42" movie television options? (NON-gaming!)

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey there, here's an odd (or not, depending on your perspective) question: Is there a better television for simple video (i.e. 1080p Blu-Ray) and cable television watching at about the 42" size than this one?

http://www.amazon.com/LG-42LS3400-42-In ... B0074WVSGC (might not be the exact set, was comparing this to Best Buy's SKU #6733367, which appears identical)
LG 42LS3400 42-Inch 1080p 60Hz LED LCD HDTV (4 3D glasses included, meh). Currently $570 USD at the local shop (it'll be replacing a huge 50" Mitsubishi television).

Now the odd part: 3D isn't really desired, so that just adds expense; AND it's not to be used for gaming. However, low lag and less ghosting are always good.
I would add that I think 120 or 240Hz display modes would be potentially beneficial - this set doesn't have them - and I see the LED backlight as useful too (for longevity and anti-flickering if nothing else).
The sound bar is seen as a plus because it adds reasonable sound capability (40W tweeters + woofers instead of the built-in 7W speakers).

[neorichieb1971]

For 1080p just about anything will do. Essentially the TV is doing 1:1 pixel mapping at 1080p so no processing involved. Its actually just displaying pixels and not much else.

Only certain brands do 42" sets. I know Sony does not.

I use PC speakers plugged into the headphone jack. Its super loud and I can plug them into the thinnest screen with beautiful PQ. The speakers I got cost $30. Sound bars have the "lifestyle" price tag. Go with it if thats what you want. But $30 is all you need to spend.

[fagin]

For 1080p just about anything will do. Essentially the TV is doing 1:1 pixel mapping at 1080p so no processing involved. Its actually just displaying pixels and not much else.

Unless I have the wrong end of the stick, I'm not sure I'd agree it's as simple as that. Movie use is probably more full of "pitfalls" when choosing a screen than retro gaming.

[neorichieb1971]

No TV you buy is tailor made for your viewing experience. Thats what the knobs are for.

If the movie has grain, its best to display it with grain. Anything you do to cover it up is adding processing to the image that wasn't designed to be there. I myself don't even like the "ideal" TV setup. Generally speaking the picture would be too dark for me.

If you go to www.hdtvtest.co.uk you will see ALL TV's are recommended. There isn't one that isn't. Thats because apart from the odd thing here or there, they are quite the same. With LED you don't even need to worry about back lighting.

My only advice is stay away from piano black glass on the frame. They finger print easily and dust always attracts to it. In the early years Samsung and LG had reliability issues, but not heard anything lately.

There used to be a phrase about cars. You don't need the perfect car if you have the perfect road. Well 1080 film material is about as perfect a road your going to get.

[Ed Oscuro]

Thanks for the response so far.

Movie use is probably more full of "pitfalls" when choosing a screen than retro gaming.

You're right - the display in question is 60Hz, whereas for proper pulldown of various material (say 24 FPS movie sources in addition to over-the-air programming) a 240Hz screen would be much nicer.

According to some Amazon users, there is no video over USB capability (lol), and more importantly no ability to output to anything but the 40W sound bar, which is an oddity.

Ultimately, though, I think that unless there is something really compelling out there that has been chosen that this one will end up sticking. Thanks for now. I'm not actually buying the set, just doing some research on behalf of someone else.

[neorichieb1971]

Unless your TV has interpolation your 240hz TV is pretty much adding tech for the sake of big numbers.

[SuperPang]

Hey there, here's an odd (or not, depending on your perspective) question: Is there a better television for simple video (i.e. 1080p Blu-Ray) and cable television watching at about the 42" size than this one?

Yes, most Panasonic plasmas.

[fagin]

No TV you buy is tailor made for your viewing experience. Thats what the knobs are for.

If the movie has grain, its best to display it with grain. Anything you do to cover it up is adding processing to the image that wasn't designed to be there. I myself don't even like the "ideal" TV setup. Generally speaking the picture would be too dark for me.

If you go to http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk you will see ALL TV's are recommended. There isn't one that isn't. Thats because apart from the odd thing here or there, they are quite the same. With LED you don't even need to worry about back lighting.

