What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Sloe Gin said:
first off, you're an idiot if you buy a Sony. Second off, I don't disagree with that statement, but you must realize that there is not a ****ton of difference.
Click to expand...

I've owned Sonys for years and I've never had anything the best expereiences with them so your idiot comment is completely without merit. Secondly, there is a ton of difference in some cases. I never buy anything of that amount of money - especially electronics - without doing a ton of personal review. Cripes, all you have to do is look at the list St. Clown listed and those are just for 32" sets. 71-54 is an outrageous difference. At 50"+ (of which I own two) the difference in my experience is even more noticeable.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Can we please get back to making fun of mwade for buying a crappy tv?
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Hey! I did not - fingers-crossed - buy a crappy tv, unless you are dissing my RCA hulk which lasted well over 8 years (prob. 10) and made a couple of moves.

BTW, since I didn't know what Consumer Reports' ratings were based on, I was happy to see mine on there, but not willing to put much faith in them. The first half of that list is 1080s and the rest are 720s. That's apples to oranges (if they were mixed together I might believe that CR was basing its ratings on something more).

I am poor. This wasn't the cheapest of the good ones, but it was a lot less than the majority and wasn't much more than the cheapest.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Sloe Gin said:
to any of you that think a name brand is any better than another...there are 3 flat screen factories in the world. Every brand comes out of one of those 3 factories. :p
Click to expand...

Ignore this post. It's wrong on so many levels. While the screens are all for the most part manufactured at the same factories, the processors and hardware besides the screen are radically different.

There is a huge difference between each brand.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Sloe Gin said:
to any of you that think a name brand is any better than another...there are 3 flat screen factories in the world. Every brand comes out of one of those 3 factories. :p
Click to expand...

Terrierbyassociation said:
Ignore this post. It's wrong on so many levels. While the screens are all for the most part manufactured at the same factories, the processors and hardware besides the screen are radically different.

There is a huge difference between each brand.
Click to expand...

Yup. It was explained to me that the "cheaper" the model (ie: Dynex, Insignia, etc.) have a greater chance of having defective parts in their tv's since they're just kitbashed parts rejected (or resold) from all the other companies.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

aparch said:
I did learn that contrast ratio is only important if you're using the TV for a serious home theatre setting in a blacked out room. And that most TV makers will find ways to inflate this number to make it sound really important.
Click to expand...
Contrast ratio is one of the most misleading specifications in all of home theater (next to output power and frequency response in receivers). There's no accepted standard for measuring, so companies tweak their testing to get whatever results they want. Disregard this spec.


Sloe Gin said:
to any of you that think a name brand is any better than another...there are 3 flat screen factories in the world. Every brand comes out of one of those 3 factories. :p
Click to expand...
This is misleading as well. Yes, there are only a few manufacturers in the world that make the screens. But a TV is so much more than a screen. What HDMI spec is it? Does it meet all the facets of that spec? Or just the minimum required to print "1.3" on the box? Which of the options did they go with?

Further, what makes one product better than another? The electronics that run the screen, of course. How good is the company's QC? What quality are the electronic components? How consistent are they from model to model? Or from unit to unit in the same model*? How fast is the TV's processor?

Next, what does it have for i/o? How many HDMI ports? What signal types can it receive and pass through?




*Westinghouse makes their TV's in several factories. Sometimes the same model number can be made in different ones, even. They've been known to buy "leftover" batches of electronics (overstock) from manufacturers and mix them into the same model number, meaning one model number could have any number of different electronics packages or screens. This makes QC a nightmare, which, for them, is apparently not a concern.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Swansong said:
Contrast ratio is one of the most misleading specifications in all of home theater (next to output power and frequency response in receivers). There's no accepted standard for measuring, so companies tweak their testing to get whatever results they want. Disregard this spec.



This is misleading as well. Yes, there are only a few manufacturers in the world that make the screens. But a TV is so much more than a screen. What HDMI spec is it? Does it meet all the facets of that spec? Or just the minimum required to print "1.3" on the box? Which of the options did they go with?

Further, what makes one product better than another? The electronics that run the screen, of course. How good is the company's QC? What quality are the electronic components? How consistent are they from model to model? Or from unit to unit in the same model*? How fast is the TV's processor?

Next, what does it have for i/o? How many HDMI ports? What signal types can it receive and pass through?




*Westinghouse makes their TV's in several factories. Sometimes the same model number can be made in different ones, even. They've been known to buy "leftover" batches of electronics (overstock) from manufacturers and mix them into the same model number, meaning one model number could have any number of different electronics packages or screens. This makes QC a nightmare, which, for them, is apparently not a concern.
Click to expand...
Which is why I usually only recomend westinghouse if people want a cheap tv (and they're not even thaaat cheap) tv that they don't plan on using full time.

