Television Challenge

[Nebu]

I need help.  I know almost nothing about the LCD television business and hope that the more savvy folks can help me. 

I'm looking for an LCD set that is 40" or greater, 1080p, and with high contrast.  I will be using it for both gaming and tv/movies. 

This is what I'm looking at currently. I think the price is $949.

What I want is bang for the buck.  I'll spend more if it's justified, but this seemed like a good middle ground.  Also, I was focusing on Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.  If you can steer me to a better manufacturer, I'm open . 

[Ingmar]

Samsung is a really good option. I know a lot of people with them, and they universally love 'em.

[proudft]

We just got basically the same thing as that, but in ginormous 52 inch size.  Ours is the 630 series, but as best as I can tell that is the same as the 550 series but with this weird 120hz motion control option which, so far, looks best turned off.   (It makes everything look like a soap opera, but we'll ease into it and see how it goes I think).

Haven't had it long enough to watch much other than the LOTR movies and Road Warrior in blu-ray (which looked frickin fantastic), but so far so good.

On these big HD sets, your input is going to matter a LOT.  Standard-def TV looks like total crap, and old DVDs are somewhat fuzzy (though you sort of zone out on that after a while).  But you get HD cable or satellite or blu-ray and it's pretty stunning.

Basically get thee to avsforum.com and start readin'.   Here's the thread about video nerds talking about that particular model, for example: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1126988

[Brogarn]

I need help.  I know almost nothing about the LCD television business and hope that the more savvy folks can help me. 

I'm looking for an LCD set that is 40" or greater, 1080p, and with high contrast.  I will be using it for both gaming and tv/movies. 

This is what I'm looking at currently. I think the price is $949.

What I want is bang for the buck.  I'll spend more if it's justified, but this seemed like a good middle ground.  Also, I was focusing on Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony.  If you can steer me to a better manufacturer, I'm open . 

I've had the LN40A550 for just over a year and have been very pleased with it.

[rattran]

I have an older 40" samsung, I love it. However, it took a few runs though DVE and AVIA to get it just right. First thing I'd suggest is turn off the black-crushing cheat they use "dnie" Out of the box, it looks better with dnie on, but turn it off and manually adjust everything, and it's a better overall picture I think. Sony and Sharp Aquos have similar things.

[Lantyssa]

We got this Philips recently and have been happy with it.  Not super fancy, but the picture is nice and the price was right.

[Sky]

I love my samsung, but it's a DLP...which is a great bang for the buck, btw.

Just checked amazon and best buy...no samsung dlps for sale? Wtf?

[rattran]

I love my samsung, but it's a DLP...which is a great bang for the buck, btw.

Just checked amazon and best buy...no samsung dlps for sale? Wtf?

They probably don't sell victrola 78s or 19" B&W tvs either.

[Sky]

 

A 67" LED 1080p DLP is hardly old tech.

 

[Morfiend]

You could look at the Visio's at Costco, they run pretty damn cheap for the picture you get.

[Cyrrex]

Don't listen to Sky, he knows damn well that DLP is the "huge screen, low cost" option...it doesn't hold a candle to either plasma or LCD.

Nebu, the only thing you need to figure out is this:  120hz or not 120hz?  Go look for yourself.  It will be either love or hate.  When you walk by a TV and you say to yourself "oh holy christ, those people look more real than the fat Best Buy employee heading my way!", that is 120hz tech, not 1080p tech.  It artificially gives the picture an odd clarity.  I happen to think it is brilliant for the majority of things.  Occasionally I think it looks too creepy-real.

