10 Tips for buying a new TV.

[Looneybomber]

10 Tips for buying TV's

With so many choices and so many numbers to compare—shopping for a television (or projector) can leave you dizzy. What are the most important aspects to look for, and not to look for? We asked Joel Silver, founder and president of the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), to provide tips on how to shop for displays.



1) Right Connection – The first question Silver says shoppers should ask is whether the superstore or specialty retail store has a delivery service that will properly connect and calibrate your TV. “Ask if they understand how to make HDMI work, because ideally you should be getting that, but it’s still novel, still buggy,” Silver says.

2) Lighting Matters - Though it may be difficult depending on the shopping environment, make sure you can view the set in lighting similar to your home’s lighting. Is your room usually bright? Go LCD. Dark? Try plasma or a projector. In between? Microdisplays, especially for value in screen size delivered per dollars spent, Silver says.

3) Where’s the View? – Speaking of microdisplays, or rear-projection TVs (RPTV), there is a catch, Silver notes: limited viewing angles. LCDs and RPTVs don’t have as broad viewing angles as plasma, so make sure you can control the angle both horizontally and vertically if you’re considering those technologies, he says. “Room lighting and viewing angles are absolute considerations, and you can’t recover from a mistake there.”

4) Have Discs, Will Travel – Don’t rely on what the stores are displaying for movies; bring your own demo material. Suggestions: something real, something familiar. A digitized Pixar movie like Cars or Toy Story is easy to make look great, Silver says, but doesn’t offer real-life brights, darks and dynamic range of colors the human eye sees every day. “Charlotte Gray with Cate Blanchette, go to the very last chapter where there are bright scenes, dark scenes—challenging scenes. The original Matrix is spectacular in HD DVD, and Kingdom of Heaven is good in Blu-ray,” Silver says.

5) Sweet Concert, Man – Another telling piece of demo material? Concert DVDs. “They’re notoriously tough because they’re dark, and it’s not film-based, it’s video,” he adds. “Dark scenes in a concert shouldn’t be full of little wormy things moving around.”

6) Be Suspect of Specs – We can give you chart after chart of manufacturer specifications, but Silver says let your eyes be the true denominator. If you have five sets lined up in a row, look for the best black levels and truest colors, even if you’re weighing 720p-resolution HDTVs against 1080p models.

7) A la Mode – TVs are shipped in “torch” mode, according to Silver, where blues are accentuated and colors in general are oversaturated. Combat this by making sure your TV’s menu includes modes “that have the words pro, theater, movie and warm.”

8) Go Big – Silver’s simple rule on what size TV: The biggest you can afford. “We believe a big picture is 35-millimeter film,” he says. “Take all the rules you’ve ever heard [for measuring the ratio of screen size to viewing distance] and throw them away. I guarantee your screen at home is too small.”

9) Good Memory – Different content sources produce pictures that need varying levels of adjustment to look good on your TV, so check that it has discrete memory per input. That means your set will remember what settings go with what connection, whether it’s cable, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Xbox 360 and more.

10) Darkness Rules – Since Silver can’t stress enough the importance of black levels in an image, we’ll say it again, this time with an analogy. He says to think about it like the differences of black levels in photography of daily newspapers compared with those of a monthly magazine.

Full story.http://www.electronichouse.com...g_tvs/

[xekushnr]

Great post. I've never completely understood the "black level" thing. Black is black, right? But I guess on some TVs, what is intended to be a black sometimes turns into a dark grey, is this what they are talking about? I've also heard that a high contrast ratio (maybe 10,000:1 and up) is important. Is there anything else I should know Dustin? I am going to be shopping for a TV soon, and I want to be as informed as humanly possible when I'm going to be dropping over a G on some hardware.

[Looneybomber]

Yeah constrast ratio is very important, but becareful not to confuse it with dynamic contrast ratio, which is how you get your 10k or even 20k:1 ratios. I have a low contrast ratio LCD monitor (it's old and cheap) of somewhere like 400-600:1. During normal lighting it's ok. If the sun is shining in bright I can't see it too well or if the lights are off at night, the blacks look dark gray. Very annoying!

Speaking of glare, LCD's reflect less than plasma's due to their non glossy plastic screen. Plasma's look great, but suffer the same ill effects as CRT's do when room lights are on and stuff...the smooth glass reflects everything.

More on contrast ratios now...Ok, dynamic contrast ratio, how I understand it, is taken by measuring the brightest possible light emitted near screen and then taken again with the TV turned OFF. Essentially all it tells you is how much brighter it is when it's turned on vs. when it's turned off. Kinda useful, but not very.

Static contrast ratio or ANSI will typically be between 800:1 and 3000:1. It's measured by taking the bightest light produced and also the darkest black at the same time with the screen ON. This is the true measurement and will tell you just how black your blacks will be.

Plasma's typically out perform LCD's but also cost more.

1080p is great, but you can only get it while using high quality HDMI equipment and cables. Even then, you may still get compatibility problems resulting in no picture at all (even if using HDMI 1.3b). If you revert to using component video cables, it will drop you to 1080i/540p

Another thing to think about is what you'll be using the TV for. Computer use, TV use, TV & movie mix, or primarily movies? Me, I watch probably 10x more movies than I do TV, so I would be more apt to buying a projector, but with a lot of TV use, a projector isn't the best option due to the expense of having to replace the bulb every 500-2000hrs depending on the bulb.

[Looneybomber]

Check out these guy's pod cast.The features we have for you today are both listener requested. Ashton sent us an email asking to to explain PCM, Linear PCM and Bitstreams and Nathan wanted more information about Aspect RatiosSave as

They mention the Sony SXRD A3000.http://www.sonystyle.com/webap...53957They say it's on sale at Fry's electronics for 1600.00, but I can't find it on their sight. At that price, it's probably the best buy you can get right now! Amazon has it for ~1850.00 shipped.

Pod cast from a couple days ago. Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD.http://www.htguys.com/archive/2007/October26.html

[nissan240sx19]

awesome advice