My only advice is stay away from piano black glass on the frame. They finger print easily and dust always attracts to it. In the early years Samsung and LG had reliability issues, but not heard anything lately.

There used to be a phrase about cars. You don't need the perfect car if you have the perfect road. Well 1080 film material is about as perfect a road your going to get.

So ability to delivery judder free video from various formats, screen blooming, black levels, contrast levels, ability to deal with SD material (and this is literally the tip of the iceberg) is not an issue as long as we only concern ourselves with matching (for BD sakes) pixel mapping? That is what I referring to mate in my original remark.

[neorichieb1971]

1080/24 material is 1080/24 material. If it judders its because its at a low framerate to begin with.

A TV is doing more processing given a non native signal than a native signal. Essentially 1080 is throughput the TV rather than processed. The only filters applied are those you choose with your remote.

6 years ago the only TV that stood out above the rest were the Pioneers for video. I didn't see a great perception of difference on most of the other TV's. Most of the time it was the presentation of the monitor itself.

If you go into any TV store and saw a 60hz, 120hz or 240hz TV, would you be able to tell the difference between them? Just like with MP3's, the higher the hz, the less you'll notice. If a 480hz TV came out tomorrow you would go wow at the figure, but essentially see no return out of your investment.

Now the Hobbit is filmed in 48fps, its more likely that having that feature down the road is much much more important than gimmicky figures that are marketed now. I would be surprised if the PS3 wasn't updated via firmware to support such a feature when the movie releases on blu ray.

[fagin]

1080/24 material is 1080/24 material. If it judders its because its at a low framerate to begin with.

A TV is doing more processing given a non native signal than a native signal. Essentially 1080 is throughput the TV rather than processed. The only filters applied are those you choose with your remote.

6 years ago the only TV that stood out above the rest were the Pioneers for video. I didn't see a great perception of difference on most of the other TV's. Most of the time it was the presentation of the monitor itself.

If you go into any TV store and saw a 60hz, 120hz or 240hz TV, would you be able to tell the difference between them? Just like with MP3's, the higher the hz, the less you'll notice. If a 480hz TV came out tomorrow you would go wow at the figure, but essentially see no return out of your investment.

Now the Hobbit is filmed in 48fps, its more likely that having that feature down the road is much much more important than gimmicky figures that are marketed now. I would be surprised if the PS3 wasn't updated via firmware to support such a feature when the movie releases on blu ray.

Before I carry on..... this is a discussion. I'm not picking holes in what you're saying.

But...

Can ALL screens handle 24fps and appropriate pulldown correctly?

Resolution processing is a relative minor task, even if it was required. IMO that's a mute point. Regardless, most TV's are "Full HD" nowadays anyhow.

IMO it is not an easy task to pick an appropriate TV and it's certainly more involved than looking at resolution. Some of the area's I pointed at previously are (as suggested) the tip of the iceberg.... especially the more anal you get.

[neorichieb1971]

If a TV is 1080 HD and supports 24p processing then why do you think it wouldn't do it properly? There are numerous ways to get the same effect but honestly the source material is king here. The better the footage, the better the TV will display it. From what I can tell a TV can only support standards set by broadcasting companies and TV manufacturers. If a problem were identified, it could also be blamed on anything down the chain, not just the TV. Some people are using some pretty old DVD players still. I know that in the USA there are quite a few types of TV still sold on the market. Perhaps thats something I am ignorant about since I left in 2006. In the UK everything is LCD, LED and Plasma, and all support HDMI 50/60hz material, most support 24p. The other factor here is that the OP is talking about 42" TV's. That eliminates a lot of problems in itself. A 42" set is going to be aimed at the entry level home theater sector.

If my TV is 3 years old and does everything to satisfaction I don't see why a current day TV would struggle. The only lag i've noticed is when running PS1/2 games under emulation on the PS3. Which seems to be more associated with the emulation than the TV. If I plug in a PS2, there is no lag... or none that I've noticed.

To compare, PC monitors and laptops are LCD. I've never noticed lag on them. A TV is just a bigger version of those with the pixels spread out wider.

