New tv!!! Yay

nguyendot

I didn't want to threadjack wutadumsn23's post so I made my own

Got rid of my 42" JVC Teledock LCD 1080p on saturday, so I needed to replace it. I went to Best Buy to purchase a new one (I didn't want to wait...otherwise I was ordering the 47" 120hz Sharp from dell for $799).

I looked at the 50" Panasonic 1080p Plasma for $979... no stock.
I looked at the 50" Samsung 1080p Plasma for $979... stock but ehhh
There was the Insignia 46" 1080p 120hz + bluray for $799 but no stock...
I was going to go cheap or go great.. It's for the bedroom so either way I didn't care much. Anything would have been better than the JVC I got rid of. The color was all off on it when watching SD programming.

Well nothing was in stock except the 50" Samsung...which I would have put in the living room instead since it's so large. I have the 46" Samsung B550 in the living room and I like it pretty well. (I got it free as a service plan replacement for my Westinghouse 47" 1080p). I searched every store and there weren't any great deals.

There was a 40" W series Sony at Ultimate electronics for $879, but it was smaller than my last tv, which while huge in my room in terms of size, is very small when my girlfriend and I play video games together from bed. I wanted larger. After stopping at Sams club to look at the Vizio's (I hear they're popular!) and being disappointed that they didn't have any in stock... Which by the way they sent out a flyer to my dad that said they had a 42" Tru-LED 1080p 240hz for $698. LIES! There is no such thing. Anyways I went to Sears with my dad and we found only one "decent" deal.. the 46" B6000 Samsung LED tv for $1299. Not horrible... Aw F' it I said. I took the tag, went back to Best Buy since the Sears guy took like 20 minutes to see if they had any. Bought it with RewardZone and took it home.

Does it look good? Yeah. Does it have the odd light leaks from the edges? Yeah but it's not horrible and hardly noticeable unless it's a completely dark screen. The contrast ratio is much better on this tv than the last. It fills almost my entire wall that's available. I need to run the cables in the wall and remove my curtains as they're in the way.

The TV is so thin it hits my window sills below the tv. My old tv did not. This is a problem as the speakers fire downward, into the window sill. Pretty much all TV sound is muffled. For me it's not a big deal, I have my Polk RT55's in there to handle the sound.

I'm still playing with it... more to come.

Sherardp

Sounds good bro. I would calibrate that screen and you may notice better image and allot less light spill also. GL.

mdaudioguy

nguyendot wrote: »

I didn't want to threadjack wutadumsn23's post so I made my own
[...]
I was going to go cheap or go great..

Screw it, I'm threadjacking!
Congrats on the new TV! Sounds like you've had a lot of experience purchasing them.
Your line above made me laugh. I recently had to replace a slowly dying 43" Samsung DLP, so I started my shopping about 2 weeks before its imminent death. I looked everywhere, but kept coming back to a 50" LG plasma at Sears for $650. The evening after the old TV died, I went to Sears and bought what was apparently the last one. Got home, set it up, everbody loved it. So, I went cheap and the family thought it was great!!

It gets better - a few hours later, I'm clearing the bookmark I had for it on the Sears website, and it shows up as a special 1 day sale price for $585! I go back the next day and they credit me the difference.
Oh yeah, the family doesn't know the difference between 720p and 1080p... Don't tell them!
And, honestly, it still looks great to me.

wutadumsn23

Sherardp wrote: »

Sounds good bro. I would calibrate that screen and you may notice better image and allot less light spill also. GL.

+1, calibrating it will make a very noticable difference. Thanks for not threadjacking, not that I would have cared anyway, lol. Congrats on the new set and I hope to be the pround owner of a 65" Plasma myself very soon.

-Jeff

nguyendot

I looked at a bunch of tvs... I wanted the Panasonic 50" 1080p but they had no stock... All they had stock on was the LED tvs since they're pretty pricey. I got another $200 off so it wasn't horrible. If they had it for $1299 they probably would have been out of stock too.

I found out last night that you can firmware hack it to play h.264 movies up to 1080p over the network. I plugged my router into it (bridged mode) and I streamed my copy of Watchmen 1080p to it. Looks almost as good as the Blu-ray I have of it.

I calibrated it last night to my liking. What's funny is at first you think the picture is muted compared to say "dynamic" mode. After watching my calibrated picture for 30 minutes I changed it back to dynamic and the color was blooming and almost glowing because of how bright it was.

On another note... For the price of this set i could have gotten a 55" Panasonic plasma or a 52" Sharp 120hz...same as my dads. His tv has an awesome black level, and is 6" larger. Actually the 52" Sharp is $50 cheaper right now.


Mmmmm

DMara

Give it some time to break in, too. I usually calibrate my TV after a couple months of use (I don't know if the break-in period is needed, but that's my experience). For Samsung LCD/LED, their default settings are quite good.

nguyendot

I doubt this tv will need any break in.. the CCFL isn't going to wear similarly to LEDs that are in this unit. I'll give it a month. Thus far it is quite impressive. If I don't like it I'll trade it for something else like my dads 52" Sharp 120hz. I have a 46 B550 in the living room already so I can't say I dislike Samsung panels