[nopcbs]

Reality check time.

People are discussing a $100 DVD player.

If you have a 50" display (and most people have smaller displays than that) you will not be physically able to tell the difference between a 720i image and a 1080i at anything beyond 9 feet. There is long-standing scientific research on this..pre-dating anything to do with HD-TV. Withe bigger displays, the ability to see a difference is greater at that distance, of course.

As for this interlaced vs non interlaced difference causing a health issue, well, given that we have all been watching interlaced TV since we were able to watch TV and that a similar effect is inherent in watching movies (whch are a bunch of still images passed past your eye at 24 fps)...we ought to all be horrible sick by now.

Sounds to me like the nuts in Belgium than run the EU have gone off their meds again.

My deepest sympathy to you all in Europe.

[free2speak]

I have really enjoyed movie time since the HD-A2 was added to my home theater. Some movies will always look better in HD. It probably comes down to source material, and how much care is taken while re-mastering for HD. All digital movies will always look amazing, but film movies can vary in quality. The sound is very good. I was a little concerned when my Yamaha amp kept playing in DTS mode when the movie was supposed to be Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD, but I was relieved to find in the manual that this is the normal when using a digital optical cable. My ears told me the sound was working very well. I think you will see HD DVD quality get better this is just the beginning. The Big Lebowski had a few scenes usually the dude dreaming which looked excellent in HD the view from inside the bowling ball looked realy cool, but this will never be one of my favorite movies. Batman Begins, 300, and the Transformers, Shrek the Third look great. I haven't watched Top Gun yet. I order King Kong, and the complete Jason Bourne collection these movies should be great.

[nopcbs]

I am going to be a bit careful about choosing my HD-DVD purchases from now on. There is a web site (probably others, too) that specializes in reviews of HD-DVD movies and they address image quality. The reviwer(s) appear to be picky, too. A good thing, too, as these things can be pricey. I have already returned a disk unopened because of a poor image quality review (12 Monkeys). Think I'll just stick with the demo-quality disks until (if) prices drop to under $10.

Thanks for the comments.

hddvd.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html

[free2speak]

I plan to buy a few select HD DVD movies. Right now I am just adding a few movies to enjoy the player. I signed up for Netflix so I will not purchase every HD DVD that comes out. I am also waiting for the movies to come down in price. There is some indication that Walmart may follow these HD player deals with more HD movies in the $15 price range in the next few months. I also found the High-Def Digest site to be valuable resource when deciding whether to buy a disk.

[nopcbs]

The NetFlix is a good idea for me, too. I live in a small town with loads of video rental stores, but not one rents any sort of HD movies.

I'm also checking out used HD-DVD's on Amazon and half.com. That Planet Earth set was $50 delivered and it is pristine. A friend paid like $70 for just the DVD version locally.

[teacha1]

Agreed. BD equals BetaMax. The picture quality is not noticably differant, most people will be buying a player, not a recorder, so disc memory size doesn't come into play and price will always break a simple tie.

[cammanim]

I have many Toshiba products and am well satisfied. The earlier comments about their laptops is "crap" -- not the laptops. My two Toshiba notebooks are great and good value I think the low priced HD-DVD is just what the market needs to take off.
GOOD GOING TOSHIBA!!!

[Barrington]

The new version of 24 frames per a second (fps) is just one example of making exisitng technology redundant, It has been stated that it causes juddring when in England films are broadcasted in 25 fps. Deep Colour, xvYCC, Lip Sync, compatibility, reliability, and wireless are just some of the features that are making early HD products obsolete or out dated if you want me to be pedantic (precise). If you go to the official HDMI's organization site it is obvious that if, 'The Establishment' properly implement HDMI 1.3+ features than early HDMI products will be out of date. Early HDMI versions not forward compatible, but HDMI 1.3 are backward compatible. The HDCP fiasco that you have forgotten about and HDMI connections falling out of sockets etcetera. I have given the official HDMI's website below.

hdmi.org/learningcenter/index.aspx

What do you think is the reason why computer monitors probably have been using progressive rather than interlace? If you are watching a flickering picture are you more likely to receive a headache or less likely if you are watching a progressive picture?

