Gear / Technical Help > Home Theatre & HDTV

ISO: 50 to 60" Plasma with good marks in the dub 1K dollar range.

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Todd R:
BTW, based on this thread (and being cheap), I went ahead and picked up a Samsung 50" plasma.  I got it for the conference championships (honest my Packer-fan-wife, I got the new tv so you could enjoy the game better....)

Only $650, so way cheaper than LCD tv's, and a far, far nicer picture than the sony rear projection LCD it replaced.  Perhaps not as nice a picture as a high-end LED-LCD, but great for us since we're not huge videophiles.  I compared it against a Zenith (made by LG) 50" plasma that was only $550.  I liked the Samsung picture much better.  I agree it is hard to compare in a store not knowing how it was set up, but though I couldn't adjust the Samsung picture, they had left the remote for the Zentih lying there.  I spent a lot of time totally changing around all the settings and playing with everything, and nothing I did made the Zenith look as good as the Samsung positioned right next to it.

I spent some time with my Digital Video Essentials set up disk to really try to tweak the settings (damn there are a lot!), and really have it dialed in pretty good at this point.

I don't notice anything objectionable in the way of noise from it.  It's in our family room in a finished basement which though it has plenty of windows, doesn't get strong lighting, so the brightness on it has been fine. 

Overall, a great tv for the money.  For our watching habits, it is hard to justify spending $2000-3000 for a tv (again, did that once already), and the plasma has fit the bill nicely.

DigiGal:
You can't judge a set at all by how it looks in a showroom.  Right out of the box most sets are programmed for vivid mode or a similar mode just to make the set stand out in a showroom under bright lights etc.  This showroom mode is not at all what you want to use at home and should not be used to judge a set.

Digital Video Essentials, Spears & Munsil etc. are great for adjusting the user settings for your set, definitely money well spent.

To go even further an ISF Imaging Science Foundation calibration will fully calibrate your set well beyond what you can achieve without special training and thousands of dollars worth of test & measurement gear.  You probably don't want to spring for this type of calibration on a $600.00 set but is worthwhile on more expensive sets.

http://www.imagingscience.com/

Brian E.:
depending on deals, you might be able to get close to $1k for the Panasonic 50-ST30.  That's a great panel.

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