Hey guys, I am looking at picking up a flat screen TV. I am looking for one in the 42-50" range and most likely looking at a plasma and under $1k. Any suggestions for a tv that is going to give me the best bang for my buck? My priorities are Price/Screen Size/Image Quality/connections. I was looking at Best Buy for some ideas, they had an Isignia 720 50" on sale last week for 700$ and a 42" Samsung 720 for $680. PC connection isn't mandatory isn't mandatory but would be nice, this will mostly be used for watching movies from netflix, with bluray, and HDTV for sports and such. Any ideas and suggestions would be appreciated.
By far, I would reccomend the Samsung over Insignia. A 720p 40" for around $700 is not a bad price. I have my 46" LCD Samsung for 3 years now, and I love it. The picture quality is great, the performance is great, and in my experience other brands haven't stood the test. Definitely shy away from LG. I have had nothing but problems with them on my other TV/monitors. Toshiba is another one I personally do not care for in terms of performance. Your best performer, imho, is Sony, but you pay out of the nose for it. If all you want is real estate, then go with the less expensive Insignia I guess. I am always one to sacrifice for quality, though, and Samsung's warranty support is supposed to be very good.
plasma is a dying tech. Sony's 40" v5100 usually hangs out at around $1000 dollars at places like Best Buy. I could just be a retarded monkey, but IMO its a solid TV for the price. Sony's 46" s5100 is pretty much entry level but hangs around the same price as the other one I mentioned. It benefits from a larger screen. It's at Walmart for $1088. Samsung is pretty much Sony's direct competitor. I don't know their product line real well so I can't say they have in your price range.
Kinda surprised by people suggesting going with LCD over Plasma. The blacks on the LCD's didn't look very dark and most people I talked to had told me to go with plasma before.
The thing is that plasma is slowly going away. The trend in TV tech is moving towards LED backlit LCD panels and eventually OLED screens. Also, the newer LCDs are doing better and better at matching the quality of blacks offered by plasma. The final thing is, since pioneer dropped out of the game, there aren't any truly great plasmas being produced anymore. Without a true standard bearer like pioneer pushing plasma screens further, the tech is going stagnant. Just look at some of the reviews for newer plasma sets, none of them even match pioneer's plasmas which are going on 2 years old.
I guess my logic is I want what looks good now since further advances in technology will not effect how my current TV functions. Although if I wait to purchase the TV I will keep that in mind.
Yes, but even non-LED lcd panels do a fair job of producing deep blacks. I'm only pointing out that lcd has made up some significant ground on plasma since plasma doesn't have any real driving force behind it anymore. My one biggest qualm over plasma sets is that even though the blacks are deeper by virtue of the technology, the manufacturers of plasma sets lag behind in the quality of other important factors. Things like color decoding and video processing. Anyways, if you want plasma this is probably the best set you could get at around $1000. One last note, Vizio is supposed to have a pretty decent LED-backlit LCD coming out in September if I remember right. I know the 55" screen is $2200. If they release something in the 40" area it will come down a bit (probably not to the price Ironjaw is looking for though).