In the UK and it is probably the same in the USA that Blu-ray has consistently have been changing the standards that they work to: improving picture quality, HD (high definition) sound that in the UK very few Blu-ray DVD films have HD sound compared to most of HD DVD film discs, Blu-ray has also change their specifications to include interactivity as with other improvements to compete against HD DVD. If you compare for example picture qualities of the best 40"/42" HD TVs compared to one or two years ago has the standard increased and if so why? Are there more 1080p TVs or less than one year ago and why if you think that HD standard is remaining the same. Something else that verifies that there is strong competition is that prices are coming down as well as standards are increasing.

I agree that 99% of the time that TV won't cause epilepsy, but the wrong frequency could cause problems for example headaches.

My attitude that most of these problems with HD that, 'The Establishment' should have been aware about them and should have solved them before marketing the products. For example allowing manufacturers to lable products with HDMI 1.3 without having the relevant features implemented in my opinion is a con and should be illegal. 'Burn-in' not being allowed to be part of warranties by Plasma manufacturers should also be illegal or at least consumers should be told about the fact that they are not insured against the display fault.

You probably enjoy replacing products every two or three years, but I want any thing that I purchase to last for at least ten to twenty years.

It doesn't comes down to how much is spent on a product. It comes down to whether the company wants to make sure that their product is extremely reliable or not. For HD TVs Sony has been given excellent score for reliabilty. If you list all HD TV companies in terms of price and reliability it is impossible to say that if a person pays much more money for a HD product that the product will perform better and be more reliable than a cheaper product.



I was going to stop, but I have just remembered probably the only reason why manufacturers are investing in HD products is because they weren't making enough profits with non-HD products. If you was a manufacturer and wanted to continue to make CRT TVs how would it be possible for you to compete against HD manufacturers who have invested millions and you refused to invest millions?

[Barrington]

What question was I answering?
If you had referred to the relevant message that I was replying to you would apologize. This is because I think it was Free2Speak in the particular posting was referring to the fact that he thinks that the broadcasting standard in the USA will always remain at 1080i - nothing to do with DVDs - I accept your apologies.

Where did I mention differences between 720i and 1080i?

We all watch flashing lights and use computers, but yet only a relatively a few people suffer from headaches. In the USA's work place are you telling me that there isn't time limits of when you should have a break from computer work to avoid headaches etcetera.

Are you telling me that you have never heard of any person for example having headaches or repeatitive strain injuries with working on computers?

CRT's work differently from computer monitors and LCDs.

So, you are telling me that nobody has received tried eyes and problems wilst watching TV for far too long, and you have not heard of the wrong frequencies, flashing lights causing health problems.

You are telling me that TV broadcasters in the USA has never warned people when flashing lights are going to occur for example on a piece of news footage.

One of the principal reasons why the USA got HD before we did in the UK is probably, because PAL is superior to NTSC.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#PAL[uvs.[/u]NTSC]

Do you you think that nobody in the world suffer from epilepsy or similar problems, and if so, why only a few people suffer from it and not 6 billion?

You can say why some people get headaches watching TV, and computer screens and not others. The same thing applies to millions of other illnesses for example Asian's Bird Flu. This is because the majority of people in the world (6 to 7 billion) donot get ill simultaeously that you are claiming.

[Barrington]

What is the website address for High-Def Digest?

[Barrington]

It appears that you meant comparing 720p to 1080p and if so when people for example compare the HD version of the BBC's Planet of The Earth against the ordinary DVD version that you probably is the only person who cannot see the diffeence?

I have dealt with your previous comments in a previous posted message.

Although, I have not provided any references - TV does cause health problems; headaches eye strains etcetera.

[nopcbs]

FYI hddvd.highdefdigest.com/reviews.html is where you can go for HD-DVD (and Blu-Ray) movie reviews that are not just popularity contests.

I confess that your trail of posts has me a bit confused as to what you are referring to. About one of your posts I will say that a very good reason that computer monitors have been progressive and not interlaced is that you sit about 18-24" from them and you often look at very detailed images on them for very long periods of time. Things like refresh rate become very important and you can get eye strain at low refresh rates. I like 85 Hz. This is not the case with TV viewing or with film. The two are unrelated.

[nopcbs]

Not sure what you mean. I did say and I stand by it, that many DVD versions of films are very close in picture quality to the HD version when both are viewed on my 768p Pioneer 50" plasma at 9-10 feet viewing distance. The point here is not that the DVD format is of comparable quality to HD-DVD, it is clearly not. The point is that the studios don't always (maybe often) got to the trouble of putting a better source picture on the HD-DVD than they put on the DVD with older films. I thought I was pretty clear about that.



