Mr Pockets said:
Everything I looked at today was 42"+
The real deal is price here...sorta. Best Buy is doing 2yrs no interest and it's awefully tempting...hehe. So doing my research.
EDTV Plasmas are $2000-$3500 depending on size (42"-52") while the HDTV equivelants are almost double in some cases.
Of course I could just get a projection, DLP, whatever for the same (and with a bigger screen) price as an EDTV, but I hate projection TVs view angle restrictions.
My wife ad I stared at HDTVs & EDTVs for like an hour and the only time we could tell the difference was with brightness and text clarity.
I hate TV shopping.
In went TV shopping about three months ago and did all the research and opinion seeking at the time for at least a month. I was always a CRT tube person back then and was never totally thrilled about projection either because of things like you said about the limited viewing angles. But things like viewing angle aren't so much of an issue if you get a good DLP or LCD Projection. The viewing angle varies from manufacturer and model. Sony's Grand Wega LCD Projection has an excellent viewing angle for example. I'm amazed at how wide of an angle I can sit and still see it. It comes to a point that there's no way I'd be watching TV from that angle before it even starts to become an issue.
I had to quickly rule out Plasma for three reasons. First reason is that plasmas can burn in. Since most of us are gamers here, I'm not going to spend all that money only to have it burn in images on the screen from a lot of game playing. That leads to reason number two, the money. Plasmas are expensive for what you get out of it. Comparable other technologies are significantly cheaper and aren't hurt by issues like burn in. The third reason is plasma screens begin to degrade in quality from the second you turn it on. It's a continual degredation of image quality until it's no longer any good. While this may be fine for awhile, there comes a point where if you were to compare it to a new one, it would be a noticeable difference and there's nothing you can do it even with calibration.
After all my research it really came down to two technologies which is DLP and LCD Projection. LCoS is another alternative but there isn't much of a selection out there. Neither allows burn in, and both have sharp drop off rather continuous drop off in performance. When the bulb goes, that's when you notice the difference in quality and then you can replace it and it'll be good as new again. Breaking it down into just DLP and LCD though, I ended up with LCD Projection for several reasons.
With DLP I unfortunately saw the rainbow so that nearly killed it for me. On top of that, a small percentage of people can get motion sickness from the technology. Granted its a minor selection, but there was no way I could convince my g/f to sit in front of a TV in a store for 30 min to an hour watching it to see if she would get motion sickness from it. Nor would I want to think about bringing people in who are likely to be over watching it. It was a risk that I just didn't want to take given I know many people who get motion sickness from FPSs on PCs. Finally the last reason was standard definition stuff doesn't look that good on a DLP in comparison to Sony's Grand Wega Projection. Since I plan to be watching stuff that isn't HDTV quality for some time, ie DirecTV, PS2, etc, I didn't want to be looking at something that exposed the flaws of the lower resolution sources. So if you plan on using it on non HDTV content and DVDs, then you need to take that into account. So because of these reasons, I went with LCD Projection.
That doesn't mean there aren't any drawbacks to LCD Projection though. One issue is the possibility of dead pixels, but I'm either lucky, or blind, but I haven't seen any yet. Nor do I have any on my LCD Monitor on my PC. Maybe I'm just lucky but fortunately it's not an issue for me. Another possibility is that the black level isn't as good as the DLP. I don't mind it so much compared to others, but it is something to keep in consideration. Neither DLP or LCD Projection have black levels as good as CRT Projection though.
Of course the best thing to do is look in a store and see what you think. I think you really should look at Panasonic DLPs(which I hear are better than the Samsungs now), Sony Grand Wega LCD Projection, Panasonic LCD Projection, and JVC D-ILA(LCoS) over any plasma screen. Also don't be afraid to take something in to the store to hook it up to see how it looks. They will let you do that.
Depending on where you look, a 42" screen can run you as low as under $2000 for LCD Projection. So I don't think price is an issue, in fact I say it's a better bang for your buck than Plasma is cuz you at least get actual HD resolutions in these sets at 1280 x 720.