The only reason I can think of that warrants TV threads at the moment, is that there are TV's out there with pretty shite standards that I am not aware of. But if you stick with a reputable Japanese brand and spend a few bucks on it, I don't see where you'll be disappointed.

If anyone wants to chime in with experiences I would be happy to read of such experiences. It seems people are so scared of phantom criticism's that they just want to buy the right TV. I've seen some of the stuff on AVforums, most of it is scaremongering.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey there, here's an odd (or not, depending on your perspective) question: Is there a better television for simple video (i.e. 1080p Blu-Ray) and cable television watching at about the 42" size than this one?

Yes, most Panasonic plasmas.

I realize that service life of these is far better than it used to be, but for various reasons that was right out. They are heavier (perhaps not heavy) than the LCD screens which can be moved by hand easily, and most importantly they seem to have much higher power draw. I'm guessing this is partly on account of black levels, but what else?

@ Neorichie:
I understand and appreciate the argument that one cannot go too terribly wrong with most TVs these days (unless you have some specific application like gaming or, lol, video over USB) and I am not dying with worry over here on behalf of the buyer. But the question was what the options are, and if any are (for the money) BETTER than this one. So I respectfully ask you to limit your comments questioning the value of extra and improved features. If you want to say that there is a diminishing value, of course I agree - I would like to see if there are any better options at the roughly $570 asking price for this.

I should add, if I didn't mention it earlier, that it would have to be something Best Buy can get ahold of and quickly, because part of the deal is that they are picking up the huge old set, so even a much better screen would end up costing a lot more if separate arrangements had to be made for moving the 50" screen.

[fagin]

If a TV is 1080 HD and supports 24p processing then why do you think it wouldn't do it properly?

I'm not sure the assumption is that all support correct 24p processing. A caveat to be aware of if you're a potential buyer wanting to use BD sources imo. Some may not even "notice" juddering on motion from this type of source / material, but hence it being prudent to mention it.

Things like this are useful to be aware of when looking for a TV imo.

Back lit blooming is another area that's worth being aware of. Some TV's (LED/LCD) are terrible with this and can be quite a shock when you're not aware of it's possibility within a set.

[rCadeGaming]

1080/24 material is 1080/24 material. If it judders its because its at a low framerate to begin with.

No, you don't understand.

Do you realize that a TV's refresh rate in Hz just means frames per second? A 60Hz LCD is literally locked to physically displaying 60 frames per second.

24fps film is of course less smooth than a higher frame rate, but this is made a lot worse when it must be converted to 60fps before actually being displayed. 60 doesn't divide evenly by 24, so simple processing could cause some frames to be displayed twice and others three times. Different TV's could handle this differently.

If you go into any TV store and saw a 60hz, 120hz or 240hz TV, would you be able to tell the difference between them?

On the other hand, 120Hz or 240Hz do divide evenly by 24fps, which is a big advantage, as the OP noted. So yes, a knowledgeable person would be able to tell the difference with several different types of source material.

Just like with MP3's, the higher the hz, the less you'll notice.

I have a quality sound system, so I can easily hear the difference between an MP3 or other compressed format (even if it does have a high sample rate) and a FLAC (lossless, uncompressed) audio file. If you can't tell, you have a crappy sound system or poor hearing.

Essentially 1080 is throughput the TV rather than processed. The only filters applied are those you choose with your remote.

There can be other things going on, and I think some TV's don't allow you to disable everything you would like to.

You aren't helping anyone, you are aggressively presenting your incorrect assumptions as fact. Spreading misinformation is a huge disservice to everyone here. Fagin may have been hinting at this, but he is being nicer and more subtle than I am. Sorry to be an ass, but this bothered me.

-

To the OP, I would agree with Fagin's points, especially this:

So ability to delivery judder free video from various formats, screen blooming, black levels, contrast levels, ability to deal with SD material (and this is literally the tip of the iceberg) is not an issue as long as we only concern ourselves with matching (for BD sakes) pixel mapping?

I'm not an expert like him, and I'm a lot less picky about my movie setup than I am about native res CRT gaming stuff, but one of the things that bothers me a lot is poor black levels, which you can get with a lot of current TV's. I've seen some pretty jarring backlight blooming from the edges on LED's too.