With newer films, King Kong is a great example, the HD-DVD image quality is pretty spectacular and significantly better than the DVD version (which is also very good). The BBC Planet Earth series is also stunning in HD-DVD. Have not seen the regular DVD version scaled to 768p, so I am not sure how good it is; I assume it is very good, but not as good.



I am very happy with my two Toshiba HD-A2's bought for $100 each at Wal-Mart. I fully expect to use them for years to watch both HD-DVD and regular DVD. My only real regrets are that there are relatively few HD-DVD movies out and they are hard to rent locally. As to the former, given that most ports of DVD movies to HD-DVD seem modestly better than the original DVD release, it may not be as bad a thing as I first thought. As to the second, I signed up with NetFlix and it looks like they can get HD-DVD movies I request to me over-night and I can over-night returns, so the rental option is actually pretty good. They seem to have all the HD-DVD (and Blu-Ray) movies out available.



What were we arguing about anyway?

[Barrington]

Does this mean that you are claiming that no person in the world who suffer from epilepsy is affected by certain frequencies on TVs? Based on this website when I was attacked I did find a prroper study by a proper university in England that stated that there was most likely a correlation based on frame rates with TVs. In England ever so often people are warned about flashing lights.

My atitude is if it is possible to reduce the interlace by havingmore progressive TVs than in theory less epileptic people should be affected whilst watching TVs. It appears that you are saying that the reason why monitors are progressive is that people sit close-up to monitors, but whilst watching TVs sit much further away. If you believe that there are people in the world that suffers from epilepsy, than I am making the assumption that there are probably some epileptic people who are hyper-sensitive and are affected despite watching TV from much further than 24" (2 feet) away.

You also have not taken into account tiredness and radiation and why the swedish rating for monitors was created. What makes eyes tired, because I also think that tired eyes in some situations causes headaches.


To: summarize you can quote relevant medical trials that have been published that verifies that it is impossible for TVs to affect some people's health.

[Barrington]

Your posting that I was referring to (that I think was on the Nov, 22nd) stated nothing about you comparing the poor quality of HD discs to excellent DVD discs, but if you did I apologize - you can quote the date and time of your posting that you are referring to.

What really annoys me is when people are quoting misleading reviews (information) that don't use the best products. If the reviews were any good then they would be done to professional competent standards - The specification (remit) would be stated that verifies what things have been left out.

For example, I would not ever buy any magazine unless preferably all the best products were included in reviews.

I also wouldnot buy or recommend any plasma TVs, because if the manufacturers don't have any faith in their products to include, 'burn-in' in their warranties then I definitely don't have any faith in plasmas TVs. I recommend HD DVD rather than Blu-ray, because despite the hype about useless greater storage capacity in my opinion and until at least recently HD DVD's picture qualities, sound qualities and features were superior than Blu-rays.

[free2speak]

We know all the same information about interlace here in the US. But interlace does not cause epilepsy.

http://www.webmd.com...epilepsy-causes

I searched WebMD for any reference to interlace there is none so they think the threat is minimal. Headaches and eyestrain can come with progressive scan PC monitors too. I am a computer professional for almost 30 years and the updated monitors have done nothing to ease my eyestrain or headaches. I like to tell my friends that I stopped blinking in 1980. I have to excercise good common sense and walk away to get a rest occasionally.

I know a little about PAL also. I used Amiga computers for 13 years which could display NTSC and PAL signals. I have seen both on the Amiga. But where talking about 480 for NTSC and 576 PAL. Okay it is better, but 96 lines is nothing to brag about. I am the first to complain about NTSC. Why do you think I had an HDTV one year before Comcast delivered digital HD cable to my house? NTSC served us well for decades, but anyone looking for something better could only wait for technology to catch up.

Now that HD is available on over 25 channels and growing every couple months I can tell you it looks great 1080i and all. I took advantage of the HD-A2 because it is perfectly compatible with my 1080i HD monitor. When I purchased my HDTV the ATSC (HD Broadcast) format for tuners was just set. It would have cost me $1,000 to add an ATSC tuner to my Mitsubishi so I told Mitsubishi to keep the ATSC tuner. I like many early adopters here in the USA purchased monitors (no tuner), and saved a lot of money. Most HD customers will subscribe to cable or satellite so an ATSC tuner is not really needed. If you want to go with an over the air signal then you would need an ATSC tuner, and an antenna. During this time Plasma TV's were in the $10,000 dollar range, and LCD was only small expensive monitors. I also know what your saying about HDMI. HDMI was also not available when I purchased my HDTV so it was not a consideration. Mitsubishi offers to keep your HDTV current with an addon for these TV's. Unfortunately, Mitsubishi's addon costs almost as much as a new TV so they can keep it. I use component video, and digital optical sound. We will see if HDMI comes back to haunt me, but I doubt it. My HDTV is nearly 5 years old, and I plan to use it for 10 years. Now there are lots of different choices each with its benefits and compromises.

