Topic: TV Advice

[Steve]

Probably the "Our Price: $1,999.99"

[KnuckleBuckett]

Something tells me those aren't going to be in the $600-750 before tax range.

Yeah.  I know.  Too limited a selection.  My real advice is get a DLP or wait until you can get a more expensive set.  Or get a refurb.

[micah]

so you would say, in my price range, a DLP is a better idea than an LED from an off-brand manufacturer?

my TV thats dying is a DLP so I kinda don't think I want one again, but guess I don't have to rule that out.

[Steve]

You really should just step down in size a touch and buy what Ober got. Thats a badass TV that is in your price range for sure.

[KnuckleBuckett]

You really should just step down in size a touch and buy what Ober got. Thats a badass TV that is in your price range for sure.

I agree.

[Perspective]

+1

...and 42" isn't small. I've been more than pleased with mine.

[Steve]

Honestly most people could not tell you if a TV was 42 inches or 46 without the advertisement hanging next to it.

[ober]

+1

...and 42" isn't small. I've been more than pleased with mine.

+1

[micah]

hmm. ok. i'll consider.

[Steve]

hmm. ok. i'll consider.

 

[Steve]

just seen a vizio 42in at walmart for 448

[Steve]

micah there is a 47 inch lcd vizio at walmart for 598

[micah]

to late, i caved and bought a BestBuy Insignia brand TV.  I know we talked about brand name being important, but this one had the HD features I wanted at the price I have credit for.

My mother-in-law has had an Insignia tv for 4 years with no complains (although she doesn't run HD through hers) but whatev.  Just finished hooking it up and it looks awesome.

[Steve]

Hope it holds up.

[micah]

So, a few days in and I still absolutely love the picture quality on this TV. 

Thats about it.

1) I made sure when I bought it that it had plenty of HDMI ports. It has 3 which I figured was good enough.  What I didn't realize is that none of my other equipment (save for my bluray play) actually use HDMI.  My cable box only has composite HD AV cables, as does my xBox.  The Wii is just plain old RCA outputs.  My old TV only had 2 HDMI ports but it also had 2 sets of Composite HD jacks and 1 set of analog RCA.   Perfect for my set up.  The new TV has just 1 set of jacks (shared for either HD or RCA.)  So basically I can only hook up one device at a time.  Grrrr!!!

2) Holy shirt this is the slowest TV ever!  It takes 8 to 10 seconds just to turn on and with no indication that its trying. So you press the power button on the remote and aren't even sure if you aimed the remote at the right place because nothing happens. you just have to wait.  Even more annoying is switching between 1080 and 480 modes (which happens a lot since channels we watch, like Sprout and other kids channels, aren't in HD).  it take on average 7 seconds.  sometimes as little as 6 but usually 7 or 8 seconds.   So annoying.

there are other annoyances that I just have to get used to: like when you power on the blue-ray player the TV switches input modes automatically (taking 8 to 10 seconds) even if you wanted to keep watching TV while you're just getting ready to watch a movie later.  Oh, and like my old tv is has "zoom" features that adjust the picture when the content is not 16:9 formatted but its pretty crappy.  It doesn't auto-detect so you either don't use it at all or you're always zoomed in -- which ruins the 16:9 HD channels.  So when switching from sprout to NFL HD, not only do you have to wait 8 seconds for the TV to adjust to the new mode but then you have to manually adjust the zoom back to normal.

Anyway, I'm just bitching.  I'm not gonna return it or anything. I'll just have to buy a switch for problem 1 (or buy an HDMI adaptor for my xbox) and deal with the slowness of problem 2.