So my dilemma is this, should I get the 37" 1080p tv or a 42" 720p for the same price. I sit a good 8-9 feet from the tv, so I don't think I'll really get any noticeable difference between the 1080p content and the 720p content.
According to my (amateur) research, the difference between 720p and 1080p is rather unnoticeable at sizes less than 50" for the average viewing distance (8 feet?). Grabbing the 42" 720p Westy for $880 let me pull the trigger now knowing that a TV with my "optimal" parameters (1080p ~55-60") won't be in my price range range for at least another couple years.
I love it when my ideas are supported!
This is the tv I'm thinking I'm going to get. Anything I should look out for?
Grump points you in the right direction - always find and bookmark the AVS thread for your TV. 
Keep in mind that AVS is a hardcore group and there's going to be lots of complaints listed in every TV thread - even the highest end, most expensive models. So don't panic when you don't see an endless string of "this is great!" posts - that's not the kind of place AVS is. Every TV has drawbacks, and AVS will explore them thoroughly. You can compare the complaints with those in the threads of other TVs you might be interested in to get a feel as to how well or poorly a certain TV stacks up.
Once you read it for a while, you'll get a good feel of what reflects small issues with an otherwise good product, and what reflects a truly bad product.
AVS dwells and relishes in the land of 5%.
Its worthwhile place though because glaring issues will be brought out to light and its handy to consolidate that in one place.. but just dont get to carried away there with what people are saying.
Yeah, AVSForum guys tend to complain about some odd things. Like the amount of times you have to hit the "input" button to get to the second hdmi input, for instance.
I have gotten lucky in that a guy at work bought the exact one last week and I'm going to go check it out. He's got the calibration discs and stuff, too so I'll see it at it's best. I think that'll be the make or break deal there.
Costco's return policy just sweetens the deal, too.
Costco's return policy just sweetens the deal, too.
People keep mentioning this, but I've never seen it fully explained. Just what IS the much-lauded Costo Return Policy?
Lester_King wrote:Costco's return policy just sweetens the deal, too.
People keep mentioning this, but I've never seen it fully explained. Just what IS the much-lauded Costo Return Policy?
It's pretty much lifetime on any item regardless of whether it's defective in any way or not. Some people abuse it fairly often though. I imagine about the time a Costco actually opens within a decent driving distance of me they'll get rid of the nice return policy.
Lester_King wrote:Costco's return policy just sweetens the deal, too.
People keep mentioning this, but I've never seen it fully explained. Just what IS the much-lauded Costo Return Policy?
Yeah, there are people on the AVSForum that talk about getting a tv and then returning it when the new model comes out. Which is perfectly plausible, but I find it a little too underhanded for me.
From what I hear, though, they just return the item to the manufacturer and get their money back. But it seems to me that they'd put a cap on the time-limit at some point.
Tyrian wrote:Lester_King wrote:Costco's return policy just sweetens the deal, too.
People keep mentioning this, but I've never seen it fully explained. Just what IS the much-lauded Costo Return Policy?
It's pretty much lifetime on any item regardless of whether it's defective in any way or not. Some people abuse it fairly often though. I imagine about the time a Costco actually opens within a decent driving distance of me they'll get rid of the nice return policy.
Wow. That's a rather amazing return policy.
Hm, there's a Costco in Durham.
So, this is the base "you bought this at Costco" warranty? It's not an extended warranty / product protection program ala Best Buy / Circuit City / Etc?
Nope, it's the Costco warranty.
That's why it pays to be a member!
/shill
Nope, it's the Costco warranty.
That's why it pays to be a member!
/shill
Certainly sounds like a good deal. I'll have to look into that.
It's pretty much lifetime on any item regardless of whether it's defective in any way or not. Some people abuse it fairly often though. I imagine about the time a Costco actually opens within a decent driving distance of me they'll get rid of the nice return policy.
The number of people who abuse it, however, are a tiny fraction of the vast number of people that flood into Costco stores regularly.
Also, it's widely believed that Costco's contracts with manufacturers offload a good portion of the "sting" of returns to the manufacturer. Costco won't cop to the details, but a CNet writer asked Vizio if they take back non-defective returns from Costco in addition to the defective ones, and they said yes. So it's a good bet other TV manufacturers do the same thing.
As long as manufacturers continue to sell a bajillion units at Costco stores (Costco sales represent a large chunk of overall US HDTV sales), expect things to stay as they are.
Now I just have to rearrange all my stuff to accommodate it.
Cabbot, you have to post pictures of that thing in action.
Where'd you order it from?
Cabbot, you have to post pictures of that thing in action.
Where'd you order it from?
It went down to $999 on Mwave right after the price on Newegg jumped back up.
Shipping was cheap so I went for it.
OMFGZ:
Nice one, Thin.
Theres a small turd on your carpet.. near the door.
dont step in it
Theres a small turd on your carpet.. near the door.
dont step in it
:)
Totally a hairball from the dog who sheds more than any other dog in the history of dogs. But thanks for the concern 
So some impressions after a night of playing with the new toy:
Still a tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of input lag from my PC. It's nothing compared to what I was experiencing with the Samsung. I've let two or three other people use the monitor since last night and none of them have any idea what I'm talking about, so maybe I'm just overly sensitive to it. Either way I played some RTS games last night and got perfectly acclimated to it and was clicky-clicking away with no problems after about thirty seconds. I'll be giving Supreme Commander a whirl on it a bit later.
It's awesome as a display for the 360. The only problem I have is that my setup is currently far from ideal. I really need to get a tower or shelf unit to sit next to the desk to get my rig up off the carpet and to get my receiver and DVD player out from under the desk. I'm stuck using my 360 as a DVD player for the moment as I don't have a set of component cables long enough to reach from the DVD player to the other side of the TV.