Once you figure that out, go get a Samsung.  If you think you want a 40", you'll probably kick yourself for not buying the 46".  In other words, consider buying one size larger than you think you need.  Last but not least, be very careful of the actual model you get.  You probably won't have much of a problem considering the price range you are looking at, but once you get into the more expensive sets, the differences between one model and the next one up are usually a bunch of stupid features that will cost you a shitload.  Don't quote me on this, but for the Samsungs I think that any of the 5xx series and lower will use the same actual screen panel.  Anything 6xx and up probably also uses the same panel...so a 650, 750, 850 or whatever the hell they make will give you pretty much the exact same picture for that size of TV.  Also, if you are in doubt, the 5xx series are NOT 120hz.  Only the 6xx and above are.

[schild]

DLP

lol no

[Nebu]

Nebu, the only thing you need to figure out is this:  120hz or not 120hz?  Go look for yourself.  It will be either love or hate.  When you walk by a TV and you say to yourself "oh holy christ, those people look more real than the fat Best Buy employee heading my way!", that is 120hz tech, not 1080p tech.  It artificially gives the picture an odd clarity.  I happen to think it is brilliant for the majority of things.  Occasionally I think it looks too creepy-real.

Once you figure that out, go get a Samsung.  If you think you want a 40", you'll probably kick yourself for not buying the 46".  In other words, consider buying one size larger than you think you need.  Last but not least, be very careful of the actual model you get.  You probably won't have much of a problem considering the price range you are looking at, but once you get into the more expensive sets, the differences between one model and the next one up are usually a bunch of stupid features that will cost you a shitload.  Don't quote me on this, but for the Samsungs I think that any of the 5xx series and lower will use the same actual screen panel.  Anything 6xx and up probably also uses the same panel...so a 650, 750, 850 or whatever the hell they make will give you pretty much the exact same picture for that size of TV.  Also, if you are in doubt, the 5xx series are NOT 120hz.  Only the 6xx and above are.

That's wonderful advice.  Thank you for the help!

[Abagadro]

From what I have been reading, the Sammy LNB750 is the sweet-spot right now for performance/price on  LCDs.  It's 240hz, has good blacks and doesn't seem to have problems (i.e. clouding/ghosting/banding, etc.).

[Oban]

[schild]

Vizios weren't reviewed, wtf consumer reports.

[Cyrrex]

From what I have been reading, the Sammy LNB750 is the sweet-spot right now for performance/price on  LCDs.  It's 240hz, has good blacks and doesn't seem to have problems (i.e. clouding/ghosting/banding, etc.).

Except that everything in that series is going to cost upwards of 2 grand, so it's only sweet-spot if that's your budget.  I haven't seen the 240hz with my own eyes, though, so I'd be curious about that.  First thing he's got to determine is if he is a a 60hz or 24p type of purist, or if he likes the artificial frame interpolation of the 120hz/240hz tech.  Once he figures that out, has a screen size and exact budget, we can practically tell him exactly what to buy.

[Cyrrex]

Vizios weren't reviewed, wtf consumer reports.

Apparently Vizios weren't good enough to qualify for the review.  Which doesn't explain why they have Dynex there.  Oh well, consumer reports needs to be taking with a sack of salt anyway.

[Abagadro]

You can get the 46" LNB750 from amazon right now for $1650 shipped.  Over the weeked they would have thrown in a $250 Sony blu-ray with it for free.  You just need to look around and keep your eye out for deals.

[schild]

Vizios weren't reviewed, wtf consumer reports.

Apparently Vizios weren't good enough to qualify for the review.  Which doesn't explain why they have Dynex there.  Oh well, consumer reports needs to be taking with a sack of salt anyway.

Or Insignia. Ugh ugh ugh.

[Nebu]

First thing he's got to determine is if he is a a 60hz or 24p type of purist, or if he likes the artificial frame interpolation of the 120hz/240hz tech.  Once he figures that out, has a screen size and exact budget, we can practically tell him exactly what to buy.

Is there a best way to determine this?  I'm very picky with sound, but find that I'm much more accomodating with video.  I'm really interested in watching sports and movies.  My television doesn't get much use beyond this.  I also don't own a blu-ray, perhaps I should consider that as well.

