So confused after going shopping today. Please assist before I buy.

[BKSinAZ]

I went to best buy and frys today with intentions to buy. But left confused and unsure of my future purchase.
My budget is 3000.

At first my intentions were to buy a plasma tv, ether the samsung hpr4272 or the toshiba 42hp95. The sales guys kept telling me that the Mitsubishi wd526228, which is a DLP 1080p unit, was a far better television with a superior picture to the plasma. I was unable to veiw them side by side. I need advice on this issue. Would you buy a 1080p DLP over a plasma? I already know I get less tv when I purchase a plasma (size)

Second ...he told me that it is not true 1080p and that no tv has true 1080p yet. They said the mitsubishi just digitized the picture to simulate 1080p. This is another confusing fact.

Third... He told me that with my 8 year old (excellent working Sony SLV550D) dvd player would not give a great picture on the dlp tv and that I would need to buy another that has some type of decoder output for the 1080p. I forgot exactly...

Please advise me. I am greatly disappointed as I should have purchased the tv today but chickened out.

[superpanavision70mm]

I think you made a wise choice...even if that choice was NONE OF THE ABOVE. The reason is simple...if you are looking to spend that money you may want to wait until you won't be disappointed once you get it home. In other words...wait a few more months until the technology and support is more readily available and also probably cheaper. If you are expecting to get the best of the best right now...you are not going to get it just yet.

As far as the DVD player is concerned...first you are going to want to get alot of bang for your buck, which means a player that upconverts regular DVD's to 1080 and you may want to get something that has HDMI outputs or component that can handle high def. Otherwise you will be playing lower resolution material on your new high def set, which won't maximize your results. The great thing about this is that the players are relatively inexpensive if you want to get one...although you don't have to go for a lower end model if you don't want to. If it were me...I would certainly wait for the TV's to get a bit better and less confusing for you.

[edtyct]

Two issues in this thread deserve more attention: (1) the idea that waiting will clear up confusion and will get you "the best of the best" and (2) the nonsense that the sales people spewed at you. As SuperP said, you were right to walk out empty-handed, though I'm not so sure that with a little information, you won't be perfectly justified in buying something well before three months elapse. You can minimize your confusion now, and the "best of the best" won't stay still for you even down the road.

I have no doubt that the Mits DLP is a solid TV. Whether it's "better" than a plasma is another story. First of all, people throw out glib words like "better" without offering any criteria for it. No display is just better than another, except in some context. The differences between DLP and plasma, or anything else, are too amorphous for such a blanket judgment. Displays, regardless of technology, have to be assessed on their own terms for features and capacities that have value for you.

At this fleeting moment, 1080p is the shibboleth for consumer displays. It represents the pinnacle of resolution. Although 1080p certainly has its advantages for people with large rooms who need large screens, there's no guarantee that any particular iteration of it will be executed as well as it could be. Remember that any advantage in detail that 1080p provides over 1080i or 720p sets will disappear when the display is relatively small and/or seating isn't relatively close. Also remember that 1080p displays capable of actually accepting 1080p signals are few and far between. The number is slowly growing (largely to take advantage of impending hi def Blu-ray DVDs), but, as I said, the 1080p advantage may not amount to much, if anything, in most consumers' viewing situations. A good 720p, 768p, or 1080i TV has ample opportunity and ability to look, or situate, as good or better than any 1080p one, and cost less to boot.

Plasmas don't reach 1080p unless they are 70 to 100" inches diagonally, simply because the panels can't fit that many pixels at the popular sizes. But plasma is capable of extraordinarily smooth, colorful, detailed images that can attain a level of foundation black that other microdisplays, like DLP, LCD, and LCoS, would kill to achieve. They also provide a wider sweet spot for viewing and can hang on the wall, unlike DLPs and LCoSs. The consensus at this point is that Panasonic, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Pioneer are the class of the plasma field.