Personally I'm going to most likely get a 40 or so inch 720p plasma from samsung. They make some of the best plasmas out there from what I've read, and I'm not going to be doing anything where the resolution difference will make much difference. And it's about half the price of an equal size 1080p bravia LCD.

'Huge' differences between TVs are not really that huge. You *will* get some differences, but they're pretty negligible if you're just planning to use it to watch tv/dvds and not doing multiple things with it (blu ray, high end video games, etc). As long as you're not buying a garbage brand you've never heard of, you'll be pretty good to go with any tv.

If you want to push the limits of what it can do, then obviously that's a different story. All depends what you want to do with it.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Swansong said:
Next, what does it have for i/o? How many HDMI ports? What signal types can it receive and pass through?
Click to expand...

Thnks for starting this thread Melissa, I have found it helpful as I begin a quest for a new TV.

My dumb question is what are HDMI ports and how many should I get. I'm assuming they are the ports that used to be RCA jacks. Can someone enlighten me?

Do I toss my existing DVD (and VCR) in favor of a blu ray?
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

I know very little about this stuff, but had read some a year or so ago, before I decided that buying a new big screen would be my reward for finishing my basement (and realizing that could be a few years away at the rate I'm going). However, I remember reading that plazma was slightly better for fast motion like watching a hockey game, but that the difference was almost negligable in current tv's. So figured, with plazma fading in popularity, LCD would be the way to go (unless a new technology comes out before I finish the basesment.) Then last year, a freind bought a 50" 1080 LCD that was rated high in the research he'd done (don't remember brand but it was one of the bigger names) and he noticed that when he wasn't on the few HD channels he gets with his dish, he'd get noticable pixilation at times. It was annoying enough he returned it for a plasma and has been happy with that. Is this a standard problem for bigger LCDs?
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

The Freds said:
Thnks for starting this thread Melissa, I have found it helpful as I begin a quest for a new TV.

My dumb question is what are HDMI ports and how many should I get. I'm assuming they are the ports that used to be RCA jacks. Can someone enlighten me?

Do I toss my existing DVD (and VCR) in favor of a blu ray?
Click to expand...
HDMI stands for High Def Multimedia interface. If you're getting a blu-ray player, it should play your current dvds on it. As for your vcr, i'm not sure if there are input converters that would allow for you to keep on using it. It might be assumed that if you're making the upgrade to hi-def that you've also made the step up to dvr.

As for how many inputs you should get, it depends on how many inputs you need. How many devices are you planning on hooking up to this thing?
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

The Freds said:
Thnks for starting this thread Melissa, I have found it helpful as I begin a quest for a new TV.

My dumb question is what are HDMI ports and how many should I get. I'm assuming they are the ports that used to be RCA jacks. Can someone enlighten me?

Do I toss my existing DVD (and VCR) in favor of a blu ray?
Click to expand...

HDMI transfers uncompressed digital signals. The real beauty of it is that you get wonderful audio and video out of one cable. It can really reduce the amount of clutter behind your set. You'd use HDMI from a blu ray or from your cable box/dvr if you upgrade to an hd box.

You might be happy just keeping your DVD player for a while with a new tv, but with a bigger hi-def set you will notice imperfections in the video that you didn't see on your old tv. I wouldn't bother hooking up your vcr. If you decide to upgrade to a blu ray player, just get a PS3. Best blu ray player for the money, IMO.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

That information's is, like, three months old. How could it be any good anymore, Scott? Geez...
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

Just for those still looking.

The vizio I ended up with has 3 HDMI, 1 Component, 1 RCA, 1 Computer and 1 S-Video jack.

It might have 2 RCA, I think one combines with the component since the jacks are only different by one.
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

JF_Gophers said:
It might have 2 RCA, I think one combines with the component since the jacks are only different by one.
Click to expand...
It probably has one full on RCA input (audio and video) and the second one is likely RCA Audio input with some other video input (S-video jack maybe).
 
Re: Need to buy a new tv - HELP!

The Freds said:
Thnks for starting this thread Melissa, I have found it helpful as I begin a quest for a new TV.

My dumb question is what are HDMI ports and how many should I get. I'm assuming they are the ports that used to be RCA jacks. Can someone enlighten me?

Do I toss my existing DVD (and VCR) in favor of a blu ray?
Click to expand...

VCR. Heehee. Not even old grandmas use those things any more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top