Well, I finally went HD

[Consul]

I was going to use some of my saved-up cash to buy a nice oscilloscope and otherwise fit out my basement lab, but ultimately decided that I don't have much use for such gear right this minute. So, I stumbled upon a great deal for a 46" Panasonic Viera Plasma 1080p ($700 as opposed to the normal $1100 for this model) and decided to go for that instead. Next up, time to think about a Blu-Ray player and a set-top box, like the Roku.

And for those who would rather warn about all the issues with plasma screens, I would like to point out that the burn-in and posterization issues are a thing of the past. Modern plasmas have come a long way in ten years, and in this price range I think plasmas have the best picture, with a 600hz refresh rate, a 200,000:1 actual (not "dynamic") contrast ratio, and a very wide viewing angle.

The HD cable box is on the way, but in the meantime, I have the DVD player plugged into the analog input, and I am completely blown away at how good the DVD picture looks, even going through analog. The quality of the upscaling is another advantage of plasma displays, as it turns out.

I'm pretty pleased with it, so far. Now I have two problems to solve. One, network connectivity for streaming, with good codec support for things like Youtube, and two, to be able to replace our standalone DVD recorder for recording shows. The first is easy, the second, not so much.

 

[Echo North]

Hey Darren,

I just picked up a 46" Panasonic plasma this week as well!

I did a lot of research and settled on the Viera G15.  I think I got a great deal and I've been loving it so far.  It has an ethernet port.  I don't want to run a cable across the house (where my airport extreme is) so I'll pick up an airport express soon and run the ethernet right from behind the TV.  That will also allow me to send Itunes music from my laptop to my stereo through the wireless network.  Fun stuff.

What model did you get?

Mike

PS - Santa also got us a Nintendo Wii...loving all the inputs on this TV!

 

[sodderboy]

Go further and get a BluRay player.  Bladerunner is amazing.  I recommended the South Pacific bluray before.  You just have to skip through the myriad of production numbers to get to the Technicolor FX scenes.  The kids can keep their Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar.  I'll be fine with South Pacific, Girl on a Motorcycle, and Head thankyouverymuch.
Mike
PS: I stream HDMI from a MacBook.  The quality depends on the original rip more than anything else.

 

[Consul]

It's a VIERA TC-P46U1. Runs for $1100 on Amazon. We got it for $700 at *redacted for embarrassment*. It was probably Christmas overstock.

I'm at my limit for "fun" spending with this, so the Blu-Ray player will have to wait. I'm hearing good things about the PS3 as a player and set-top box/streaming media client, so I might go for one of those in a couple of months. In the meantime, we'll be getting our HD cable box in a bit less than a week, so we'll have plenty of good HD content to choose from. I'm still blown away at how good DVDs look just coming in on the analog input.

 

[Echo North]

Don't get your hopes too high for the HD if you have comcast.

They have been aggressively compressing their HD signal to make room for more channels.  I get heavy pixelation with fast movement.

See here...this is what I experience:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271

I'd switch to direct TV however I don't want to lose the CBC.  I pretty much have a little Hockey Night In Canada party Saturday nights for me and my Canadian friends in Seattle.

Boo.

Mike

 

[Consul]

Even being stuck with the analog only signal, it's still miles better than our old tube TV, and a 46" TV of any kind for $700 is a bargain. I remember back when the only HD option in that size were the DLP rear projector types, which, in all honesty, actually look pretty good still. My brother got one of those a number of years back, and it impressed me. A couple of years ago, it got water spilled in it, and he went and got a Vizio LCD panel.

We tried to go with a satellite service, but when they said they required credit card and social security numbers in advance, we told them to get stuffed. Comcast didn't ask for any of that.

 

[desol]

Picked up a 32" Sony LCD yesterday. Very happy with it.

 

[rodabod]

Don't get your hopes too high for the HD if you have comcast.

They have been aggressively compressing their HD signal to make room for more channels.  I get heavy pixelation with fast movement.

See here...this is what I experience:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271

Looks like Comcast might be performing a decode-recode if the pictures are as bad as what I saw in the screenshots grabbed there. It shouldn't be that bad at those datarates, although maybe not great. Shame they don't seem to be operating at MPEG4; you can get away with around half the datarate there.

 

[Silvas]

I bought a 32" samsung for christmas, and couldn´t be happier.

I love "super mario bros" and tetris on the 32". It´s hooked up to my pc as secondary display. I love emulators for old SNES games.

Now i realize now my eyes were hurting with that old 20" which btw had some capacitor making that annoying beep at around 12k.

 

[coniglius]

I got the 50" Viera, the THX certified one and damned if I can remember the model name (it came out about a year ago). There was a supposedly comparable Samsung on the market at the time, but the Viera blew it away in picture quality. We also chose the Viera over the 50" Pioneer Kuro. Granted the Kuro was about $1k and change more, but the increase in picture quality wasn't worth the extra $$ in getting the Kuro. And the Kuro is generally considered "the best HD TV ever". For another $300 or so you can get the Viera calibrated which brings it even closer to the Kuro. Don't waste your money on a Roku if you're planning on using it for just Netflix. I paid $99 for mine awhile back and now I find you can get Blu-Ray players with Netflix capability built in for around $150. I believe the Vieras do Amazon video on demand or whatever so you're pretty much covered there for the function of the Roku. And I just found out the PS3 now does Netflix as well...

 

[Consul]

That was back when I thought the Roku could watch Youtube videos and stream over my network from a local server. It turns out it can't do both of those things. I'm taking a serious look at the PS3 instead, but I'm still not in a real hurry.

 

[Svart]

I might be able to get some info out of comcast about that compression stuff since they buy our test equipment.

I don't think their channels should look like that.  They are pretty darn anal about signal integrity.  That whole mess looks like someone screwed something up big time.  Or that other thread looks like someone trying to extort money.

Either way, my comcast HD looks great.  never had a problem like that.