DLPs are certainly a great option, for price as well as picture quality, but a small percentage of people are bothered by artifacts that their color wheels can create. If you see little rainbows on the screen when you watch one, it may not be right for you. The salesman's point about "true" 1080p on DLPs is so partial that it's more wrong than right. DLPs create the requisite viewing resolution to 1080p (and often even 720p) by a process called wobulation (aka "smoothpicture"), which permits sets to carry only half as many horizontal pixels as would normally be necessary to create the stated resolution. These pixels are diamond-shaped instead of the standard squares or rectangles, allowing them to be divided into parts that can be illuminated in extremely rapid succession. Our persistence of vision turns the double image into a single one. It's an ingenious invention. Calling the process untrue because it's "digitized" is a little like saying a dog isn't a real dog because it's canine. Nothing that happens in a DLP isn't "digitized"; in fact, 1080p can only be created digitally. Forget what the salesman said. If you aren't smitten with another TV for both how it works and how it mounts, any number of DLPs rate a serious look. But forget abstracts like "better" or "digitized" or "true."

As for the DVD player, I have no doubt that your 8-year-old Sony would be trumped even by a modest current player at $200 or less. You want it to be progressive-scan to relieve your TV of having to draw all of the digital lines itself, only because DVD players sometimes do that job better that TVs do; sometimes they don't. An option is a DVD player that "upconverts" standard DVD signals to pseudo-hi def to match (or nearly match) the native resolution of your HD display. All displays have their own layout of pixels ont the screen--1080, 768, or 720--that incoming signals have to match to be shown at all. Since DVD feeds are 480, they have to be scaled and deinterlaced to reach the TVs requisite pixel count. Again, sometimes an upconverting DVD player can scale/deinterlace a lower resolution better than a display can itself. But the difference is rarely night and day, if evident at all, and occasionally, the display does a fine job on its own. But SuperP is right. Only a player w/HDMI output allows such upscaling.

I've shot my mouth off pretty good and still only scratched the surface of possibility. If you have any questions that you don't want to throw open to the board, feel free to PM me. Otherwise, this thread should be a good resource.

Ed

[BKSinAZ]

You've given me quite abit of info. In fact the info left me as confused as I was as I was leaving those audio shops. I realize it is not your job to make my decision, but I am still not sure which tv to buy. What if it were you? A 42 inch plasma or a 52 inch DLP 1080p TV?


Two issues in this thread deserve more attention: (1) the idea that waiting will clear up confusion and will get you "the best of the best" and (2) the nonsense that the sales people spewed at you. As SuperP said, you were right to walk out empty-handed, though I'm not so sure that with a little information, you won't be perfectly justified in buying something well before three months elapse. You can minimize your confusion now, and the "best of the best" won't stay still for you even down the road.

I have no doubt that the Mits DLP is a solid TV. Whether it's "better" than a plasma is another story. First of all, people throw out glib words like "better" without offering any criteria for it. No display is just better than another, except in some context. The differences between DLP and plasma, or anything else, are too amorphous for such a blanket judgment. Displays, regardless of technology, have to be assessed on their own terms for features and capacities that have value for you.

At this fleeting moment, 1080p is the shibboleth for consumer displays. It represents the pinnacle of resolution. Although 1080p certainly has its advantages for people with large rooms who need large screens, there's no guarantee that any particular iteration of it will be executed as well as it could be. Remember that any advantage in detail that 1080p provides over 1080i or 720p sets will disappear when the display is relatively small and/or seating isn't relatively close. Also remember that 1080p displays capable of actually accepting 1080p signals are few and far between. The number is slowly growing (largely to take advantage of impending hi def Blu-ray DVDs), but, as I said, the 1080p advantage may not amount to much, if anything, in most consumers' viewing situations. A good 720p, 768p, or 1080i TV has ample opportunity and ability to look, or situate, as good or better than any 1080p one, and cost less to boot.

