HDTVs

argh why did I read this thread, I have enough crap to spend money on right now...

I'm actually in the market for an HDTV right now. My wife and I went shopping last weekend, but didn't buy.

We've got a 24" monitor doing HDTV duty right now. From the couch (8 ft), it's still noticeable to see the difference between DVD and HD. From 2 feet, (computer angle), it makes a huge difference.

I suspect that going up to a ~46-52" ought to make SD vs HD a much greater difference. A friend has a 36" 1080i HDTV, and from his couch (8-10 ft), SD vs HD is substantially different.

Subjectively (from around 6-7 feet), I found that regular LCDs lacked the color depth of the LED backlit LCDs (advertised as LED TVs) and plasma displays. I found that plasma displays were noticeably less sharp than both styles of LCD. (As a side-effect, I suspect that if you still watch lots of standard def stuff, Plasma would work better with those)

From my research, Plasma displays look to use around $20 worth of more power per year (2-3 hrs day) vs standard LCDs. LED TVs should save an additional couple of dollars. The power usage doesn't make a huge financial impact here, but it's worth noting.

I am checking back into this thread because I am in the market for an HDTV. My reasoning is that I am starting to see more and more programs cut off on the left and right, and I have tons of HDTV channels and movies that I pay for and can't access.

Based on my space available, a 37" or 40" is ideal. I am going with LCD to keep in my target $800 price point. After much research and interviews, I decided to go with a Samsung. I wanted to have the best specs I could get for the money so that it won't be obsolete in a week. (240Hz is already out there for instance, and the contrast ratios are at over 3million, and LED's are growing in popularity...)

After some shopping, I found a 40" Samsung at Sam's Club with 1080p, 120Hz with motion plus, 80,0000:1 contrast ratio, lots of inputs and features. The price was $798. I was ready to pull the trigger, but they were sold out by the time I got there. I found the next model up online for $799, with free shipping and no tax, so it is actually a better model an $50 less.

Will be here later this week, can't wait to see what the hype is all about.

just a quick note ,i did find out that around my parts, cable tv runs at 60Hz.I asked if they are going to run higher and they said not any time soon.I don't know what any of the game consoles are but was told 120Hz. I am thinking of LED just for the better contrast ratio and go with 120Hz . I figure by the time i need to upgrade the TV would be at the end of its lifespan

The 120/240Hz tvs do some fancy math to interpolate frames, which smooths out the action. (You can turn it off if you want.)

The big deal for a 120Hz TV is that it's an even multiple of 24Hz, aka 24FPS, aka what non-digital films were shot in. They're also even multiples of 30 and 60Hz. This means that they can multiply movies that are encoded at 24Hz evenly, which winds up with a more even transition to TV. Some of them detect the re-encoding of the frames at 60Hz and display them correctly.

Short version: at 60Hz, (3:2 pulldown) a 24 frame/sec film is translated from 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., 23, 24
to
1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, ..., 23, 23, 23, 24, 24

at 120hz,(5:5 pulldown) it comes to
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, ..., 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24

What do you guys think of using an HDTV as a computer monitor?

We don't have a TV at the moment and just watch internet TV and DVD's on our laptop. I'm getting a new desktop, but was thinking it would be cool to set it up as a media center and use a 32-38" TV as the monitor. I don't really care if the image isn't true HD, but will it look like crap?

HDTV - I'd say an LCD with a VGA input would work fine as a computer monitor. A friend of mine does that and surfs the internet from his couch. If you have HDMI output on the computer that works too.

I'd suggest that you'd want a 1080p display to do double-duty.

DO NOT use s-video or composite or coax. Not worth it.

If you have dvi on the computer a dvi-hdmi adapter can be procured in a number of places online for 5 bucks or less.

Zombie Canoe.