Thread: Need recomendations on TV

I'm looking to replace my aging RPTV...57 inch...due to various reasons. I looked at various LEDs, LCDs, and Plasmas in Best Buy the other day. Sometimes you really can't tell the better pictures since I noticed they had quite a few of them with the brightness jacked up.

Which technology should I go with? We game a little bit on the TV but not extensively so burn in is not an issue in my selection. Basically my first concerns are size and costs...but I still want a decent picture.

I don't care about internet ready TV's, etc I have all that in devices already. Don't need 3D right now either.

A question I have is... do the TV's today pass the audio out from the HDMI via the optical? So I could just say plug in 3 or 4 HDMI devices and output the optical to my 6.1 system? My receiver does not do HDMI switching and I really don't feel like buying another one of those either.

digi.

What is your budget? You can probably get last years Sammy 58" plasma for around $1500-$1700. My two year old had optical so I am pretty sure newer models do also.

One other thing. Panasonic will have better blacks and Samsung will have more accurate color in plamsa these days.

As usual, I will recommend the Panny Plasma. Top notch customer service, as shown by my lighting fiasco, and excellent PQ.

Plasma really is the way to go. You can get some really good deals on last year's models from both Panasonic and Samsung.

To answer your audio question, no. The vast, vast majority of TV's will not take HDMI audio in and send it out optical at more than 2.0. That would require bypassing HDCP.

S~

Originally Posted by msmith198025

As usual, I will recommend the Panny Plasma. Top notch customer service, as shown by my lighting fiasco, and excellent PQ.

Yeah, even one of the BestBuy guys was recommending a Panny to me but he didn't have any. He would have to order one, I was like well what's the point? I'll just order it myself.

Originally Posted by teachsac

Plasma really is the way to go. You can get some really good deals on last year's models from both Panasonic and Samsung.

To answer your audio question, no. The vast, vast majority of TV's will not take HDMI audio in and send it out optical at more than 2.0. That would require bypassing HDCP.

S~

That really sucks... I was hoping they would pass more than 2.0 and let the TV do the HDMI switching. Been waiting on this 4 port HDMI switch with optical out from Monoprice (no one else seems to make one) but they keep pushing the back order date back a month every month.

Originally Posted by digiblur

Yeah, even one of the BestBuy guys was recommending a Panny to me but he didn't have any. He would have to order one, I was like well what's the point? I'll just order it myself.

And you probably can get it cheaper.

Amazon.com does a good job with TV ordering/delivery. Family members have had great service ordering from there (and they really beat the Best Buy price).

Originally Posted by digiblur

I'm looking to replace my aging RPTV...57 inch...due to various reasons. I looked at various LEDs, LCDs, and Plasmas in Best Buy the other day. Sometimes you really can't tell the better pictures since I noticed they had quite a few of them with the brightness jacked up.

I was in the same situation, with an aging 50" DLP. There was a big difference between how different sets looked at Best Buy, versus what those sets looked like at Paul's TV: At Best Buy, within the brands we were considering (Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and LG) some were clearly better than others, while at Paul's TV all the sets were practically just as good as each other, and all better than they looked at Best Buy.

Conclusion 1: The folks at Best Buy either don't know how to, or don't care to, set televisions up correctly.

Conclusion 2: The decision with regard to which has the best picture isn't going to be obvious, and indeed, we're in the realm, now, perhaps, of personal preference being the main determining factor. Some folks will care to defer to electronic measurements; other folks will recognize that their eyes probably cannot detect minute differences like that. (Having said that, I went for the "better" set -- more on that later.)

Originally Posted by digiblur

I don't care about internet ready TV's, etc I have all that in devices already. Don't need 3D right now either.

What I've found in my research is that some of the features and qualitative characteristics that I wanted most, in a good "non-3D, non-Internet-connected" television, were only available on 3D-ready, Internet-connected sets.