Note: I have to drive 90 mins to get to a Best Buy, so that's a factor. 

[Cyrrex]

You can get the 46" LNB750 from amazon right now for $1650 shipped.  Over the weeked they would have thrown in a $250 Sony blu-ray with it for free.  You just need to look around and keep your eye out for deals.

You're right, that's a pretty sweet price.  I actually got Best Buy to do a price match against an Amazon price on my own TV.  They probably don't do that often, though.

Is there a best way to determine this?  I'm very picky with sound, but find that I'm much more accomodating with video.  I'm really interested in watching sports and movies.  My television doesn't get much use beyond this.  I also don't own a blu-ray, perhaps I should consider that as well.

Note: I have to drive 90 mins to get to a Best Buy, so that's a factor.  

Two options.  First, you will have to go see it with your own eyes.  Make sure they have the 120hz or 240hz playing something from a good source.  You'll know you're seeing it because it will look creepily realistic.  Not just high resolution (that's a given), but an odd sort of depth to the picture, where people in particular appear to have a surrealistic sharpness to their features when they move.

Second option...just chance that you will like it and take the plunge.  At best, you have a fucking awesome TV.  At worst, you have a fucking awesome TV where you go in an turn off the 120hz at your whim.  To be honest, if you could get that same TV that Abragado mentioned (46" LNB750 at 240hz) for around the same price, you'll love it, guaranteed.  You can probably find a LNA640 or 650 in some size at a good price that would also be kick-ass.

Last but not least, get a Blu Ray player, crazy.  A PS3 would do nicely for that (seriously).

Edit:  I pass 3 Best Buys on my way home from work...and that isn't counting the one 3 minutes away from my work in the opposite direction.    

[Sky]

I'm really interested in watching sports and movies.  My television doesn't get much use beyond this.

Don't let these guys get you down on DLP, keep an open mind. It's a /great/ tech for sports, football is stunning on my (OLD) set. I just put a new bulb in mine and it is as good as the day I bought it five and a half years ago. I have the older bulbs, which run $150, the new LED bulbs last much longer.

My only gripe about DLP is the overscan of the screen. Not sure if LCD has that. Watch out for funky resolutions with plasma if you want to hook your pc up to the set (which you know I highly recommend, 61" AoC is cool).

The best advice is to do your research on avsforum, realizing it's still a forum and problems are way overblown by audiophile-like nerds. After you know all the factors involved and know which sets to look for, then head out and use your peepers to see for yourself. Again, knowing the problems with store displays (set up oddly, poor feeds, improper view angles, etc).

[Cyrrex]

I'll spin the DLP argument around a little.  Buy an ordinary LCD TV for all of your ordinary purposes.  Then, when you have a little extra cash laying around, go out and buy a DLP or LCD projector.  In terms of the amount of enjoyment you get per dollar, there is no beating a projector.  Playing something like COD4 on a 170" screen has few things that compare to it.  Shit, I played Deadspace in the dark on about 250 inches of screen in my living room and it is an experience without compare.  If I was single, I would not bother with an ordinary TV.

Note that I am talking about FRONT projection, not crazy Sky's crazy rear projection DLP craziness.

[rattran]

Samsung lcds have 'just-scan' setting. No overscan at all. Beautifully crisp, though it was a firmware upgrade in mine (along with 24p) so I get a thin green line on the right edge. Later tvs won't have that.

And yeah, second on the ps3 for bluray. I occasionally use mine for games, too!

[Polysorbate80]

Samsung lcds have 'just-scan' setting. No overscan at all. Beautifully crisp, though it was a firmware upgrade in mine (along with 24p) so I get a thin green line on the right edge. Later tvs won't have that.

And yeah, second on the ps3 for bluray. I occasionally use mine for games, too!

You can get odd artifacts at the edges of the screen with any TV that eliminates overscan; they're usually source-dependent.

