I'll be moving into a new home next month, and to celebrate, I'm going to buy myself my first HDTV. Surveying the landscape, there are about a thousand different parameters to pay attention to, and my search of review sites, AVSforum, etc. has given me more questions than answers. If there's a comprehensive review site that simplifies the process, I haven't found it, so obviously, the solution is to ask here.

I've already ruled out projectors with separate screens because there will be a good amount of ambient light in the room. My desired screen size is in the 50"-60" range due to the size of the room. Outside of that, I would like 1080p resolution, a wide viewable angle, picture-in-picture, and excellent picture quality, though I realize the last one involves about a million different factors, some measurable, some not so much. I want something that's resistant to or free from burn-in concerns, and something that won't cost a lot of money in the future for maintenance (e.g. replacing bulbs.)

So, anyone have any suggestions, either specific models, manufacturers, whatever? Also, what's the best extended warranty option? I know the big box stores often rip you off with them, so I'm wary of those, but definitely want some coverage with such an expensive purchase.

HAHA Forum! I laugh in the face of your attempt to eat my post! I copied to Word before I submitted!! HAHA!

Ahem.

I spent a ton of time researching these things last December when I purchased my current tv and since then, the market hasn't changed too much except for some replacement models of last years sets which are basically the same thing.

For me, I knew I wanted a 50-60" Plasma right off the bat. I looked at all of the LCDs and while a couple of them were quite nice, they just didn't look as nice to me as the plasmas. A nice plasma just looks...richer. I dunno. The only LCDs I seriously considered were the Sony Bravia and Sharp Aquos. Both look great but again, when I compared them to some of the plasmas, they just didn't do it for me, especially when price was thrown into the mix.

And that is the other main variable. How much do you want to spend? I knew right off the bat that I wanted to spend $2,500 - $3,000. I figure I'm going to have it for quite a while and I'll be using it A LOT so I might as well invest in something nice. I also knew that I wanted HDMI (which most of them ended up having anyway) and some sort of PC connection.

After looking at a metric assload of plasmas, the first one I gravitated towards ended up being the one I purchased, the Pioneer PDP-5070. Hands down, its got the nicest picture, highest quality and greatest looking build of all comparably priced sets. The only other plasma I considered was last years Panasonic 50". Its also a great looking set at a lower price but the Pioneer is definitely the better of the two. I went to pretty much all the electronics stores in my area (Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, Magnolia, Compusa, Microcenter) so I saw a lot of freakin' sets, and the Pioneer was basically the nicest. I also did my fair share of AVS reading and the Pioneer seems to be a pretty popular set there. The thing about AVS is, while you can find a ton of info on pretty much any particular TV, its sort of difficult to figure out which set most people favor since everyone raves about pretty much everything. It seemed like Pioneer and Panasonics were popular though.

After I figured out which one I wanted, I looked for the best price, which is pretty much always going to be online. I googled Pioneer Authorized Dealer and the first hit ended up being Pioneer's actual website where they provide links to like 25 authorized online dealers. Its important to buy from one of these dudes because then Pioneer will honor the 1 year warranty which I believe includes in home service. I bought my set from Beyond Plasma. Their website looks straight out of 1997 but they offered the best price (with insured shipping) and I got awesome service. I actually ended up purchasing the PDP-5080 for my parents about 6 weeks ago from them and everything went swimmingly. I think they carry all the major brands and I imagine they've got decent prices on those as well. As far as the warranty goes, I figured I was buying a pretty high quality set and I didn't worry about it too much. What I did make sure to do was to put it on my American Express which upped the one year in home service to two years. Pretty handy.

So I'm pretty partial to the Pioneers. There are other great looking sets but for some reason I liked the Pioneers the best. There is an Elite version of each of the Pioneer's and while the salesmen will tell you they look better, I found that it was pretty much not true. The only difference with the Elite is it has a display adjustment thing where you can make fine adjustments to a bunch of display settings. It also has a network connection for some kind of HTPC feature. It seemed interesting but I couldn't find too much information on it online and I was going to be connecting mine to a computer anyways so the non-Elite version was fine for me. There was also the HUGE price difference.

