whatever

Excited with the prospect of having a dedicated 'fun' room in our future home (games room/media room), I was looking around on the internet at televisions, dvd's, stereos, speakers, videos etc...
Mr Whatever can not believe that there are such things as tv's measuring 50" to 70" - he thought our 32" widescreen was mega! Anyway, we made some money on selling all our TV's and stuff here to go towards buying new stuff there, and I was surfing and mentally totting up how much each item would cost and suddenly I thought, surely it must be possible to just buy a package that includes all you need for a decent home entertainment system?... and maybe even save a few pennies in a package deal?

Can anyone direct me to a site or advise what they bought/would buy? Any particularly good/bad makes? Also... sorry if this is a stupid one but what is the difference between a regular TV and a Projection TV? I've never heard of a projection tv before

sibsie

Forget projection TV's. It's High Def you want.

Best bet is to pop along to Best Buy when you arrive. They have some great deals and we just got a $100 rebate on our new TV.

edwords

You can get some great deals on conventional (CRT) TVs. Manufacturer and retailers are trying to get them out of inventory to make room for flat panel models.

USBound

best deal I saw was at frys... philips 55inch HDTV on sale for $999 delivered.... I bought one

I haven't seen an all encompassing deal where you get everything... but I do know that trawling the net will get you some pretty good stuff, currently at frys you can get a pretty damn good 6.1 surround sound setup for 399... I'd suggest just looking around.

andy

Pimpbot

Costco has some great deals on big screens. They had a 62" HDTV for $1500 around christmas time. Best Buy is probably the place I'd go shop though.

Pulaski

Projection TVs are on there way out. The picture quality isn't great - think of a old-fashioned slide projected onto the back of a translucent white screen, and so flat panel/ hi-def is certainly the way to go.

Having said that, make sure to go to a store and compare what you are buying with other products. I recently noticed (I am not actively looking for home entertainment gear right now) a Sony flat panel hi-def TV directly above an identical looking, but cheaper, Samsung TV, and playing the same DVD. The Sony had a much superior picture - a diagonal line looked straight, whereas the Samsung showed the line as noticably "stepped" due to the much larger pixel size. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for!

USBound

hmm... I'd have to disagree here... I went to frys and saw about maybe 10 TV's that I would have bought based upon feature set and price. All the ones on show had problems with screen burn and general quality BUT this is to be expected. Projection TV's don't react well to being moved and need to be re-setup (convergence) when you move them. This takes about 5mins on the remote for most of them. The TV's in Frys that I saw had all been moved around extensively but not re-setup... so they looked quite bad. I asked for a demo, the guy spent 2mins on the remote and eh voila... a perfectly sharp picture sitting right beside a similar sized Plasma with $2000 difference... I'm afraid I'd take the projection TV every time (it was a sony f55 plasma over a Phillips HD55).

Each to their own, everyone will judge these things differently BUT don't go simply on whats on show... ask them to demo it fully setup for you; they won't do it just in case you might buy, you really do need to ask.

andy

dunroving

One thing I've noticed with the projection TVs is that when you are viewing from an angle the picture is worse (gets "dusky" - or disappears completely if you're at a sharp enough angle). For that reason, I'd be wary of a projection TV if you will have a lot of people watching it at the same time (e.g., family) - because unless you have stadium seating some of them will not be viewing "head on"

USBound

this is the case beyond about 60degrees on my current TV... however I have no seating outside of 60 degrees so.. no problems.

from this I'd say if you are planning on having the seating quite close (with say 8ft) of the TV then don't get a plasma... unless its just you watching that is. I have about 12ft between me and the TV and all my seating is fine.

andy

Pulaski

But for a projection TV you also have to be prepared to forego about three feet of your room (if placed against a flat wall), or approaching six feet if placed in a corner. If you have a family room that can be measured in acres then that's very nice for you, but for the rest of us the size of a projection TV also has to be an issue.

USBound

a 32 inch sony CRT is about 20inches deeper than my current TV whilst only being about 10inches smaller in width.

veryfunny

Front or rare projection? plasmatron,? what are you looking for in terms of quality?

veryfunny

Have you seen the picture quality form a DLP front projector? Front Projection will be here for a long time!

Pulaski

You'd have said that about VHS videos five years ago - now you'd be hard pushed to find one that costs more than $100, and between Tivos and DVDs the market is shrinking rapidly.

I say that projection TVs will be all-but gone in five years. At the moment the manufacturers are milking the market by holding the price of flat panel TVs artificially high knowing that many Americans will buy a "bargain" projection TV now, and then junk it in a couple of years to buy a flat panel screen as the prices come down.

veryfunny

I say thee nay! DLP projectors are better than anything you have on the market right now in terms of quality and size.

Plamatron has few disadvantages, especially when it comes to the gas it requires every 10 or so years etc.

Organic screens, still away off before they become a reality.

DLP projectors have both Quallity and size and can be used in a light or dark room.

Video tapes were superseeded in quality with Laserdiscs which came out 2 yrs after videotapes but did get supported as much, a new version of that is used for DVD's.

Speaking of DVD's these have already being upgraded with blue laser lens and better storage capabilities.

Technolgy never stands still!