astroglide's home theater: what i own, what i would buy today

[LuckOfTheDraw]

I hated avsforum at first, but then I spent several hours reading through a few threads. It's not too bad. And, once you start to know you way around the site and have a pretty good idea what you're interested, it's quite easy to keep up on the latest happenings. I check in there once or twice a week to keep up on a few things.

I haven't purchased my TV yet, but I've narrowed it down to these: Samsung 5064, Panasonic 50px75u, or Samsung 5084. The 5064 and Panasonic are both 720p and the 5084 is 1080p. The picture quality on 5064 is better than on Pany's 75u. However, the Samnsung is known to have issues with judder. I have witnessed this first hand in a store on a large panning shot. I could see it getting annoying, especially watching football. I am going to hold out a little longer while Samsung claims to be working on a firmware upgrade to fix the judder. As far as I know, there are no issues with the 5084, but I just don't really think I need 1080p and don't want to pay the extra $600-700 for this set. That being said, it is a very reasonable price for a 1080p 50' plasma with very good picture quality. I didn't mentioned Pioneer here. I'd love to buy one, but they are just too expensive.

[gusmahler]

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- Standard television looks awful on LCD/plasma. Stick with a CRT unless you plan on adding HD programming.


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Nice summary. I'll add that standard DVD is passable on bigger screens. Obviously not as good as real HD, but usually much better than broadcast SD.

I'll add the following:

* Dish Network has 39 national HD channels (plus HD local channels in some markets)

* DirecTV has only 9 national HD channels as of the time of this post. However, they will have 70 national HD channels by the end of October (at the latest), and 100 by the end of the year. They launched a new satllite in July that they are currently testing it. Testing is supposedly almost finished, so the DirecTV boards are abuzz with news of when the new channels go live. You'll need a newer HD box (the H20 or the HR20) that's capable of receiving MPEG 4 signals.

[jeffnc]

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The front speakers alone cost $135k per pair:
http://www.wilsonaudio.com/product/alexandria/

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Yeah, those are pretty decent speakers. I have them hooked up to my PC for playing games. They sound great with Doom. Doom was a pain to install because I had to shuffle through 6 diskettes, but now that it's finally on there I'm really glad I didn't skimp on the speakers.

[jeffnc]

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Probably your best bet is to ask questions. And you'd probably be better off asking here, because if you ask on avsforum, it'll be pushed off the front page in a couple of hours.

So what do you want to learn about first? Probably displays?

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Well I didn't want to bog down here with noob questions, but thanks I'll take you up.

Yes, displays. Or more generally, formats. Since there are so many formats, do you have to be careful with all the upsampling, downconverting, sideswiping, whatever-the-hell? Is a modern digital HDTV going to handle it all? Or do I have to go through reams of fine print for every model I consider to determine if it will support the myriad permutations of signal types it will have to display? Like some funky situation where it will play all "widescreen" DVDs from any DVD player, but will only show "regular TV" DVDs from certain DVD players that are "compatible". (Completely made up scenario because I don't know what I'm talking about.)

Furthermore, let's assume they can actually display all the signals. Am I going to get screwed with one TV that will show "bad signals" really well and another that will show them badly? For example, someone recently said "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV.

[Jack of Arcades]

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OK, looking for a 32-42 incher. For the bedroom, but could end up in the main room in the conceivable future. Budget isn't a big deal but I'd like to keep it under $1500.

I'm looking at the 37" Sharp. My girlfriend likes the 32" (she works at an AV store), but I'm wondering if maybe there are better deals/something critically wrong with the Sharp.

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I would get a 42" plasma. Both Samsung and Panasonic can be had for less than $1500.

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I would be glad to buy a 42" plasma, but my girlfriend really wants to stick to something smaller.

[jws43yale]

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Well I didn't want to bog down here with noob questions, but thanks I'll take you up.

Yes, displays. Or more generally, formats. Since there are so many formats, do you have to be careful with all the upsampling, downconverting, sideswiping, whatever-the-hell? Is a modern digital HDTV going to handle it all? Or do I have to go through reams of fine print for every model I consider to determine if it will support the myriad permutations of signal types it will have to display? Like some funky situation where it will play all "widescreen" DVDs from any DVD player, but will only show "regular TV" DVDs from certain DVD players that are "compatible". (Completely made up scenario because I don't know what I'm talking about.)

Furthermore, let's assume they can actually display all the signals. Am I going to get screwed with one TV that will show "bad signals" really well and another that will show them badly? For example, someone recently said "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV.

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Any moderm HDTV should be able to braodcast all common signals. It is true that some TV's are better than others at displaying non-HD content. I would say that only a few of my channels look bad and that is because their signal has too much compression. Overall standard cable looks fine on a good HDTV. One reason most people think it looks horrible is that their TV's are not calibrated properly. The factory settings will definitely not make your content look the best. They do make a HD picture very eye catching, but they are not the most realistic and definitely hurt the picture quality of non-HD.

[jeffnc]

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Overall standard cable looks fine on a good HDTV. One reason most people think it looks horrible is that their TV's are not calibrated properly. The factory settings will definitely not make your content look the best. They do make a HD picture very eye catching, but they are not the most realistic and definitely hurt the picture quality of non-HD.

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Are you saying you should switch settings depending on HD or non-HD channel? Is there usually an easy user preset you can switch among to do this? Or is this a feature I should look for in a TV?

[gusmahler]

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Well I didn't want to bog down here with noob questions, but thanks I'll take you up.

Yes, displays. Or more generally, formats. Since there are so many formats, do you have to be careful with all the upsampling, downconverting, sideswiping, whatever-the-hell? Is a modern digital HDTV going to handle it all?

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Modern TVs handle it all. As you probably know, the primary formats are 480i, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Any digital TV you buy today will be able to automatically convert signals in any of those formats into the native format of the TV. So any DVD player you plug into an HDTV will work. You probably will have to setup the DVD player first. E.g., on the DVD players I have, there is a setting to switch from 4:3 to 16:9.


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Furthermore, let's assume they can actually display all the signals. Am I going to get screwed with one TV that will show "bad signals" really well and another that will show them badly? For example, someone recently said "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV.

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There are a few reasons "regular" channels look like crap on an HDTV:

1) An HDTV is bigger than most regular SDTVs. A picture that looked fine on a 32" TV doesn't look so fine when blown up to 61".

2) You have an HD reference for comparison. If all you ever saw was SD, you'd probably think it's fine. But once you see HD, you'll think that SD looks like suboptimal.

3) Compression. Cable companies and satellite companies compress the hell out of the SD signal in order to fit your 500 channels. This is why a regular, SD DVD generally looks better than broadcast SD. (They compress HD signals also, but not to as large an extent).

[gusmahler]

Oh, I should have put in a link to Setting Up Your Home Theater 101

[jeffnc]

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Oh, I should have put in a link to Setting Up Your Home Theater 101

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If I could find the video equivalent of that, that would be cool. Thanks for the help so far, it's helping.