I've also not been able to get the picture set quite the way I like it yet for the 360. I can't find that happy balance where it isn't washed out but the screen isn't too dark either. I'll get there, it'll just take me a few days of playing with it.
I've also not been able to get the picture set quite the way I like it yet for the 360. I can't find that happy balance where it isn't washed out but the screen isn't too dark either. I'll get there, it'll just take me a few days of playing with it.
I found on the 42" that when I got the picture set for video, some of the 360 games were very dark. So, I just adjusted the games and left the TV settings alone.
The TV doesn't have separate picture settings for separate inputs? That blows a little.
Well, I use my 360 as a DVD player as well. So, it's the same input (VGA) for games and DVDs. Not sure about the rest of the inputs, but I think it's a universal type setting on backlight, contrast, etc... Mine was a display unit, so no manual for me.
Has anyone looked at the Viewsonic TV? All I'd ever use it for is videogames and DVDs, and for that purpose it seems pretty nice. Plus, at that size and weight, I could probably move it to a different house reasonably easily.
Yeah, getting it set for both games and DVD's is the issue at the moment because I can't hook up my DVD player.
Yeah, getting it set for both games and DVD's is the issue at the moment because I can't hook up my DVD player.
Like Hemi, my game machine is my DVD player. Easy!
Has anyone looked at the Viewsonic TV? All I'd ever use it for is videogames and DVDs, and for that purpose it seems pretty nice. Plus, at that size and weight, I could probably move it to a different house reasonably easily.
A friend of mine purchased that TV (or an earlier model) a year or so ago. He's mostly happy with it, but his model seems to lack a zoom mode (making non-anamorphic letterboxed content rather small). Also, one of the component inputs appears to be unable to display any progressive scan signal. The HDMI input can display any of your standard resolutions.
He also noted that it didn't seem to scale the display properly when set to 720p (connected via the component input that would display progressive scan signals). It seemed to frame the image within a black border (as if displaying the 1280x720 signal within the 1366x768 resolution), whereas if set to 1080i, the full screen was used as you'd expect.
Overall, he's been more than satisfied with the TV, it just seems to have a few minor 'quirks'. Don't forget that he's had his for over a year, so current models may not have some of these features / problems.
Like Hemi, my game machine is my DVD player. Easy!
Mine had been for a long time as well, but once I got a big HDTV, I threw $50 into getting a cool upscaling DVD player (discussed in another thread on this board).
I will be in the same boat soon, though, as I am going to get a 360 for the bedroom TV and it will be the DVD player for in there too. I expect I'll use VGA to get DVD upscaling since the TV is a 720p LCD, so I look forward to any tips people going through this right now uncover.
I figured out part of the problem in my case regarding getting the brightness and contrast calibrated in a way that I like.
There's an "auto adjust" feature that's on by default when you use the VGA port. I left it on becuase I assumed it was like the VGA port on my Samsung where it just centered the picture correctly and then stopped.
On the Westy that isn't all it does. It also seems to adjust the gamma based on the picture displayed when the input is activated. This is a problem because gamma isn't a setting you can get to anywhere but the TV's service menu, which by the way, I'm pretty sure is inaccessible if you're not hooked up to the service port in the same way that a Westinghouse tech would be. The more I played with the TV the more I thought there was something wrong with it until I found a post on hardforums about this very "feature".
So last night I turned off the auto adjust feature, turned the TV off, turned it back on and it was suddenly a million times easier to get the TV set in a way that looks really really nice. Now I've gone from being just pretty impressed with the TV to being super happy with it.
I paid something like $700 more for my Samsung 32 incher back around the time I started this thread. That just blows me away. It wasn't a bad decision at the time, but boy has the LCD market ever changed since then. Now I just have to find a decent way to sell the old one.
*edit*
Hey, here's a related but somewhat offtopic question... what desk should I get to put this thing on now? You've seen the old overused and beat up thing it's sitting on right now. The keyboard tray is so warped downard that it's ridiculous looking when it's pushed in under the desk.
I'm really really interested in the Ikea Jerker computer desk, but it's f*cking impossible to get one here because they have like five total store locations and none of them are in the southeastern section of the US. The closest ones are 4 or 5 hours away in either Canton Michigan or some city in Illinois. I was going to order it from the website but shipping was just shy of $300 when I looked. They've since removed it as an option to even buy it over the website.
I wanted the Jerker because it's wide enough for the 37 monitor and it's deep enough for me to sit far enough away to really be comfortable. Plus the actual workspace itself is height adjustable so you can set it where you like it. This thing has to serve double duty as a computer desk and an entertainment center, so the sort of modular nature of the desk with all it's corner shelves and height extensions was a huge plus.
Does anybody know of any equivalent Desks I might find? I'm driving myself nuts looking around at Office Depot, Office Max, Best Buy, and Staples.. and none of them have anything that even remotely compares as far as just how usable it is.
I really don't want to have to build a custom combo desk/entertainment center, but I will and have the means, materials, and ability to do it if it comes down to that. I have access to about 40 three quarter inch solid birch 7x4 doors that came from an old church that I could use for material. With a little sanding and work I think it could be super nice. I just don't want to have to do all that extra work 
none of them are in the southeastern section of the US
It doesn't get much more southeastern than Atlanta.
Atlanta, GA
In stock:
yesYour stock check was valid at:
2/23/07 10:03 AM
none of them are in the southeastern section of the USIt doesn't get much more southeastern than Atlanta.
IKEA wrote:Atlanta, GA
In stock:
yesYour stock check was valid at:
2/23/07 10:03 AM
Semantics. That doesn't help me in Kentucky.
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