The other thing is the motion adaptive processing that some TV's have. Ever seen something where the moving things in the foreground look disconnected from the background? I don't know exactly how to describe it. Some people don't seem to notice it, but it looks really artificial and just awful to me.

I think in some stores you can bring in your own source materials for comparison. I'd try that, and see what can be done with the picture adjustments for the models you're considering. I'd also see what the return policy is, because things can look a lot different in the dark at your house.

I was really constricted in choices because I had to have something with low input lag. If you don't need to play games on this, that should really open things up.

The last thing is that if you really want to watch movies, you should be thinking more about audio. Sure, a sound bar will sound better than basic TV speakers, but it's still crap compared to proper speakers. I've installed these things professionally. There's only so much you can get out of undersized cones in a tiny box.

Watching movies is a much better experience with clear, full range directional surround. Same for any TV drama with good production values, and of course it doubles as a great music system.

[Fudoh]

I've been chosing my TVs for movies for over a decade now. I'm happy if they work fine with my gaming gear as well, but movies have always been the top priority. Just a few notes:

The large LCD panels are too slow to "just" display 1080p24 signals. If you were to just send the signal straight to the panel, you'd be battling the high response rates of those large panels. This would cause the motion resolution drop to a few hundred lines only (compared to 1080p). That's why processing and IFC (interframe creation) is neccessary on today's LCD/LED sets. This doesn't neccessarily mean that the you get some video look due to added frames. Creating a higher refresh rate in order to push the panel can also be done by inserting black frames.

Most of the top TV manufacturers today still utterly fail at their IFC algorithms. Many TV sets just allow for "all or nothing", meaning that you're either stuck with the choppy 24p playback (or, in other words, as smooth as genuine 24p can get) or you get the full "video look" treatment. Only a few TV sets allow deeper settings. Sony's sets are fantastic in this regard. You can to chose by hand if you want 24, 48, 72 or 96 "motion frames", can add black frames or a strobing backlight manually as well. I can honestly say, that I hate bad IFC settings and I hate when movies look like video, but once you're used to watch BDs on a Sony set with 48Hz, you'll never go back to straight 24fps. The increased smoothness while retaining a 100% perfect film look is astonishing.

On most the better TVs 60Hz signals vs. 24Hz signals doesn't matter anymore. You usually get excellent IVTC (inverse telecine) functions, which just get rid of the duplicated frames, creating the full "24p experience" from any 60Hz *movie* material. Video material stays 60Hz of course.

LED TV sets are the standard by now, but unfortunately they struggle to show the same fantastic colors you could achieve on good LCD sets with CCFL backlights. Many of the manufactures have switched to glossy panels and/or glass front sheets. They make the colors pop more than usual and hide the fact that the color range of LED backlights is rather poor. Plasma sets have superior color rendition. Plasma sets also have better blacks than any edge-lit LED sets. Full back-lit LED sets with local dimming match the black levels on Panasonic's top range plasma sets. Blooming can happen, but believe me, the total blacks are totally worth it and it sounds much worse than it is, especially if the TV sets aren't driven with their full light output, but at properly calibrated levels.

EDIT: oh, and forget about pixel mapping and scaling and such. Most people can't even tell good 720p material from a 1080p BD when sitting 8 ft from a 50" screen.

[rCadeGaming]

Fudoh, any idea what the motion effect I've noticed is?

[Ed Oscuro]

You aren't helping anyone, you are aggressively presenting your incorrect assumptions as fact. Spreading misinformation is a huge disservice to everyone here. Fagin may have been hinting at this, but he is being nicer and more subtle than I am. Sorry to be an ass, but this bothered me.

I've been trying to get through to neorichie for some years but it hasn't happened yet. Still, you laid out everything nicely, and I hope he comes back to the thread to read what you wrote because it's nicely comprehended, only suffering by being a point-by-point refutal.

