Going HD

[Paul]

I've decided its time to go HD (football season starts in a couple weeks, I want to be ready). I've been doing some looking, and I'm pretty sure that I want a CRT. LCDs are expensive, plasmas burn, projection is too big. I believe a 30 inch lcd would be the perfect size though. I'd like to keep in the 500-700 dollar range, and on bestbuy's site, I like this one Insignia NS-30HTV. The only thing it does not have that I feel may be useful is HDMI, but in all honesty, I cannot see myself using HDMI any time in the near future. Signal wise, all I have to do is take my cable box to the company and swap it for an HD box, its free, and then I get plenty of HD programs. Does anyone have any experience with HD CRTs, or have anything similar/any suggestions?

 

[WayneW]

This seems to be an LCD HD at $549, but only 26".
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_in...=26_inch_LCD_TV

 

[Mike]

You might want to check out DLP. I have a 61" DLP and its only 16" deep and about 99 pounds. They make smaller ones as well (46" I believe). Of course the room I got it for was large, for any other room in the house I would go LCD I think, or perhaps plasma. They have increased the lifespan of plasma's greatly (the usage of the gas inside which decreases brightness over time has been increased a lot, from 8,000 hours a few years back to I think over 30,000 (could be wrong have not been looking closely).

Just real clean to put things on the wall rather than putting a 250lb+ beast somewhere. That is worth a premium to me. Plus if you look at Costco and the like, you can get 42 inch LCD/Plasma's for a little over $1000 these days.

 

[Rupp]

New plasmas do not burn or at least not as much as the public is lead to believe this happens. Some people were worried that the TV logos at the lower right of the screen would burn into a plasma but this doesn't happen. All new plasmas have built in circuitry that prevents burn in. Burn in is just a way for LCD and DLP manufactures to scare off the competition. We used several 50" plasmas at work with static text on them and they burn at the same rate as a CRT, nearly non existent on the new generation plasma screens.

If you are getting a TV for sports and fast action beware of LCD's Response times. If it's not a newer high speed LCD you will see "smear" from fast action scenes that are in sports related programming. NASCAR on an LCD doesn't look good at all. We just bought 5 new Panasonic EDTV's at work that have the hi-def tuners built in them and I can't tell these from the high def models from about 5 feet away so that's another option as well.

At your price range it's probably going to have to be a CRT though. What ever you do make sure you at least get the wide screen format or you will loose a lot of the HD viewing material that is cropped on a 4:3 HD TV.

 

[Paul]

Wayne-

I'd like to get 1080i, which the crts will do, but I can't get in an LCD under 37 inches

Mike-

I've gotta work with space constraints, I figure a 30 inch 16:9 is about the biggest I can go.

Rupp-

Definitely going 16:9. I did read a few reviews on that tv that I posted earlier, and, (although I havent been to see one), the reviews say that its garbage, at best. Cnet gave it a 3/10, and all of their customer reviews were even worse. I think its time to take a trip to a best buy and look around a little.

 

[Rupp]

Paul,
It's good to shop but don't get caught up in all the details like I did. I had a 50 rear projection TV that died almost 6 years ago and I just bought my replacements. I kept waiting for the price to drop and for the next big thing and while the prices did drop I spent way too much time shopping and not enjoying.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

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