Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Researching LCD TVs

Spent a bunch of time tonight reading up about LCD technology and trying to figure out which TV to get.

This is a pretty is a pretty interesting article from CNET: "Six things you need to know about 120Hz LCD TVs", pretty cool stuff. Seems like this anti-jitter technology may or may not be good, some people like it and other people think it is doing to much post-processing to the image from a movie, thus modifying the director's intent for the film. Interesting points on both sides. I think I am just gonna have to go to Best Buy and the Sony Style store and see what it looks like in person.

So far I think I've narrowed the choices down to 3 awesome options, they all look good, and I'm gonna have to see if the 120Hz and smoothing options are worth it, or not.
So I think it's come down to one of these 3 options. They all cost about the same amount.
  • Sony Bravia W-Series KDL-40W4100 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV
  • Sony Bravia V-Series KDL-42V4100 42-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV
  • Samsung LN46A550 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV
The W-Series has the Sony 120Hz MotionFlow smoothing function, which is new, but may or may not be good. I want to see what that looks like in person. If I go with that one, they are more expensive so I'll go with a 40" one. The next is the Sony V-series, which is 60Hz, similar presumably to the Samsung A550 series. That's 60Hz so it's cheaper, and so I can get a 42" for about the same price. I am also interested in the Samsung. Those are more affordable, and it's a 60Hz too, so for about the same price I can actually get a 46" one. Gonna have to just go downtown on the weekend and watch a bunch of TVs to see what I really like.
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1 comment:

  1. John Gross1:04 PM

    Are you set on LCD instead of plasma? I got a 40" Panasonic plasma set a couple of years ago, and I've been very pleased with it. I chose plasma because sports (i.e. hockey) was my priority, and I had heard that plasma did a better job with the fast-moving images. No problems with burn-in, and the reflection issues are no big deal (I don't watch a lot in the daytime, and I turn off the lights).

    The other things to be careful about is to be sure that standard-def shows look OK on whatever set you buy. HD shows & DVDs will look great on any new HDTV set, but crappy old standard def shows can look really terrible on some, and just fine on others. Be sure to insist on viewing some SD crap (some show you would actually watch) and make sure it's decent.

    Good luck, sir.

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