The big "How do I choose an HDTV?" thread.

WSeda95 wrote:

Toshiba 32HLC56 over the Westinghouse LTV32w6 ... but as far as picture quality goes, which is better?

Haven't seen the Toshiba myself, and can't find all that much online (CNet hasn't reviewed it, not too many AVS posts, etc)

I do see that the Toshiba lacks an ATSC tuner, which means you couldn't hook it up to an antenna directly and get OTA HD broadcasts. Of course, if you use cable or satellite, you're probably not going to use an antenna (unless you could get HD channels over the air that your cable/sat provider doesn't offer), so for most users a tuner isn't of consequence.

Although I work at Bestbuy and I could see picture quality myself, I think their TV setups' suck and what you take home an be completely different from what you're seeing.

Very wise. Whatever you pick, go grab a copy of DVD Video Essentials (DVE) to help you calibrate the TV correctly.

Anyone know a good place for a stand? Right now all my stuff is on the floor.

Alright guys, this is what I'm left with. I could go for A) 27" Samsung LN-S2641D, B) 32" Westinghouse LTV-32w6 and C) 32" Insignia NS-32LCD. The price difference between each three is less than $60. Now, all three units have their pros and cons. The Samsung looks nice and has good picture quality but is only 26" (not bad for me). The Westinghouse seems to be the best bang for the buck and is 32", but doesn't look as crisp as the Samsung. And lastly, the Insigna looks surprisingly good here at my store but it's INSIGNA (Bestbuy Brand). I'm relying on everyone's last opinion to go ahead with my purchase. Everyone here at my job has different opinions that I do not agree with that's I'm asking here. =)

My LTV-32w6 is still in the box due to a project I'm working on (yet im posting here...) so I can't really comment. Maybe try hooking up the same source to all three and test them.

WSeda95 wrote:

A) 27" Samsung LN-S2641D, B) 32" Westinghouse LTV-32w6 and C) 32" Insignia NS-32LCD.

Well I would cross the Insignia off the list. I can't find a single decent review of any Insignia flat-panel display, and the only thing I've seen on AVS is some quality questions.

I would make it come down to the Samsung and Westinghouse. The Westy 32" I saw was incredibly crisp - the lack of crispness you are seeing probably comes down to the input & poor settings of a display model.

My suggestion would be to get the Westinghouse and a copy of DVE. Calibrate the Westinghouse. If you find that you still don't have the "crispness" you desire, then take it back and get the Samsung. But if correct calibration does the trick (my suspicion), you'll have the bigger display and you'll be glad you did it that way.

Make sure the Westinghouse (480p/720p/1080i) is set to HDTV! The one in both my local Best Buy's were set to TV (480i).

That's something I wanted to mention too. I was at my local Best Buy today. NONE of the TVs on the main wall were receiving HD signals.

If you can't tell HD on sight, here's a way to tell: go over to the small flat-panel EDTVs. They're probably receiving the same feed. If they look exactly the same as the big HDTVs, only smaller, then the HDTVs aren't displaying HD content.

Some TVs look really sharper scaling and displaying SD content than others, and that doesn't correlate to the same quality difference between TVs when the content is HD.

None of their TV's had HD signals?

Wow.

Our Best Buy remodeled a while back and all their HDTV's receive a nice clean HD signal. In fact all the flat panels are mounted on one wall that's like 50 feet long. It makes up about half of the entire back wall of the store.

I think the easiest way to tell is looking over at the SDTV aisle and then back at the HDTV's while the part of their display loop that shows football games is going. Yowsa.

I sure wish I could get some kind of HD signal out here to watch football on

Thin_J wrote:

None of their TV's had HD signals?

Wow.

Well, Best Buy (at least the one near me) has a new separate section called Magnolia, where they display their super high-end TVs in a darker room with couches, etc. The TVs in there are tuned to HD content.

The ones outside the room (which aren't all low-end TVs, but mid-range displays too, up to 50" LCDs and plasmas) are piped the same SD video loop that all the regular TVs and EDTVs have too.

They did have a pair of TVs in a separate section that were side-by-side, showing the same basketball game in SD and HD so that people could glance back and forth and "see what they were missing", so to speak (the SD one was a 4:3 picture stretched to fill the 16:9 screen, totally not misleading at all). But those TVs weren't for sale themselves, they were displays for selling HD DirecTV tuners and cable DVRs.

But yeah, any TV under $3000 was showing off a non-HD video loop. After all, you can't have people looking at a $1400 Westinghouse LCD or HP Plasma and only seeing a small difference from the $3000 Sony displays!