Transformers is amazing on HD DVD. Top Gun looked pretty good, and the sound was surprisingly good. I will watch King Kong this weekend.

[nopcbs]

We bought our 50" Pioneer plasma a bit over a year ago. It gets used some 4-6 hours each day. There is no burn in.

My only issue with it is that it is a power-eater (440 watts) and warms the room a bit (nice in winter/not in summer).

You desire for an anti-burn in warranty is perhaps understandable, but what happens if somebody buys one and uses it as a 4:3 monitor continuously? I think that even the best plasma will suffer some burn-in after years with that signal. On the other hand, in such a case it would be irrelevent, anyway.

No, I think that burn-in has become a non-issue with modern plasmas. Since LCD's have their own problems, high price, narrow view angle and lack of black, they are probably still the sweet spot. Sure wish they used less power, though.

[Barrington]

You keep on falsely claiming that Tvs don't cause epilepsy, but I never said that they do. Some people with epilepsy it appears to make their conditions worst. What I found some where is that the faster the frame rate the lesser the problem that some epilepsy people have. In theory two interlace = one progressive.


Possibility of alleviating epilepsy problems that if works will be one excellent thing to come out of these discussions for epilepsy people:


http://news.bbc.co.u...th/1694386.stm]


I could not find the original medical artical - take too long but I shall place two websites below that probably verifies that there is a health problem between people and TVs (just,b ecause we don't suffer problems doesn't mean that other people don't:


[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990601080722.htm]


[http://www.google.com/search?q=UniversityEpilepsyTV]


I placed, ' University Epilepsy TVs ' into Internet Explorer 7 that then downloaded it into Google, automatically.





Found the website - below was probably the one I found after people started disagreeing with me:


[http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1997.tb01202.x]


I placed into IE7, ' Interlace TV Epilepsy '


That then placed the following website into IE7


[Interlace TV Epilepsy


What I said is that from what I read some where that the reason probably why the USA got HD before us in England was, because NTSC was worst. It migh even be the worst broadcasting service in the world. It would also cost less for, 'The Establishment' to sell HD to Americans than to people in for example the UK. If somebody wants better picture quality yes they can wait or they can make sure that they buy the TV with the best picture quality for the amount of money they are going to spend. If somebody buys a TV of the way it looks and then tries to convince their selves and everybody else that the TV etcetera is the best in the world then usually they are wrong. It is always interesting when people says for example I could only afford to buy aparticular product, but then claim that it is much better than anything else despite the manufacturer making a better model.


I have just read your next section, to quote, ' I can tell you it looks great 1080i' - I rest my case. Did you compare it with the best 1080p TVs from; Sony, Philips (different name in the USA), Pioneer or Panasonic to keep things in perspective?


In England probably the largest cable company Virgin Media that took over Telewest and NTL probably only has one HD channel. Sky probably have between 5 to 10 I think it is. Therefore people in the UK are not rushing to go HD. I was going to say when organisations claim that they will upgrade their products usually they won't. This is probably why every two years or so they market new products or change the colour scheme to maximise their profits. If Americans think that they have to pay a lot for things you should try living in England. I read somewhere that at least quarter of the eraly adopters I think it was in England were told that they were buying HD and were only get obsolete LCD TVs. Too lazy to find it on my favourites. I also forgot to state that, The Establishment also last year and will probably be bringing it in sooner or later a smaller and different shape HDMI connections as well as the larger ones. Yes, I know what you meant that the manufacturers are implementing new changes as slowly as possible. Probably two exceptions are HD DVD and Onkyo. What you and some others havenot taken into account is that, The Establishment' are depending on HD to increase their products. Therefore thecompanies that cannot compete will probably go bankrupt, and the firms that cannot compete will probably go bankrupt. Tis is why the technology will continue to increase and prices will be kept reasonable. Originally, games for years have been making much more money than Hollywood. Gamers have substantially increase the computer technology and I am sure that they will substantially increase HD technology, for example TVs having PCs connections. The Establishment has two choices, 'Sink or Swim'.