As it is, we decided on the PN58C8000. We could have gone with the C7000 or C6000 but the C8000 has a display designed to better deal with incidental light in the room, which is somewhat of a concern, and bone of contention, between my wife and I. The extra few hundred for the C8000 is easily accounted to marital peace.

Originally Posted by digiblur

A question I have is... do the TV's today pass the audio out from the HDMI via the optical? So I could just say plug in 3 or 4 HDMI devices and output the optical to my 6.1 system? My receiver does not do HDMI switching and I really don't feel like buying another one of those either.

The short answer to your question, for us, was "no". From the PN58C8000 manual, "DIGITAL AUDIO OUT (OPTICAL) ... 5.1 CH (channel) audio is available when the TV is connected to an external device supporting 5.1 CH ... " but " ... When the source is a digital component such as a DVD / Blu-ray player / cable box / STB (Set-Top-Box) satellite receiver and is connected to the TV via HDMI, only 2 CH audio will be heard from the home theater receiver. If you want to hear 5.1 CH audio, connect the digital audio out jack from your DVD / Blu-ray player / cable box / STB satellite receiver directly to an amplifier or home theater. ..."

Other televisions may work different, but I think that that's doubtful -- I suspect this limitation is a reflection of the HDMI specification, because why else would Samsung provide 5.1 sometimes, but not other times? (Does anyone know for sure?) Regardless, this set, at least, won't do as you suggest. The multiple HDMI inputs, as far as I can see, are really intended either for specific purposes (see below) or for use when you don't have a sound system, and will instead just use the television's speakers.

Regarding "specific purposes", the PN58C8000 has one HDMI input designated for ARC. That is the way that you can get multi-channel digital audio to go from the PN58C8000 to the receiver, but of course you would need a receiver with an ARC-compatible HDMI port.

I went though a few hours of creative home theater topography work this weekend to try to figure out what to do with the issue you've raised, because for me it was not an option to connect all my existing devices through my existing receiver -- I'm getting a new 3D Blu-ray disc player, and my existing receiver does not support HDMI 1.4, which is somewhat necessary for 3D. Luckily, for me, there was an answer. I could continue to use my current receiver for my "other" digital devices, feeding the receiver into the PN58C8000 as one of its inputs, and feed my new Blu-ray disc player directly into the television, with a separate optical digital audio connection from the Blu-ray disc player into the receiver. That is not a return path, like you were suggesting, but rather simply a split from the Blu-ray disc player: Video going through HDMI and audio going through optical SPDIF.

Of course, this kind of solution won't work for you unless your receiver has lots of SPDIF inputs, and your other devices all have SPIDF outputs.

Originally Posted by tigerfan33

You can probably get last years Sammy 58" plasma for around $1500-$1700.

During my research, I found that we could get this year's models for just a few hundred more, or so. They're thinner, and are a little better in some respects. In other words, you're getting something more for the extra money beyond just the fact that they're this year's models. I couldn't justify buying last year's models given the small difference in price. YMMV, of course. We're fortunate enough that spending a few hundred extra on top of a couple of thousand isn't a big hardship, nor a significant concern -- but, without a doubt, spending a few hundred extra on top of less than a thousand dollars would be.

Originally Posted by tigerfan33

My two year old had optical so I am pretty sure newer models do also.

Having optical and having it work like you'd expect are two different things. I do note, however, that I didn't make clear what the optical SPDIF ports in today's televisions are for: They're specifically for when you're using the HDTV's own tuner to tune in content from RF inputs, for routing the audio back into an audio receiver.

Originally Posted by tigerfan33

One other thing. Panasonic will have better blacks and Samsung will have more accurate color in plamsa these days.

There's a lot of questions about whether Panasonic actually has better blacks than Samsung this year. Panasonic had a problem with its black levels increasing markedly as the set aged. That "rising blacks" problem may put Samsung at the top for both blacks and color. Regardless, the main point is that the two are so close to each other that most people wouldn't notice any definitive difference.