The set turned out to be a LG 42LM3700 UC. Some stuff looks very nice on it, and it doesn't exhibit dot crawl like the set it replaced (which had been hooked up in a sub-optimal fashion, however; yes, even people buying expensive 50" sets weren't using the fancy component connectors on back). It is somewhat glaring now when 1080 (or close) resolution footage is interspersed with lower-resolution footage, as I noticed in a section of the Battle 360 Blu-Ray which had some lower resolution footage of modern fighter jets for a few seconds. So one of the great "benefits" is that everything looks like a video played back on your computer.

For some reason I don't really like the way this set looks, even when viewing material that is 1080 through an HDMI connection. I think I prefer my own smaller PC display for 1080p material.

rCadeGaming - are you seeing some kind of overdrive overshoot?

[rCadeGaming]

I think I prefer my own smaller PC display for 1080p material.

If it's also an LCD, maybe you're not noticing problems so much just because it's smaller?

rCadeGaming - are you seeing some kind of overdrive overshoot?

No, you don't see any really noticeable trailing or ghosting. Whatever's moving looks sharp, but the border between the moving object and the background looks oversharp. It looks like the foreground and background are disconnected; like the foreground object wasn't actually filmed with the background, it was just pasted in. I have an idea that it's some kind of processing to reduce motion blur (pure speculation though), but it makes everything look so artificial that it looks much worse.

It's hard to describe, but it makes it hard to even concentrate on the movie.

You know when you're watching a good movie, and you kind of lose yourself. You're not thinking about how you're sitting in front of a TV watching something on a display. You just feel like you're perceiving the events in the movie; you're contemplating the plot; you're wrapped up in the characters, their motivations, and what will come of it. When something jarring happens with the audio or video, it blows the whole illusion of immersion, and you have to try and get back into it.

I was watching a movie at a friend's house and it was really bad. He didn't seem to have any idea of it (the friend whose house I was at), so I didn't say anything. Then in the car on the way home, my other friend who was with me said he noticed it; and I hadn't even brought it up.

The movie we were watching was a 1080p Blu Ray rip from a torrent, and the exact same file doesn't have the problem on my TV, it looks great. In fact, we were using the same HTPC at his house, I had brought mine over. The only thing different about the setup was the TV.

I've seen it on a lot of TV's at stores too.

[neorichieb1971]

To all the comments you stated above. Go into the TV shop and look with your eyes and listen with your ears.

What your basically doing here is asking someone (supposedly) more qualified than yourself to do the foot work for you.

If you want to buy a TV or a sound system based on scientific data without looking with your eyes, or listening with your ears then go right ahead. Personally this is my criteria for buying. Also reviews, but only somewhat.

I just bought a camcorder, based on REAL LIFE FOOTAGE. I didn't read the spec sheet too much.

All of what you said has merit to some point, but what I am saying is that you would be hard pushed to notice a difference most of the time. Your worried too much about how the result is achieved rather than the result itself. The other factor is budget. Size is important with a $500 budget. Thats probably the biggest viewing differential thats really going to make much difference in the real world at that budget level.

I have 500 blu rays in my collection, 250+ games, 3 arcade machines and 25+ PCB's. Your talking like i've never seen a screen before.

I suppose in your guys world there is a massive difference between blu ray players as well. Like the Oppo and PS3? For me though, can't tell the difference. Couldn't do a blind test successfully.

Based on your comments above, I would imagine you could EASILY identify the exact processing technique of each TV. I call your bluff on that one. Like I said, your more worried about how a result is achieved, rather than the result itself. At $500, there are 100's of TV's to choose from and they are all available at your local store with HD material fed through.

[Fudoh]

Fudoh, any idea what the motion effect I've noticed is?

sure, that's a high-level IFC setting. Most IFC implementations use excessive sharpening of the background combined with 96fps (or more). This results in the break between persons moving in the foreground and static backgrounds.

[rCadeGaming]

If you want to buy a TV or a sound system based on scientific data without looking with your eyes, or listening with your ears then go right ahead.

At no point did anyone say to buy purely on numbers and theory. I specifically recommend viewing TV's in stores.

Based on your comments above, I would imagine you could EASILY identify the exact processing technique of each TV. I call your bluff on that one.

You're calling my bluff on something I never said and you just made up? Darn, you got me.

Like I said, your more worried about how a result is achieved, rather than the result itself.