Finally, I know you said you wanted 1080p and I did too but after I looked at the price difference, and thought about how often I'd actually have a 1080p source, I went with a 1080i set. Now, in December of 2006, there was a greater price difference then there is now; prices on the 1080p sets are definitely coming down. For shits and giggles, I just called Beyond Plasma to check what the difference was and they are selling the 1080i Pioneer for $2,595 delivered and the 1080p Pioneer for $3,599 delivered. If I were in the market again, I would probably go with the 1080p since the price difference is less now. If you don't want to spend $3,599, there is a great Panasonic 1080p that I saw at Price Club. I forgot the price but I remember it being pretty good.

Dude, this post got way too long but I thought i might as well share. Slow day at work and all.

Edit to mention the burn in thing. Apparently, while this is still an issue, some of the sets have built in "burn in reversal" features. I think it flashes a white image across the screen for a long time and it basically reverses the burn in. According to some people I talked to, you can do it yourself as well by doing the same thing. The guy at Beyond Plasma said to put a pure white image on the screen for several hours and that it would help significantly.

Sharp Aquos LCDs are supposed to be fantastic.

It meets a lot of your criteria:

1. 50-60" size (they have a 57" and 65" model too)
2. little to no burn-in
3. high quality picture
4. full 1080p
5. widescreen
6. no bulb to change

If you don't need the mounting flexibility of a flat panel (LCD, Plasma) then you'll get more bang for your buck with a rear projector.

The Sony SXRD sets are excellent. The SXRD panel is high contrast, high fill factor and good color but without the flicker/rainbow issues of DLP's that use a color wheel. The scaler/deinterlacer does a good job. The out of the box calibration is quite good but if you are extra picky there is a lot available without having to go into scary service menus. The input flexibility is good with the latest models even supporting the fancy schmancy 1080p/24fps mode that some HD-DVD and BluRay players can output. I've been very happy with mine.

It does have a replaceable bulb but it's rated for something like 8000 hours which is a hell of a lot of TV to watch.

Whatever you decide, my best advice is get the biggest screen that is reasonable for your room. It may seem shocking at first but you'll quickly get used to size.

I just got a Samsung DLP rear projection TV a couple months ago. Most DLP sets do have a bulb to replace, and color wheel to break, but this year Samsung introduced a DLP TV using 3 LED's for its light source. This eliminated the replacement bulbs, and the color wheel. I got a 61", but the do also have a couple 56" & 50" sets available. Last time I looked Amazon was the price leader on the 61" at ~$1,900.

Pros:
LED light engine, no bulb or color wheel (Also no color wheel no rainbow effect)
Very good with lots of ambient light, with fantastic color reproduction.
Full 1080p
10,000:1 contrast ratio, good blacks.
DLP is free from burn-in
Picture in Picture
Very affordable.

Cons:
Viewing angle is important for best picture, both vertical and horizontal. It still looks good though when you are outside the "sweet spot."
1080p60, so it won't play back HD media in 24fps.
LED light engine is new tech, I believe they have started on the 2nd gen sets now, but there is no definite reliability data. But the LED's should last 20,000 or 200,000 hours... (don't remember which)

I am really happy with mine, and would buy it again in a heartbeat! Best Buy & Circuit City should have it on their floor if you want to look at it.

Samsung's LED backlit LCD: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/lcds/first-ha...ever-312112.php

Olevia LCD links: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hdtv/wired-na...gory-314444.php

Olevia 65" LCD: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/olevia-rolls-out-cheap-65+inch-lcd-hdtv-310921.php

New Sharp LCDs: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/breaking/shar...ever-289540.php

I had spent years and years thinking about buying a Plasma/LCD TV, and about 6 months ago I took the plunge and bought a 50 inch Pioneer.