[Nebu]

Ok, one more question: What's the benefit of 240 Hz vs 120Hz.  Is it visibly better?  In what way?  I can see that 120 Hz is crisper than 60 Hz, especially for motion... is it a similar gain?

Edit: I ask because it will take me a 90 minute drive to see the difference for myself.  Is this tech worth the price jump or not yet?  I'm still struggling to justify the 60-120 Hz price jump. 

[Abagadro]

It is supposed to reduce artifacting and motion blur in quick moving action type stuff, particularly sports.  I don't have a lot of personal experience with it to say whether it is really worth it, but the 600hz capability of plasmas is supposedly what makes them so smooth, so I would rather have more than less.  It is my understanding (athough someone correct me if wrong) that the frame processing stuff like AMP is what creates the "soap opera effect" that some people like and some don't but you can always turn that off.

[Cyrrex]

Here's the deal, some of which you probably already know.  Your average TV program is broadcast in 60hz, which is really just 60 frames per second.  Imagine you're watching soccer.  As the ball travels, it's going faster than your 60 fps rate can track it (there is probably also an influence from the actual pixel refresh speed...this is the 5ms or whatever they advertise that it takes for the pixel to turn itself off and then on again).  You get ghosting and artifacts.

What 120hz does is that it kicks the speed up to 120 fps.  But how does that work when the native speed of the program is 60 fps (or even a movie, which might be recorded in 24 fps)?  It interpolates the missing frame.  So now the soccer ball that would have traveled 10 feet between frames at 60 hz now has an artifical frame inserted so that you get an image of where it should have been at 5 feet as well.  You can see how that influences something as simple as a ball travelling at speed.  It isn't perfect, though, the interpolation process creates it's own weird artifacts sometimes, depending on the source.

Where it all becomes weird is that it interpolates everything.  If you take a 1080p source...something in really high definition and a great picture...the frame interpolation is happening on everthing.  When a character moves, every part of him gets the treatment.  It makes adds a strange sharpness to the edges of his frame due to the smoother movement.  The result is a surreal looking, almost 3 dimensional image.

So that's what 120hz does.  What does 240hz do then?  I guess that instead of adding one frame in between 60fps frames, it will add...3?  So, three times the smoothness.  Haven't seen it with my own eyes yet.  I imagine that because this would now be the second generation of non-60hz, that they are working out the artifacts that result.

NOT to be confused with plasmas running at 600hz.  They do not add the spooky weirdness from what I've seen.  I don't think we are getting the whole truth with how their frames work, because I do not believe they interpolate frames.  Plasmas don't have artifacting and ghosting for something that has less to do with framerate, and more to do with the way the pixels are activated.  They don't turn the pixels on and off like an LCD, so they do a better job of coping with speedy images.

In my opinion, get the 120hz or 240hz if you like the spooky 3d quality.  They'll probably ghost as much as the 60hz anyway, or near to it.  If you are more a purist and like watching the flat 60 frames and 24p stuff that comes from broadcast tv and movies, then just get a good 60hz set.  If you're even remotely unsure, just get the best 120hz/240hz set you can get for your budget.  After all, you can activate and de-activate it as you like, and at worst you have a set that is a generation or two newer than the 60hz tech, which is definitely a good thing.


Edit:  Want to make it clear that I am not a true expert on this stuff, just an extremely interested consumer.  It's very much within the realm of possibility that I'm wrong on a fact or two. 

[Nebu]

Thanks again.  I really appreciate the opinions, education, and advice. 

[Polysorbate80]

Cyrrex is mostly right, a few notes:

NTSC television (your basic standard-def TV) is 60hz, but that's not true 60 frame video.  It's 30 frames, each frame consisting of two interlaced fields.  Each field contains half the scan lines of vertical resolution (odd or even).  Fast-moving objects will change position between fields, so if you look at a single frame of video the object will either appear smeared or "combed."