What is happening is what I would expect and that is action films and for example The Planet Earth type films properly filmed in HD should be excellent. Blu-ray in the early days - their discs were poor evena Sony Excutive was quoted to say words to that effect...What happened despite Blu-ray's hype and propaganda were probably forced to improve standards of Blu-ray films, because of HD DVD. HD DVD were superior in; picture quality, sound quality and features - verifies how useless Blu-ray were. Too many people believed that Blu-ray had more storage space and was therefore better, but the only thing that counts is who were supplying the best films and that was HD DVD! Look at any DVD +R discs and they probably all says 4.76 Gb I think it is, but if you compare how much each DVD recorder can record and there is an enormous difference. I think at the beginning that Microsoft was going to join Blu-ray, but probably based on computer programming expertise joined HD DVD with Intel and HD DVD provided and probably still do the best films - in England HD DVD provides HD sounds on most discs compared to Blu-ray. If Blu-ray with the number of expertise that they keep boasting about should do much better concerning qualities and value for money.

[Barrington]

Bur-in doesnot usually suddely happen it usually happens after months or years of continuous use.

My attitude is that consumers should be actually told and that people like you should not be trying to cover-up the problem.

NB!!! some where I read it and am reasonably certain that it is true and that is that a manufacturer who makes the large plasma TVs for display purposes have solved the burn-in problem, but won't give the information to any other campany.

For you to boast that LCD has problems, because LCD does suffer from dead pixels, but it is covered by warranties. NB! I have not checked recently but even companies that make both plasma and LCD won't include burn-in within warranties BUT WILL include dead pixels that affect LCD under warranties. Therefore I know that you think differently, but I would feel like an idiot if I purchased or recommended a plasma TV and sooner or later it suffered from burn-in, whilst if I purchased a LCD from the same manufacturer (that made a faulty plasma with burn-in) I would be covered by the warranty.

I think plasma manufacturers also warn people to run plasma TVs in for a while probably at less than hal brightness that they would not have done if there were no problem.

When people like you says that burn-in is a non-issue or the chance of burn-in occurring is remote then forget the hype and insure against burn-in as, 'dead pixels' on LCD are covered under warranties. NB!!! Neither the manufacturers and insurance companies will include burn-ins within warranties and they specifically exclude, 'burn-in'.

It appears that you are claiming that that a top of the range Sony LCD is more expensive than the most expensive 40"/50" Pioneer Plasma TV what planet are you living on? The top of the range Sony LCDs probably produced more black than the best Panasonic and Pioneer. Then what happened Pioneer as now probably created the best black TV in the world - despite that I have not seen it yet. What you are implying is that all plasma TVs are superior and cheaper than all LCD TVs - like I said what planet are you living on. I am only concerned which is the best TV for the price being paid, whether plasma or LCD. If I either buy or recommend a plasma and a permanently, 'burn-in' occurs I wouldbe reminded of it each time somebody asks when I am going to get it repaired. Therefore, I would then have to buy probably 2 plasma TVs for every single LCD - much more expensive and make me look like an idiot.

With some or maybe all of the top Sony 1080p TVs it is possible to reduce the power as with numerous other makes. Perhaps, you can reduce the power supply to the display on your TV. With your coments about viewing range it is obvious that you haven't seen a 1080p Sony TV. Old plasma TVs probably had the worst viewing angles - having to watch the TV from the same height. did you also compare the running costs before buying. Sony has been either the best or second best for reliability in at least three surveys that I have seen, but you probably never considered reliability.

[nopcbs]

You wrote:


"Bur-in doesnot usually suddely happen it usually happens after months or years of continuous use."


Yeah, I know. So what. Before the Pioneer plasma we had a Hitachi CRT rear-projector for five years. Rear projectors can suffer from burn in. It was used a lot to watch TV and DVD's. It NEVER suffered from burn-in. On the other hand, I recall walking into a Circuit City one day, before they had turned on their TV's, and on every single one of the rear-projectors you could see a Circuit City logo burned into the display. The point is that if you abuse a set you can get burn-in. If you use it to do what it was sold to do (moving images), nothing bad happens. All of the plasma manufacturers have taken steps (like pixel shifting) to reduce the possability of burn-in damage. I think the brand you are talking about is Samsung in terms of the most counter-burn-in steps. Finally, Consumer Reports is as snitty as anybody about this sort of thing, and they do not make a big deal (or any deal) about burn-in with plasmas. It simply is not an issue.