Plasmas don't reach 1080p unless they are 70 to 100" inches diagonally, simply because the panels can't fit that many pixels at the popular sizes. But plasma is capable of extraordinarily smooth, colorful, detailed images that can attain a level of foundation black that other microdisplays, like DLP, LCD, and LCoS, would kill to achieve. They also provide a wider sweet spot for viewing and can hang on the wall, unlike DLPs and LCoSs. The consensus at this point is that Panasonic, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Pioneer are the class of the plasma field.

DLPs are certainly a great option, for price as well as picture quality, but a small percentage of people are bothered by artifacts that their color wheels can create. If you see little rainbows on the screen when you watch one, it may not be right for you. The salesman's point about "true" 1080p on DLPs is so partial that it's more wrong than right. DLPs create the requisite viewing resolution to 1080p (and often even 720p) by a process called wobulation (aka "smoothpicture"), which permits sets to carry only half as many horizontal pixels as would normally be necessary to create the stated resolution. These pixels are diamond-shaped instead of the standard squares or rectangles, allowing them to be divided into parts that can be illuminated in extremely rapid succession. Our persistence of vision turns the double image into a single one. It's an ingenious invention. Calling the process untrue because it's "digitized" is a little like saying a dog isn't a real dog because it's canine. Nothing that happens in a DLP isn't "digitized"; in fact, 1080p can only be created digitally. Forget what the salesman said. If you aren't smitten with another TV for both how it works and how it mounts, any number of DLPs rate a serious look. But forget abstracts like "better" or "digitized" or "true."

As for the DVD player, I have no doubt that your 8-year-old Sony would be trumped even by a modest current player at $200 or less. You want it to be progressive-scan to relieve your TV of having to draw all of the digital lines itself, only because DVD players sometimes do that job better that TVs do; sometimes they don't. An option is a DVD player that "upconverts" standard DVD signals to pseudo-hi def to match (or nearly match) the native resolution of your HD display. All displays have their own layout of pixels ont the screen--1080, 768, or 720--that incoming signals have to match to be shown at all. Since DVD feeds are 480, they have to be scaled and deinterlaced to reach the TVs requisite pixel count. Again, sometimes an upconverting DVD player can scale/deinterlace a lower resolution better than a display can itself. But the difference is rarely night and day, if evident at all, and occasionally, the display does a fine job on its own. But SuperP is right. Only a player w/HDMI output allows such upscaling.

I've shot my mouth off pretty good and still only scratched the surface of possibility. If you have any questions that you don't want to throw open to the board, feel free to PM me. Otherwise, this thread should be a good resource.

Ed

[edtyct]

Just as confused? Oy. I guess that's the risk you run when you start from scratch. I don't think that we're really dealing with the problem of confusion if I simply pick one of your two options. But for picture quality, I prefer plasmas made by Panasonic, Hitachi, and Pioneer (the preference might not hold with Toshiba or Samsung's plasmas). Also, plasma wins for unobtrusiveness, especially if you can hang it on a wall. If size is important, then DLP provides great bang for the buck, but not all DLPs, like plasmas, are created equal, so do some of your own homework and search for reviews, even if only in spots like CNET. Unfortunately, you can't trust picture quality from what you see in the stores, but you'll have to navigate that problem by assembling background info about particular sets. The criteria are as complicated as you need them to be, but I'll avoid going into any further detail unless you come up with particular questions.

[The Tahitijack]

The Samsung HP-R4272 may be discontinued. The local Magnolia store has it on sale for about $2,700 ($300 less than orginal price). A good, not great, Samsung DVD player with upconversion and the usual features can be had for around $100. Toss in a HDMI cable at $100 and you are under budget pretax. You might also look at the new Samsung plasma HP S4253 which is street priced at about $2,400. I like the price of the rear projection units but my eyes have never seen one that produced as picture as good as LCD or plasma. For me I prefer smaller screen with highter quality image over big screen with poor picture quality and limited view angles. Good luck....