(The Westy that I will probably end up getting was made to look really crappy, the brightness turned way down, and the remote is there but somehow deactivated so that people can't use it to mess with the settings)

Quick question guys... Someone at my job told me that LCD's weren't the best for gaming. He said with the 360, if I play a game like GoW or any fast-paced game I would get "ghosting," and the picture would box up until I've slowed down. He said I was better off with the Samsung 30" TX-S3082WH CRT that I previously was thinking about. Is this true with ALL LCD's, because I was really leaning on picking up that 32" Westinghouse. Like I said before, I dont care if it's LCD or Tube, 30" or 32", I just want a GOOD gaming tv for my XBOX 360 and some HDTV watching (I'm too busy in college to watch TV).

I just spent hours playing Gears of War on the 32" Westinghouse. Fear not my friend, and go buy this set in confidence. It truly is awesome.

What you friend says is only partially true. He is referring to the response time on LCD's. For gaming you want 8 ms (milliseconds) or less. Not sure what this one has but it works just fine. I really dig the auto-detection of new media. Let's say I switch off my 360 to play xbox media center, the TV automagically switches to it. No fuss! I'm probably going to buy a second one for my parents.

WSeda95 wrote:

Quick question guys... Someone at my job told me that LCD's weren't the best for gaming. He said with the 360, if I play a game like GoW or any fast-paced game I would get "ghosting," and the picture would box up until I've slowed down.

This was true... a few years ago.

Today, LCDs have much faster pixel response times than they used to.

Think about this: have you ever seen a PC game on an LCD monitor, especially recently? Did you see "ghosting"? Probably not.

Today's LCD TVs have caught way up in terms of pixel response time, and you're not going to see ghosting on an LCD with, as Edwin says, an 8ms response time (as most are right now, including all current Westinghouses, at least from 42" on down). I used to play PC games on a 16ms LCD panel without any noticeable ghosting. Shoot, I've played 3D games on my laptop, which has a 25ms response time, where I start to see a very subtle effect.

8ms response time isn't bare minimum, it's pretty excellent. You're not going to even be at the threshold of ghosting problems.

*Legion* wrote:

This was true... a few years ago.

Yep. Even the crappy equipment does OK.

As a note, if you go with the 32w6 from Westinghouse. Make sure your set has the latest firmware (4.02). The earlier models have it disabled even though it used to work with earlier firmware.

Ok guys so I've gone ahead and purchased the 32" Westinghouse & my Xbox 360. I must say, it does look amazing. Thank you Legion, Think J, Edwin and Leapinggnome for all the advice. Now, I have been reading about using VGA cables for my Xbox DVD playback. Can someone explain this to me? I am using the HD component cables that came with my xbox. Do any of these cables upscale the DVDs?

Edwin, my Westy has FW ver. 4.01. What do the earlier models have "disabled?" And can you tell me what settings you are using for your Xbox 360 gameplay.

I haven't had a chance to change any settings as I don't have the DVE that Legion refers to. I have to find it and order it. I hope a HD version comes out some day soon. I hear some have the picture in picture disabled.

Edwin wrote:

I hope a HD version comes out some day soon

Already is

You could use the SD DVE with an upscaled player, which would not be optimal but better than nothing for ballpark color adjustments.

I've heard that there are also times when certain HD channels will display an HD test pattern for use in calibration.

Another option is the Spyder2 Express, which is a little gizmo that attaches to the screen and interacts with software on your PC to tell you how to correct your display's color. It would be a good alternative for someone not planning on getting an HD-DVD player anytime soon.

WSeda95 wrote:

Now, I have been reading about using VGA cables for my Xbox DVD playback. Can someone explain this to me? I am using the HD component cables that came with my xbox. Do any of these cables upscale the DVDs?

If you use a VGA connection, the 360 will upscale DVDs as high as 1080p. (The reason this is not supported over component is not a technical one, but a legal one. VGA output is not covered under the ridiculous rules on upscaling & copy protection). The cables don't upscale - just using VGA allows you to get around the legal restrictions.

Another thing about using a VGA connection is that you can set the 360 to run in the exact resolution of your display. Your TV's native resolution is actually 1366x768, not the 1280x720 defined as "720p" (don't worry, virtually all non-1080p LCDs now have a native resolution of 1366x768). This means that, when you run in 720p, there is some slight scaling involved. It's nothing major, but if you use VGA, you can set the Xbox to 1366x768 and enjoy a true 1:1 picture. Is it a noticeable picture improvement? I don't know, I haven't tried it yet, but I doubt it.

One concern with using the 360 with VGA is that there have been a LOT of complaints about how colors look over a 360 VGA connection. VGA users complain about washed-out colors, especially blacks that don't look dark. So 360 over VGA is a mixed blessing at best.

