TV shopping

[forgotten_aria]

Many years ago we bought the cheapest flat panel (plasma) TV we could find. It's an ok TV, has a bit of plasma burn in (from pretty much the start of it's life) but the darks have very little differentiation in them and so certain video are very hard to see what's actually going on. It's also a bit loud and power consuming, so we've been looking at TVs.

So on my mother's recommendation we sent to see the Samsungs, but apparently they did something wrong this generation and they don't look good.

A apparently JVC makes this amazing TV, but is only sold IN STORE at paul's TV... weird. (JLE47BC3001)

We looked at the 3d things. The shutter glasses are still horrible. LG's passive was surprisingly nice, but even the 240hz had motion jitter (in 2d). I think they actually went too far the OTHER way on that front. (47LM7600) 3d also still seems like a gimmicky feature, despite how long TV's have been offering it.

EDIT: there's a blasted setting to reduce this. It's called "judder"

We're possibly considering some of the cheaper no names, but we're mostly deciding that now is not the time for a new TV. Basically everything is too expensive for what we'd get, so no new TV yet.

Comments

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Vizio has a bunch of pretty damned reasonable TVs, overall.

[frolain.livejournal.com]

I bought a Panasonic 46ST30 at the beginning of this year. If I recall I saw sales as low as $800, but I ended up buying at a slightly higher price. It my first flat panel and it was a huge improvement over my old tube. It is 3D capable, but I didn't buy any shutter glasses so I don't use that. I got this model because it had a better refresh rate than the ones without 3D.

[avacon.livejournal.com]

I'm also a fan of Panasonic plasmas (I just like the idea of Plasma where each pixel emits light better than LCD where the pixels filter a backlight). Similar to @frolain, I also got a Panasonic 3D display a year or two ago because it had better specs even if we rarely use the 3D. The 3D on plasmas is also MUCH better than on LCDs. Costco sometimes has some good prices/packages as does Amazon.

[bryant]

Store TVs are tuned poorly for living rooms so that they're more punchy in stores. And then most stores don't ever touch them even when they need calibration. I hate TV shopping.

The Wirecutter likes a few Panasonic models. I can't attest to these recommendations but their review aggregation methodology seems reasonable.