To upgrade or no?
briscoelab -- Mon, 08/07/2006 - 15:59
Hello all, I am looking for some upgrade advice for my home theater system. I am currently using a 65" Mitsu CRT RPTV that is nearing 4 years old. It is a 1080i set and only has component inputs for HD signals. It has been professionally calibrated and overall I have been very pleased with it. However, I am considering getting a HD-DVD player and would like to be able to HDMI connections for the HD material (as well as upscaling of regular DVDs). Not to mention the display is a massive beast that weighs several hundred pounds :) (I'm also getting a little influence from my fiance to free up some floor space in teh living room)
Anyhow, I am really looking hard at some plasma displays now, since they seem to be reaching excellent price points for the quality recieved. I'd like to spend at most $5K on the display. But, I am intrigued by the Vizio 50" PDP that was in the most recent TPV issue. The price is amazing and the unit I spent some time with had impressive image quality, especially the blacks. I think that 50" is the minimum I could live with after becoming used to the 65" we have currently. I also saw that Vizio has a new model out now that has a built in tuner, but all the other specs seem to be the same. The built in tuner would be useless to me, so I'd likely just get the one I can find cheaper if all other factors were equal.
My question is, would I be happy with a product like this? Obviously this is a nearly impossible question to answer.... but I am basically asking if most people coming from a well calibrated CRT RPTV of large size are satisfied with the image offered on a smaller Plasma display?
Thanks for your time.
Larry Ullman gives the Vizio P50 excellent marks in the July-Aug. issue of The Perfect Vision (#69). I can back him up. I used the same model for a mass review of dozens of DVD players and think it's not only great, but the best bargain in the flatpanel market by several long miles. I've recommended it to many friends and relatives, and in fact, my mother-in-law bought the review unit I used for the DVD roundup.
Your question about screen size is a good one. 50" is about the minimum for a really immersive theaterical experience. If your seating distance is less than ten feet away it's fine. Much more than that and you probably need to find something bigger, but of course, at much greater cost.
One solution that I like is to buy a display like the Vizio for television viewing and have a larger pull-down screen to cover it for viewing movies via a DLP projector. There are many excellent projectors on the market for $3k or a bit more, and the combined cost of one of them and a Vizio P50 is still far lower than any 60" plasma.
Barry Willis
You might also want to think about the (likely) large difference in apparent sharpness between the Visio and a CRT-based RPTV. I have a 60" Hitachi CRT RPTV, and a fixed pixel device, to my eye, just looks sharper on almost all material. I don't know if this is artificial sharpness or what, but the difference is huge, and you'll either love it (me) or hate it (those who demand 'film-like smoothness'). To me that issue swamps the size difference (as Barry says, 60" is the low end of immersion, but that is being generous).
Thanks for the informed opinions guys. I do like the way the plasma panels look when setup well. Also for general TV viewing I know it woudl be much better than the RPTV as the light output level woudl be much higher.... making it easier to see when the lights aren't down.
The big kicker is just screen size. We've grown used to watching the 65" screen, and we love the feel it gives when watching movies. Right now the seating position is about 9.5' to the position of your head when in the seating. We could easily move that forward a couple of feet to help compensate for the smaller screen.
I'll do some research into the front projector option as well. Any suggestions to get me started?
Maybe I shoudl just keep what I have and get some new amps ;-)
Thanks again!
Re: front projector, I liked the Optoma H31, an inexpensive little projector that I believe is selling now for about $1100. Its only real fault was a color shift from red toward orange. At the moment I've got the Optoma HD7100 for review and think it's excellent at $3500 retail. See the review in the upcoming TPV 72.
Barry Willis
Also if you're thinking front projector, look into the screens that work with ambient light. There is stuff about this on the forum.
Barry Willis wrote:Re: front projector, I liked the Optoma H31, an inexpensive little projector that I believe is selling now for about $1100. Its only real fault was a color shift from red toward orange. At the moment I've got the Optoma HD7100 for review and think it's excellent at $3500 retail. See the review in the upcoming TPV 72.
Barry Willis
Thank you very much for the info. I have been looking into some info about the Optoma HD72 projector they offer. The prices seem outstanding for the unit and the reviews I've seen so far have been favorable. Has anyone here had experience with this particular unit? The new screens that function well with ambient light are something I need to read up on a bit more as well. Those seem like something I would be interested in for sure.
Check out www.screeninnovations.com
There may be others (I know Sony had one, but I'm not sure if it was specific to their projectors). I've seen the Screen Innovations product and it works if you have the right set up (example: I don't think you can have a window directly behind the screen on the opposite wall).
Keep in mind that a front projector makes more demands of the user than does a flat-panel display. There's more involved with a front projector---a screen, positioning, focus, zoom, ambient light considerations. It's less friendly for casual TV watching. The upside is a huge image.
My brother bought the Vizio 50" plasma and loves it. That set is a tremendous bargain.
Robert Harley
Editor-in-Chief
The Absolute Sound
The Perfect Vision
I went to my local home theather shop this past weekend and spend a couple hours viewing source material on different displays they had. The conclusion from my fiance and I was that a 50" display just isn't going to be large enough for us to be happy with. They did have a 55" Hitachi plasma that wasn't priced too crazy that was almost acceptable.
They also had two front projection setups. One was a Mitsu DLP, I believe it was the 3000 model. It threw a nice bright image, but both of us could see some rainbow artifacts when watching high contrast sceens. This was the first time either of us had spent time watching a DLP display. So, it looks like DLP is out as an option.
The other projection setup was an Hitachi LCD HDPJ52. The image from this projector was very good as well. The colors seemed much more realistic than the DLP, and the blacks were decent as well. Plus, no goofy rainbow stuff going on. This projector also has horizontal and vertical lens shift... which woudl be VERY nice in aiding setup. We're going to look at a few more units, but this one was very appealing.
Obviously, there are a lot of tradeoffs to getting a good front projector setup. I don't think my fiance is too keen on turing the living room into a "cave" :) But, we already have blinds and curtains on the few windows for that room. It would be easy enough to make some new drapes lined with blackout cloth. The we could just pull them closed when watching it during the daytime. (which would be about 1% of the time, based on the use of our current setup)
Another thing is putting up with a large fixed screen in the room. It is just hard to imagine something in the ball park of 100" diag hanging on your wall until you really see it. So, I went out and got some lumber, black felt, and a Parkland Plastics Poly-Wall sheet and built a do it yourself screen that's 48"x84" screen size. Total cost was about $40! Lots of people have said this type of screen works just as well as any other matte white screen and the cost is obviously very low. I did it just to get a feel for the size of the screen, but I might use it initally if we get a projection setup. It might be nice to have a baseline to then choose what we want to improve on, before buying a crazy expensive professional screen. Currently, I'm letting all the wood glue setup. So, I haven't had a chace to hang it on the wall yet. But, hopefuly it will give us a good idea of what to expect with a large panel in that room. (I doubt it could possibly be worse than the current CRT RPTV that's in there!)
Just wanted to say thanks again for all the comments you guys have given. I will keep this updated on what we decide to go with.
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