Fast-moving objects on LCD screens can appear to smear even more, since the pixels are always on.  Old-style cathode ray tube TVs and some flat-screen technologies such as plasma work differently.  On those, the pixels strobe briefly and then go dark.  Your eye doesn't see the blanking.  You can look up the details behind it if you care, but the "always-on" lcd pixels are prone to give an optical illusion of ghosting.

120hz can be applied simply for 60hz images, but it may or may not be depending on the manufacturer.  The simplest method is to replicate the frame (which would really do nothing for ghosting, but effectively turns the 120hz "off") or to insert a frame of black between video frames to simulate the effect of CRTs.  I'm not sure any manufacturers do that.  Mostly they go with the frame interpolation, which gets even wierder when you're converting 24 frame movies--you've suddenly got 4 extra frames to deal with.  240hz would be up to 9 additional frames.

It's not perfect, don't expect it to be that way for a few years either.  A high-end dedicated $30k box that does nothing but live frame interpolation still introduces the occasional artifact.

Regarding image quality, it does give a more three-dimensional, lifelike quality to the images.  That can be disconcerting when watching film; the smoothness sometimes feels wrong.  Case in point, if I watch King Kong I like to turn the 120hz up high when watching the monkey fight the dinosaurs; it really works well there.  In the same movie, it really brings out the flaws in some of the scenes where the actors aren't integrated well with the green-screen CGI (particularly the dinosaur stampede in the canyon.)  I find I keep it set to "low" most of the time to get some of the smoothness without adding too much of the artificiality.

Edit for clarity:  how many times does one really need to use "simply" in one sentence? :P

[Trippy]

Mostly they go with the frame interpolation, which gets even wierder when you're converting 24 frame movies--you've suddenly got 4 extra frames to deal with.  240hz would be up to 9 additional frames.

It gets more complicated than that. If you have something that can do inverse telecine (e.g. your Blu-ray player or the TV itself) 120 Hz allows for even "spacing" between all the original 24 fps film frames (aka "5:5 pulldown").

NOT to be confused with plasmas running at 600hz.  They do not add the spooky weirdness from what I've seen.  I don't think we are getting the whole truth with how their frames work, because I do not believe they interpolate frames.  Plasmas don't have artifacting and ghosting for something that has less to do with framerate, and more to do with the way the pixels are activated.  They don't turn the pixels on and off like an LCD, so they do a better job of coping with speedy images.

Plasmas are the closest to CRTs in terms of displaying motion but plasma refresh rate numbers aren't comparable to LCD refresh rate numbers because of the different technology involved.

http://www.popsci.com/node/30831

[Nebu]

Ok then... how does picture quality relate to frequency and refresh rate?  Which plays the greater role or are they different roles.  Assume the question is geared toward recorded media or HD television. 

[Trippy]

TV marketers are out of control right now. It's hard to know what features will really make a noticeable difference in picture quality for the types of material you typically watch. Ideally you should test drive a TV or two in your own home so you can watch it under your normal viewing conditions with your own source material rather than in a store. Since that's usually not possible you'll have to do a lot of viewing in stores to try and determine for yourself what looks best in your price range. For "user reports" and things like that AVS Forum is the place to go. Just remember that there's no "best" TV technology out there right now -- anything you choose will have issues, but depending on your vision, personal perferences and wallet size they may not matter to you.

For direct-view LCDs I would recommend you look at the 120 Hz+ models. Even if you don't have anything that can do the 5:5 pulldown right now (i.e. the TV can't do it itself and you don't have a source player can that do it) it's likely in the future you will so it'll be nice to have a TV that can handle that. But there are a lot of competing 120 Hz+ technologies right now so like I said above you'll need to do a lot of viewing yourself.

If the highest quality motion in a direct-view set is the only thing you care about and you need something larger than, say, 36" (about the limit of HDTV CRTs which aren't even made anymore) plasma is the only choice right now.

[Azaroth]

What you see in the store is a god damn lie.