Again you're presenting your assumption as fact, and it's simply not true. At the end of the day, the result itself is of course my priority; but how do we achieve that result? We're talking about how the result is achieved because: 1. it's interesting 2. knowing how the result is achieved makes it a lot easier to achieve it.

I have heard the argument that "I can't tell the difference, so it's not worth it" applied to everything from audio to video to game controls to motorcycles. The thing is that once you learn a little you find that it very much is worth it. Some people find that a deeper appreciation of something makes it much more enjoyable.

I didn't know anything about all of this just a few years ago, but now that I do I find it all to be so much more interesting and rewarding. Yes, refining your preferences makes them harder to satisfy, but I wouldn't go back if I could, even though it would make things a lot easier and cheaper.

A dog is easily pleased. A dog with can be very happy with very little. I prefer being a human.

[fagin]

Ignorance can be bliss.... Especially when you realise how much cash you may have saved by being ignorant! A statement that could have saved me a lot of cash over the years.

A little knowledge can be dangerous.
A lot of knowledge can mean great expense.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think I prefer my own smaller PC display for 1080p material.

If it's also an LCD, maybe you're not noticing problems so much just because it's smaller?

It could just be that I haven't seen much 1080p content on the new set. Cable programing through a DVR is coming in via coaxial cable and isn't yet HD so it looks somewhat blurred.

My PC display is an IPS-H panel, although without an LED backlight, whereas the TV has who knows what for panel tech. I also get the benefit of various implementations of interpolation (via VLC) and stretching (via the graphics card) on the PC, whereas with the TV it has a rather ugly kind of stretching for non-HD material at least. Of course, the TV also doesn't get aspect ratios baked-in to the input like most video files on the PC.

[rCadeGaming]

You don't mean you're actually plugging a coaxial cable into the back of the TV do you? Of course that would look terrible.

Do you just mean that it's coaxial going into the cable box? At that point the coaxial cable is just carrying a digital signal to be decoded by the cable box, it's not carrying analog video that the cable box upscales or something. Any good cable box will output at least 720p via HDMI, and it will only have to upscale if you're watching "SD" channels which would be 480i. Just make sure you're subscribed to and watching "HD" channels.

[Ed Oscuro]

Obviously I don't mean coax when I'm talking about 1080p. I just don't much prefer 1080p over my own VGA (yes!) monitor for 1080p so far. Maybe that'll change, but my monitor is a matte surface while the TV is somewhat glossy, as well. Just a few issues that are hard to sort out.

Interestingly enough, a prerecorded VHS of Jurassic Park looked and sounded quite nice (had to laugh at the reformatted for your screen disclaimer) and detailed, even while plugged in as only composite video. This set doesn't have an SVHS jack, and it appears that a combination DVD / VHS player's component video cables don't work for VHS (hinted at by the separate output jacks for VHS and combined jacks only for audio; I did see black and white for a moment when unplugging component while only the first cable was still plugged in, though).

[rCadeGaming]

Fudoh, any idea what the motion effect I've noticed is?

sure, that's a high-level IFC setting. Most IFC implementations use excessive sharpening of the background combined with 96fps (or more). This results in the break between persons moving in the foreground and static backgrounds.

Ok, did some quick searching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

[neorichieb1971]

In regards to comments above. We are talking about a $500 TV here. Its no Pioneer Kuro.

As for sharpness, on any digital flat screen TV, turn it off, zero, nadda. Its just a filtering technique which adds zero sharpness at all, it just produces a halo effect. You can notice it on upscaled material like DVD especially. Its the first thing I do when buying a TV. The image will look just as sharp with it off. HD requires no sharpness at all DVD i'd probably have on +1.



The best picture is almost always obtained and judged by the content, not the TV. You can't buy a crappy reviewed blu ray of Goldeneye and expect your 96hz gizz TV make it look like Avatar.. It ain't happening. No matter how much you spend. Your better off just buying movies that get 9/10 for Picture quality and a half decent TV. Your pretty much most of the way there already. HDMI takes almost all the fun out of TV buying.

Thats why I feel all this TV talk is gibberish. Personally, I feel the remote control is more of a selling factor these days than the picture quality. Because that can make or break my viewing pleasure if its plasticky with horrible buttons. There is no half decent TV that I couldn't figure out how to get acceptable viewing material out of it..

