Based on some snooping and Consumer reports (my wife gets it…great mag), I ordered this set on Black Friday, after failing to get into BB:
I paid $900 shipped for it. ($850 for the set). I don’t see that price there now…might have been a one day deal. But I think I’ll be happy with it. It probably won’t arrive until next weekend, at the earliest. I just bought some new PS2 games, and I’m not going to play them until the set arrives.
Not to shit on your purchase, but you can buy the lvm-37w3 37" 1080p LCD for around $900 now. Just sayin’.
So what do you guys do about input? Obviously there aren’t enough inputs on these TVs for all the game consoles I own. Right now, I’m using a composite switcher through my Sony Trinitron 27" set. This TV…
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=KV27V66&LOC=3
Anyway, I suppose you need a Component switch box with these new TVs if you connect more than two devices, aka a 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, Xbox?
I really hope you guys are right and I won’t get the set home early next year and sit there noticing all the imperfections in the picture.
Like I said, the imperfections depend on the source material. For games, you won’t notice it at all since they don’t compress their output (discounting FMV).
However, with games you will notice lag if you play games in non-native resolutions. This is an artifact of the processing applied by the video rescaler necessary to bump from input resolution to native resolution. In some cases this lag has been mesaured as high as 100ms (e.g. Samsung DLPs).
Anyway, assuming none of that bothers you, your set should have more than one component video input I would assume. My shitty Sony CRT rear-projection TV I bought 3 years ago has, I think, 3 sets of component video inputs (and a total of 8 video inputs overall).
That LG I linked as one HDMI port and two Component ones.
Are you saying I’d get lag from composite sources if I were to use composite for say the Xbox/PS2/older consoles?
I guess I have to also remember that the digital cable box will have to go through component too?
No problem. I looked at the Westinghouse stuff, and it looked good. I didn’t see that particular set for less $1000 though. In any case, the way our living room is set up, we didn’t want to go bigger than 32 inches…we just don’t need it.
We also really liked the Panasonic technology and the view angle. It has a 3k:1 contrast ratio (the Westinghouse has 1k:1) and nice inputs.
So we’re happy. It’s what we wanted, and I’m not going to start having remorse on price now. They fluctuate too much to worry about it.
I would imagine that you have either an old set that maybe only does ED (480p), or you hooked something up wrong. I have a 32" LCD TV hooked to a Rogers HDTV set-top box, and the difference between HD and non-HD is striking in the extreme. Did you have your cable box hooked up through component/HDMI? Did you go through the settings on the cable box to send a 720p or 1080i signal?
Also remember that just because a channel is in HD doesn’t mean that they’re showing you HD content. CityTV’s HD channel shows America’s Next Top Model - just to use a completely hypothetical example - but it doesn’t show it in HD. Confusing, I know.
I don’t understand what the issue is with having the HD channels grouped around the 500s. I love that, because it allows me to quickly scan what’s on in HD at any given moment.
It is the Pioneer 5040HD, not ED. It is in 16:9 and I am using HDMI. It isn’t just with my TV… it’s the same with my friends. Some HD sports looked better, but otherwise it wasn’t that different. Like being color-blind, maybe I am HD-blind.
Also remember that just because a channel is in HD doesn’t mean that they’re showing you HD content. CityTV’s HD channel shows America’s Next Top Model - just to use a completely hypothetical example - but it doesn’t show it in HD. Confusing, I know.
Now that… I didn’t know. I assumed all content on an HDTV channel is in HD.
Yes. You will get lag if you try to display anything in 480i on the set, which means anything with a Composite or S-Video connection, or any games which do not support 480p (many PS2 games do not).
You will likely get a miniscule amount of lag with 480p sources, but it should be so small that you probably will not notice it.
Do you have any interests in putting together a full home theater system with surround sound and the works? Instead of just buying a component-switcher you could get a nice A/V receiver and run all your gadgets through that.
Nope. Click on the Guide button and check out the HD listings. Usually, the biggest grouping of HD programming is during prime time - go figure. The shows will usually have “(HD)” listed after the name of the program in the guide. There’s no real rhyme or reason as to what’s in HD and what isn’t, so you get stuff like one of the Toronto cable channels showing two Veronica Mars’ on Tuesday from 8-10pm - the first one is a repeat in non-HD, and the second is a new one in HD.
Like has been said previously, if you’re on an HD channel and the show you’re watching is pillarboxed - i.e. black bars on the left and right sides - the show isn’t in HD, because HD is in 16:9.
I think some people are HD-blind. On a properly configured set, it’s the only explanation. The difference in quality between SD and HDTV picture quality isn’t incremental, it’s huge.
No, they’re broadcasting 4:3 that’s had letterboxes added. You can’t broadcast SDTV at 16:9. On a HD set, the 4:3 letterboxed content will just show with black bars on all sides unless you use a zoom option on the TV.
HD broadcasts are actually at 16:9.
My guess is he’s got his cable box setup to output at 480i still, and not 720p/1080i.
Umm, yes you can. We’ve had that for years. That’s anamorphic 16:9 broadcast, same method that DVDs use to store 16:9 content even though the format was designed for 4:3 content. It’s not letterboxed – although some programs do that, too – it’s real widescreen that sends a special widescreen signal to the TV, causing it to turn on anomorphic widescreen mode. Over analogue SDTV (PAL) cable connections. Seriously.
Heh, that doesn’t exist in the US.