It isn't full HD, it only does 1080p/24 and like Mark pointed out it isn't native at this res.

My advice to you would be ignore everything you read or other people tell you and go demo a few in a proper demo room, viewing them at a store it pointless. Take along the sort of films you watch etc... and check to see if they can put a normal TV signal up for you.

Also, if you can go round to mates house and watch a few films on theirs, this is how I decided plasma was for me, I found the LCD's to brash and bright for my eyes, but a good plasma gave me the movie feel I was looking for.

There will always be a new box that is better than yours, think carefully about what you need now and test everything you can find in your price range. Pioneer was a new brand to me, but this TV will last me years, I suspect until the panel burns out.

Cheers

Cris.

Since we've been talking about it elsewhere, what's the power consumption of plasma vs. LCD vs. DLP w/bulb vs. DLP w/LCD vs. something else?

Turns out that 2 seconds of searching gives me viable information:

Quote:
Average plasma: 328 watts
Average rear-projection: 208 watts
Average LCD: 193 watts
Average CRT: 146 watts

Other A/V gear:
PlayStation 3: 197 watts
Xbox360: 187 watts
Average PC: 78 watts
DirecTV HR20 DVR: 33 watts
Wii: 19 watts
Slingbox: 9 watts
Wireless router: 7 watts

I love the notion that a wireless router is AV gear.

CNet's HDTV World looks like it might have some useful information.

Are they comparing a 50" LCD to a 13" CRT?

It looks like maybe they may be averaging all of the TVs they reviewed in each category. And, yeah, the CRTs are small as compared to the others.

They got rid of that program. People were *surprise* taking advantage of it and they caught on.

The better stats from that page are these for power usage:

Quote:
Microdisplay rear projector: 0.14 watt per square inch
LCD: 0.29 watt per square inch
Plasma: 0.34 watt per square inch
CRT: 0.34 watt per square inch

This is indeed a complex question that really only you can answer. Along with what you have mentioned as criteria what other things are important to you? Is color accuracy more important than brightness? Just how much ambient light will there be? What is the source? What is the style of the room that the set will be used in? How do you want to mount it? Do you need it to have speakers or will you be using a separate sound system?
How many HDMI inputs will you need? Will you be using it with a PC? Do you require 1:1 pixel mapping?

I have a Sony Wega III in the living room that I have had for more than three years. It is a RP LCD and I have never had to change the bulb. I’m guessing that it is approaching 7000 hours of use. The screen material is such that it works very well in an area were reflections off of the screen are an issue as the screen has almost a matte finish.

I have a 42” Maxent plasma in the bedroom that is going on 1 year old. I paid less than $1000.00 for it. It is certainly not one of the best sets out there but it has served me well and was a bargain in my opinion. The plasma is MUCH brighter then the RP LCD but is prone to ghost images and has a very shiny screen that is not well suited for areas with a lot of reflected light. Plasmas are notorious for delivering a very bright, over saturated image. The light output will diminish over time with a plasma and can not be regained. If you like a bright picture and use the set with the contrast set high this will speed up the process. I very very rarely buy warrantees as I am of the belief that they are a waste of money but I did buy it for this. At $99.00 I felt it was worth it. I have heard good things about Mack warrantees but have never bought one personally.

I also have a JVC RS1 in a home theater. This is a FP that projects the image onto a 126” 16:9 screen. This is in a totally light controlled environment. It is by far the most pleasing and color accurate system that I own. While this is true I don’t think I would chose this as my choice if it were going to be the sole device that I would use for viewing.

I won’t even go DLP I am very susceptible to DLP rainbow effect.

I have somewhere a chart that examines screen resolution vs. eye acuity vs. distance to screen. I can’t find it at the moment but depending on what you intend to do you might find that you can’t tell the difference between 720p and 1080p in your environment.

Good Luck, there are a lot of choices out there the good thing is that there are few really bad ones.