1080p is 1080p. The smaller the screen, the more pixels per square inch there is. You would expect a brighter, tighter image from a smaller PC monitor compared to say a 42" monitor. In fact PC monitors blow TV's away for clarity. Less in this case, is more.

[Ed Oscuro]

1080p is 1080p. The smaller the screen, the more pixels per square inch there is.

Please take a look at this sentence and ask yourself two questions:

1.) Is anybody likely to be stunned to find this out? (The "Am I wasting my time and/or habitually talking down to the other forumers?" question, the answer of which gives the reverse of the other form of the question)
2.) Did anybody actually disagree with this? (The "Am I grinding an axe and/or actually comprehending what other people are saying?" question)

The best picture is almost always obtained and judged by the content, not the TV.

I can't find a way to read this so that it makes perfectly good sense.

If your Blu-Ray copy isn't as good as an HD-DVD release, or not as good as the source material, SO WHAT? You're still limited to using that source material! Blu-Ray won the format wars so, all things considered, the source material means little unless you want to tell people they are wrong for having to buy a specific movie. Casablanca is muddy and fuzzy at points (sometimes on purpose), who ever could believe it? And Welcome Back Kotter wasn't filmed at all, but was an early taped production with limited resolution. Horrors!

The more important question is: How does this great picture spring fully formed out of the content? Is the television a mere blank tablet or mirror to the art, ready to show all the glories or faults of the data? Are filmmakers wrong to film with 24 frames per second? Is Peter Jackson wrong to film The Hobbit at 48FPS? That's not the point! It's the television's job to reproduce as closely to the artist's intention as possible. The set can always help a film or hurt it. A set that can't show every frame for the same amount of time as the others is not really up to the task. For a lot of the 30/60FPS content this set is likely to display, I don't think there is much problem. But if anybody tries to watch the upcoming release of The Hobbit on it, watch out.

1080p is 1080p. The smaller the screen, the more pixels per square inch there is.

Bonus Round: You JUST SAID 1080p = 1080p. As soon as you start bringing up things which make one implementation of 1080p different from another you don't get to say "1080p is 1080p" to mean everything is the same (when you want it to be). Quite obviously there are lots of complications that you either don't know of (which would be surprising since one has been mentioned a few times) or didn't want to admit other people have fairly brought up. People have mentioned one of those complications here - frame rate and pulldowns - and I don't have the attention span to figure out if you're just repeating yourself blindly or just coming up with random phrases to look like a response.

It's just a word salad full of cocksure propositions with no justification. We can only have a reasonable discussion about what goes into a good TV if you're willing to identify the important qualities with us, rather than use statements like "1080p is 1080p" as convenient to block out things you don't want to talk about.

For my part I had little enough input into what TV was actually bought. It looks like a reasonable enough set, although for movie use I think there are a lot of compromises to it, some based on price. I am not bent on justifying somebody else's purchase, obviously, but I don't see what statements have possibly brought out all this defensiveness.

[rCadeGaming]

I feel all this TV talk is gibberish.

Then why are you here? Go away.

[neorichieb1971]

Well at least admit your all a bit geeky. I don't mind if you want to invest loads of time into "how does a TV work". I'd like to see test results that prove your learning experience has gained you something.

I've seen some pretty amazing setups in my time. None of them were from people who talk like you guys. They just threw some money at the situation, got a bit of advice from here and there, put the stuff together and voila. You got yourself a great home theater experience.

I've read nothing in this thread that you guys have written that makes me want to buy a specific kind of TV. (the specs you seem to analyze in a kind of scientific way).

Now if you had something to show like this -

http://www.blu-ray.com/community/galler ... lderid=282

Then I might take notice. After all, if presentation is what you seek................ The guy even has a chart for color and audio frequencies, but nothing is mentioned about pulldown, framerates or how any sort of conversion is done. If you guys talked about cars you would talk about how petrol fuel is converted into energy. When 99.99999% of people just know, if you put your foot down, you go faster.

I apologize sincerely for the interruption of this thread.