, what a freak I must be. However, I've been getting along fine without it so far, just using my computer to watch movies. However, the time is approaching as I finally settled on a TV/audio stand which is now housing my components and is big enough to support virtually any TV.
First off, let me say that plasma is basically out of the question given that I live at 7,000' ASL and also play video games occasionally. The altitude is the main issue. Even the NEC panels, which were recommended by a local custom AV store, are only rated for operating up to 6,160'. Additionally, while I'm sure plasma now are more resistant to burn-in now than they used to be, I would rather not take a chance. Lastly, I'm weary of the fact that the small plasmas only have a 1024 x 768 resolution. So, given these issues, I'm calling plasma a no-go for my situation. Moving on.
For a long time I have been interested in the 50" Sony SXRD, but just this weekend I witnessed a shortcoming. Connecting a regular DVD player via component and watching the movie Hero, which is anamorphic widescreen with subtitles, if the picture was enlarged properly so that it filled the screen horizontally with no image stretching, then the subtitles were half cut off.
Unacceptable. Being that this only happened two days ago, I haven't had time to research other rear projection models and see how they compare and deal with regular DVD images. The only other DLP TVs I've investigated some, but do not know much about, are the Mitsubishi's.
As far as LCDs, I've been looking at the Sharp line. For a while I have been looking at the 42" 1080p model (LC-42D62U). This weekend I saw another model, a 37" 720p unit (LC-37D43U), and it looked quite nice as well, in addition to being $600 less than the 42" 1080p model (which doesn't hurt). The only downsides to LCDs for me are that I'm sensitive to pixelation, ghost trails and black levels. I've actually seen pretty bad ghost trails in some of the new 1080p Samsung panels, which surprised me. In any case, I have yet to hook up regular DVD to any of the Sharp panels to play around with the settings and image size and see how they look.
Just for reference, I'm looking to stay around the 40-50" range in size, my viewing distance is about 10', and I would definitely like to stay at $2k or less. The main purpose of the TV will be for watching regular DVDs. The player I have is a Marantz DV-4400, which is component output and is not upconverting. This player will be sticking around for a while as I, like many others, am waiting out the whole Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD issue. Aside from DVDs, I suspect that I will eventually end up getting HD satellite or cable in the future, but even if I do, I don't suspect I will watch a whole lot of it.
Thanks for taking the time to read. Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated.