Personally, I would consider buying a dedicated upscaling DVD player. You can even get ones that do so over a component connection, although you're technically not supposed to be (as if that stopped the sale of region-free DVD players, right?). Best Buy has plenty of them to choose from, some less than $100. I would put that employee discount of yours to work again if watching DVDs in upscaled resolutions is important to you. (I plan on getting one myself, after my TV purchase)

And, of course, invest in a copy of DVE!

That's odd. My tv only lists 1360 x 768, not 1366 x 768.

Edwin wrote:

That's odd. My tv only lists 1360 x 768, not 1366 x 768.

You said you have the LVM-32w6, right?

Westinghouse's own site lists it as 1366x768 native (as well as all their other 720p LCDs)

EDIT: I did just see something in a random Google search about a 1366x768 display that does 1360x768 over VGA. Dunno what the deal with the "final six" pixels is.

WXGA is defined as 1366x768 and I know the 360 supports it. I don't know if claims of displays doing 1360x768 from VGA are typos or if there really is a weird little thing.

Edwin wrote:

Anyone know a good place for a stand? Right now all my stuff is on the floor.

I got a very nice metal and glass entertainment stand at Ikea for around 60 bucks. I love Ikea.

Barab wrote:

I got a very nice metal and glass entertainment stand at Ikea for around 60 bucks. I love Ikea.

Ikea has some nice stuff, but I hate the stores. The wandering yellow brick road through hell. Let me buy my damn plates, bookcase, table, whatever and get out. Don't make me walk through a never ending pathway of retail temptation.

We don't have any ikea stores in Florida. I checked their site, but nothing looked like it would work in the space I have.

I need other people to talk about HDTVs. It's kind of a favorite subject of mine right now.

*Legion* wrote:

I need other people to talk about HDTVs. It's kind of a favorite subject of mine right now.

That's kind of hard to do when someone's just lookin at you saying "TALK ABOUT HDTV's" with no question or details.

Thin_J wrote:

That's kind of hard to do when someone's just lookin at you saying "TALK ABOUT HDTV's" with no question or details.

There's got to be someone left with a burning question to ask about a potential HDTV purchase.

OK, how about this: HDTV owners! Are you getting broadcast TV in HD, and if so, through what (cable, sat, OTA, etc)? How do you like it?

Or is everyone just using their HD sets for games?

I use mine for everything.

Where can I get some good/cheap cables? I need a coax, HDMI, and some toslink.

For TV I use a combo of DirecTV HD and OTA since the receiver handles both. I mostly watch HD channels but there are so few (like 20). HDnet and Discovery HD are the two that get the most time with me.

Edwin wrote:

Where can I get some good/cheap cables? I need a coax, HDMI, and some toslink.

The best place I've ever found for good quality cables for lower prices is Monoprice.

They should have everything you need.

And I can't get broadcast HDTV because I live just a little too far out from Cinci, at least not without putting some kind of antennae on the outside of the house.

*Legion* wrote:

OK, how about this: HDTV owners! Are you getting broadcast TV in HD, and if so, through what (cable, sat, OTA, etc)? How do you like it?

Or is everyone just using their HD sets for games?

I chose a HDTV monitor over an HDTV with a built in tuner. I don't really use the TV for anything but movies and gaming. When I'm interested something on TV, I'll typically either wait until a DVD is released, or find somewhere to get after it's been aired. The only thing I watch on TV is football, and I've pretty much given up watching it for the year.. atleast until the playoffs.

I've seen the SO watching her shows, and to be honest, it's not a particularly pretty sight. It's a tiny bit better quality than it was on our old TV, but because it's much larger (about 10") it's far more noticeable, but I think that downside is more than made up by the huge savings. We saved around $200 for buying a model without a tuner included, and you can easily pick up a HD Tuner for half that price, and it's really a non-issue to me, since you need DirecTV for Sunday Ticket and GameDay anyways.

*Legion* wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

That's kind of hard to do when someone's just lookin at you saying "TALK ABOUT HDTV's" with no question or details.

There's got to be someone left with a burning question to ask about a potential HDTV purchase.

OK, how about this: HDTV owners! Are you getting broadcast TV in HD, and if so, through what (cable, sat, OTA, etc)? How do you like it?

Or is everyone just using their HD sets for games?

I'm using my Westinghouse for Xbox right now. Tomorrow I'll have brighthouse come over and install my HD-DVR (YAY!). Hey legion explain to me what digital optical output is? Someone started to explain it to me at work but we had to cut it short due to customers. And if you or anyone have any suggestions about an inexpensive surround sound that would be great.