I bought a new HDTV…and it’s not 3D

8/10 UPDATE:
The unit arrived this morning! Absolutely beautiful. Haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet, but thought I would share the picture!

A bit of a history lesson–I have been putting off buying a new HDTV for quite some time. When I first moved to the bay area about 4-5 years ago, I bought a used 32" Westinghouse 720p LCD television, knowing that I would be moving several times and only having it in my bedroom. Shortly after, I got a job working for a home theater company which loaned me a 40" Vidikron for me to test with, 1080p of course, so that also helped with the postponement of my own purchase. That TV was in the living room and the good ol’ Westinghouse went in the bedroom. Long story short, that job ended, the TV was returned and I was stuck back to my 32" in my main living room at a lower 720p resolution. The resolution downgrade actually didn’t affect me as much as dropping a mere 8" from 40" back to 32".

I decided to have a conversation with our resident AV Expert Andrew Van Til, the very proud owner of a Panasonic VT25 3D 1080p HDTV television set, who once again encouraged me to purchase a new TV to "properly test and evaluate for MissingRemote." This would come to be the most expensive instant messenger conversation of my life, as that was a good enough sales pitch for me…and thus the hunt for the right TV began!

Let me establish my own guidelines I setup before doing any actual research:

1. I did not want to spend over $1000 — I know I will move at some point within the next few years since I’m a renter, so not worth a bigger investment to me; plus I knew at that price I could get a pretty awesome set that compared to either Vidikron or Westinghouse which are both older models would blow it away.
2. No 3D —  This is a combination of factors. Price as noted above was going to make it difficult to budget and get 3D technology, and if the TV hit my price WITH 3D, it probably wasn’t going to be a high quality set. The main reasons however are that I would have little use for it, seeing as I only subscribe to basic cable…so I would essentially be paying the extra cost for the few Blu-rays I *might* rent that would be in 3D. I know the future can hold blah blah, but that’s where budgeting only $1000 comes into play. If 3D takes over the world in 3-5 years, I can graduate this one and be able to justify buying a new one with 3D THEN.
3. No frills/extras needed — I rent an apartment, so wall mounting was OUT so it must have a stand. But as far as any technical extras go, I don’t need Netflix, Yahoo or any other crazy pointless widgets these TV companies are coming up with these days–that’s why I use an HTPC!
4. 24p Not required — This heavily would hit up against my #1 point, as it’s a very expensive feature, and I just don’t feel I would notice the difference enough to justify the price hit. Also since I’m running an Intel HTPC, I would have to deal with some issues there as well with handling the automatic rate switching.
5. Tuner not necessary — obviously since I have everything going through my HTPC, all my content goes through that including television tuning.

Now that I established my rules and baselines, here’s what I was UNSURE about:

1. Plasma or LED LCD TV — I knew the debate would run between Plasma and the local dimming LED LCD television sets
2. Brand — I figured it would come down to the major boys merely based on reliability and picture quality, as well as personal experience stories. I had good luck from a reliability standpoint with Westinghouse, but I know the quality was sub-par. Buying a TV is one where name brands actually do support the quality of the unit.
3. Size — 46-50" — I read the guides about figuring out the right
   size for your place, but knowing I might move I had to take that into
   equation. I have lived with 32" and 40", and I knew I wanted bigger, so
   it was between 46" and 50"; the 4 inches doesn’t make a huge difference,
   so I settled for that since the price jump up to 55" was pretty
   noticeable. It should be noted that I wanted to make sure I got the best quality set at a size I felt I could grow into. To quote Andrew on how to decide besides those measuring charts, "buy the biggest you can afford; it only looks big for a few weeks then it’s normal…then it’s small."

With that knowledge in mind, I was stuck doing research, taking in
online opinions and trying to find a store with the sets I was
interested in. Working in Milpitas, CA, I could only think of Fry’s
Electronics or Best Buy; both options made me cringe at the thought (I
have worked at Best Buy, so very familiar with their techniques).

Best Buy won out, although I knew there would be some glaring issues going there.
First, their demo’s are awful–they stream 720p content on all their
sets hanging on the wall. This content is anything but uniform–some is
shot in HD and looks pretty good, others like movie trailers look awful. Second, are no remote controls and no method of adjusting the picture or
changing what is playing on ANY of them. And finally, the viewing situation is anything but realistic, with flourescent lights and TV’s at all sorts of heights and elevations. SERIOUS NOTE: If you are really battling between sets, take the time and find an AV store which does a better job of displaying sets to offer a more realistic comparison. And bring your own Blu-ray you’re familiar with to watch the same scene across each set. I had the fortune to pretty much be decided on the set I was going to purchase but if you are in serious debate, do yourself the favor.

Reviews on all of the above were all very positive, so it was time for the store eye test. The good news, Best Buy had the Panasonic S2 set on the wall with the Samsung model (although annoying that the Panasonic was well above eye level). The bad news, was that they had the G25 series in its own demo area, with a Panasonic Blu-ray player connected and 1080p content streaming to it. Not exactly apples to apples. I spoke with a Best Buy rep and he gave me an awful excuse that they have to do that because it’s what the companies pay for–meaning Panasonic paid Best Buy to make sure they had more impressive content displayed on their set. And it IS more impressive, there is no debate about that. 

The Samsung 46" LCD sports an impressive list of features, but it also has a much heftier price tag of $1400 at the store. Comparing it to the very nearby S2 Panasonic Plasma left me a bit curious. The picture on the plasma looked amazing, but it did look somewhat washed out–most likely due to the demo unit being on the brightest mode possible. The Samsung looked sharper, but it also had a rather odd feeling of depth which I found off putting. Not sure if this was a setting they had enabled or if it’s just a feature of the 120Hz LED tv sets, but I was not impressed. As corny as this sounds the main item I really liked from the Samsung set was the bezel–with it’s glass appearance and blue glow, it just oozes awesomeness. But I’m not that shallow! Give me substance over flash…at least in my home theater sir!

After speaking to some TV experts I know and doing a bit more research online, I decided on the plasma–the TC-P50S2 from Panasonic for the following reasons:

1. For true blacks, unless you’re going to go way up in price of LCD’s with local dimming, it’s very difficult to beat a plasma for picture quality (I heard this fact from a number of folks, and it helps that a few experts I read all prefer plasma–including HDNation’s Robert Herron, EngadgetHD’s Ben Drawbaugh and of course, our resident AV Expert Andrew Van Til) 
2. The Panasonic plasma was the best price. It was roughly 25% less expensive than the G25 would have cost, and significantly less than the Samsung LCD would have.

I bought it through Amazon, and decided to go with the 1-year additional warranty through SquareTrade. Seemed like a worthwhile purchase at only $45 and extends after the 1 year from Panasonic. Well worth it for peace of mind in my book, but warranty’s have their lovers and haters, so you may feel quite differently about it.

So that’s it! My plasma is scheduled to arrive within the next few weeks, and you can believe I’m going to write a review on it for you all. I hope this blog has helped at least cause some thinking–so often when thinking about big purchases like this it’s easy to get carried away with what’s the "best" more so than what’s "right for me." I made sure to have criteria, speak to the right people about my train of thought, and then make sure I was getting a deal and set that I would be happy with for years. I think I’ve done all that, would love to hear everyone’s opinions. Especially from you loyal LCD fans 🙂