I'm trying to decide what TV to go with. Here is my situation. My wife & I mostly watch SD brodcast and I watch allot of DVDs as well. I also purchase DTV fights on the regular which are SD as well. A couple months ago I purchased the Hitachi 60" LCD and loved how HD and DVDs looked on it and loved the slick design of the set and stand but could not sit there and put up with the horrible SD Quality so I returned it. I bought an open box 36" Sony HD Wega (Picture Tube Set) for the meantime to hold me over while I make my desicion on which Big CRT set to buy.
Today I went to the Store and looked at the Toshiba 62" DLP was $3,300.00 I compared it to the Samsung 61" DLP for $3,600.00 and compared those to The Mitsubishi Medallion CRT which was $2300.00 and was considering buying the Toshiba. Once they put on a SD channel on all the sets I left the store upset with no purchase of any set. I know the store attenna is routed to many sets and the SD quality in the store is sacrificed quite a bit. All these sets look Incredible when watching the HD channel but the channels I regularly watch are not HD.
So my question is, what set would give me the best quality for SD similar to my current 36" Sony Wega HD Picture Tube Set? In the past I had the 70" Hitachi RP CRT, which seemed to look fine with SD but the set wasn't HD ready. There is just the worst picture when watching SD broadcast through a HD set (looks 200 times worst than watching it on my 36" Sony).
Can I expect SD signal to look Better on a large Screen CRT or a large Screen DLP? Also, How does the Toshiba 62" Compare to the 60" Hitachi LCD RPTV?
Keep in mind, I'm only concerned about SD broadcast at this moment until most of the channels I watch convert over to HD.
As a note: I have a Zenith HD Sat Box with only 5 HD channels and everything else is SD I also have the Samsung progressive scan DVD player to use with whatever set I buy.
Thanks in advance for any input.
VineetB
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Hi Joey,
Went through the same type of anxiousness re: quality of SD broadcasts - which is also what we watch most of the time, since there isn't exactly an abundance of HD programming. Our experience with stores was the same. I ended up choosing a 50" Sammy DLP (HLP5063W) partly because the store where we got it did not hesitate to show us an SD broadcast. To this day (I've had the set for two months) I have no regrets. SD broadcasts come in very decent - even old shows in B & W - e.g. "the Fugitive" on TV Land - are very watchable. Strangely enough, some more recent shows on SD don't look so good, but they're still OK. we have an HD box with both analog and digital channels
Much of this (LCD vs DLP vs CRT)is really, as one very knowledgeable salesman put it, "in the eye of the beholder". We moved our old 30" Toshiba CRT to our bedroom, but I can honestly say that I don't think that SD broadcasts look vastly better on it than on the Sammy DLP. (Technically speaking, SD should look better on a CRT - hasn't been the case at my house) One word of caution - don't watch SD on a DLP set from too close a distance - that's when the "clay face" effect and a bit of fuziness occasionally may bother you - but, in my opinion, unless you are an extremely discriminating "purist" type of videophile, I'd trust the Sammy DLP quality overall (the HD is absolutely fabulous) - in my opinion, SD is better on DLP then on comparable LCD sets eg Sony Vega - which we also considered as an option.
I was able to have both the Samsung and Sony GW 655 in my house and I thought the Sony LCD was the better of the two. You didn't have to get close to see the clay face effect on the Samsung on SD. The Sony has none of that and has an HD tuner built in. The Sony looked the same as the Samsung on HD which is great but the handling of SD signals is what makse Sony a winner. It will be a ong time before you are watching more HD than SD so you better have a TV that can do both great.
TM
Chadd
Unregistered guest
Posted on
I really like my Sony 50" rear projection LCD. It's the KDF50WE655. I also watch a lot of SD. I have Time Warner Cable with the high definition cable box so I have a couple of choices for watching SD broadcasts. The cable box can show the image with sidebars, stretch it or zoom it. I can also do the same three options with the TV itself which I think provides a better picture. At Best Buy I tried the different options on some DLP's and the Sony and I just thought the Sony provided a better overall picture.
The big test is when my wife continues to walk into the room and comment on how great the picture looks.
Plus XBox is amazing and PS2 is pretty good too!!
Anonymous
Posted on
I have a similar dilemma. I am having a hard time deciding between LCD and DLP and have even considered going to a standard HD RPTV. I like the PQ in HD of the LCD and DLP projections but am worried about the screen door effect on the LCD's(I watch alot of sports with fast moving people and objects) and the rainbow effect of the DLP's.
It seems as though for the money that the standard HD RPTV may be a good deal.
A note on SD, using my Comcast Motorola 6208, DVI out to my Sammy HLN617W. I was "less than impressed" with digital channels (they were OK) and not super happy with <= channel 99 analog.
On a lark having read a post somewhere, I split my RF cable coming in and ran coax to ANT A on the Sammy and WOW! what a difference. Analog SD is VERY watchable, Digital is still OK and HD, of course, rocks.
The downsides are using the TV audio for analog and doing the "remote juggle" (not conducive to the WAF).
Anonymous
Posted on
One thing that should be kept into account regarding the problems with SD tv, is that during the next few years(less than 5, probably), most of the tv stations in north America will be HD, even the small local stations. This TV sets are not that cheap and we espect them to last at least 10 years, and some systems like DLP will last much more than that, so I would forget about SD and think of the HD systems as an investment to have decent TV for the next 15 years.
I agree with Anonymous. Look to the future as TV stations will be required to transmit in HD. If the picture on SD bothers you a lot now, get a smaller set like a 50 inch. The number of "pixels" remains the same as the size of the TV increases. Or, the bigger the TV, the larger the pixels. I personally have a 62 inch Mitsubishi DLP but I have a large room to accommodate it and I am fortunate to get good reception and receive HDTV off the air. If you get good reception in your area, you might consider getting a TV with an integrated tuner to view regular programing.
Gunny
Unregistered guest
Posted on
I agree with Gene. It seems if you run the SD signal straight into the TV on a coax line (assuming it doesn't HAVE to got through a box), it looks better than going through a box or vcr and then sent on a component or digital line.