"My attitude is that consumers should be actually told and that people like you should not be trying to cover-up the problem."


No one is covering anything up. Virtually everyone shopping for a set has heard of burn-in and if not, the salesperson will tell them. You are tilting at windmills.


"NB!!! some where I read it and am reasonably certain that it is true and that is that a manufacturer who makes the large plasma TVs for display purposes have solved the burn-in problem, but won't give the information to any other campany."


Oh please. Now you are getting into conspiracy theories. Too much Oliver Stone movie viewing? There are a handfull of plasma manufacturers and everyone knows what everyone else is doing.





"For you to boast that LCD has problems, because LCD does suffer from dead pixels, but it is covered by warranties. NB! I have not checked recently but even companies that make both plasma and LCD won't include burn-in within warranties BUT WILL include dead pixels that affect LCD under warranties. Therefore I know that you think differently, but I would feel like an idiot if I purchased or recommended a plasma TV and sooner or later it suffered from burn-in, whilst if I purchased a LCD from the same manufacturer (that made a faulty plasma with burn-in) I would be covered by the warranty."


I was NOT talking about dead pixels. I was talking about off-center viewing. It is a demonstrable fact that LCD's suffer light fall-off and image degradation as you move left/right or up/down from being perpendicular to the image center. Hey, it's not me claiming it - Consumer Reports warns of it as a fact to be aware of in purchasing an LCD set. And I am not anti-LCD. I am best bang for the buck, and at the moment that is plasma, if you want thin. If you don't need thin, it's rear-projector, but again you have light fall-off and (usually) expensive lamp problems to deal with...and maybe rainbows. Nothing is ideal. Not plasma, not LCD, not rear-projection. Plasma is, at the moment, closest. And so says CR.


"I think plasma manufacturers also warn people to run plasma TVs in for a while probably at less than hal brightness that they would not have done if there were no problem."


You are free to think what you want. My Pioneer manual said no such thing.




"When people like you says that burn-in is a non-issue or the chance of burn-in occurring is remote then forget the hype and insure against burn-in as, 'dead pixels' on LCD are covered under warranties. NB!!! Neither the manufacturers and insurance companies will include burn-ins within warranties and they specifically exclude, 'burn-in'."

Sigh.



"It appears that you are claiming that that a top of the range Sony LCD is more expensive than the most expensive 40"/50" Pioneer Plasma TV what planet are you living on? The top of the range Sony LCDs probably produced more black than the best Panasonic and Pioneer. Then what happened Pioneer as now probably created the best black TV in the world - despite that I have not seen it yet. What you are implying is that all plasma TVs are superior and cheaper than all LCD TVs - like I said what planet are you living on. I am only concerned which is the best TV for the price being paid, whether plasma or LCD. If I either buy or recommend a plasma and a permanently, 'burn-in' occurs I wouldbe reminded of it each time somebody asks when I am going to get it repaired. Therefore, I would then have to buy probably 2 plasma TVs for every single LCD - much more expensive and make me look like an idiot."


You can buy an excellent 50" Panasonic 720p plasma for $1400 today. You can buy an excellent 50" 1080p Panasonic plasma for about $2300. Both will, at above 9 feet viewing distance provide an image equal to or superior to and LCD of the same size at much lower cost. Like up to $2,000 less. At closer distances you may see some pixels on the 720p set, but you will need to get very close to see them on the 1080p set. At current selling prices, plasmas are simply a much better buy for the same or better quality than are LCD's. Plus their is the viewing angle restriction with LCD's and the lack of true blacks.




"With some or maybe all of the top Sony 1080p TVs it is possible to reduce the power as with numerous other makes. Perhaps, you can reduce the power supply to the display on your TV. With your coments about viewing range it is obvious that you haven't seen a 1080p Sony TV. Old plasma TVs probably had the worst viewing angles - having to watch the TV from the same height. did you also compare the running costs before buying. Sony has been either the best or second best for reliability in at least three surveys that I have seen, but you probably never considered reliability."


Sony makes some fine sets. I am even considering a 61" Sony LCOS rear-projector. Plasmas NEVER had viewing angle problems, by the way. The plasma cells create light, like the phosphor of a CRT TV does, so viewing angly cannot be a problem. You are thinking of rear projectors...and most LCD flat panels. CR says that plasmas and LCD flat panels are reliable. It's rear-projectors that show reliability problems. Do your research before you post or lose what credibility you have left.