Best LCD or DLP Wall Hanging TV For $1500 Max. (1 Viewer)

So my parents are building a new house and want a 40ish inch wall hanging TV for the living room. The price limit is $1500 max and that includes tax, tags and title so to speak.

So assuming that I don't want plasma what are my best options?

I would prefer full 1080 capability.

Please let me know why you suggest whatever you suggest.

Thanks for any help.

Well, first off, there are no "wall-hanging" DLP tv's in that size range. In fact, there aren't ANY wall-hang-able DLP tv's that I know of. The only RPTV that can be wall mounted is the new 58" LCoS set from JVC, which is way over your budget.

So, that leaves flat panel LCD and plasma for you to consider, if it must hang on a wall. At $1500 out-the-door for 1080p, I'd say look at the Westinghouse LVM-42w2, which should be well within your budget if you shop around. For an even bigger display, the Westinghouse LVM-47w1 is available at just over your budget (only ONE place I found had it for less than $1500) but it's a much bigger picture, which with 1080p is important.

A lot of people will say that at the 40" size range you should just go with a 720p set. I don't agree. Most HD content now and in the future is/will be 1080i or 1080p. Only a few network tv channels broadcast 720p, and all HD discs are 1080p. Video games are more common in 720p, but 720p scales up to a 1080p tv better than 1080i scales down to 720p. In summary, for a 720p TV, you need really good processing to scale 1080 images down. But with a 1080p display, less processing is required (only de-interlacing for 1080i, and easy scaling for 720p) so you can get by with a "lesser" tv. So even if you can't see the increased resolution on a 40" set, you very well might see fewer processing artifacts on a 1080p set.

One caveat on the Westinghouse TVs... they are not TVs... they are monitors. Both models I suggested have NO built-in tuner of any kind. You must have an external tuner: e.g. a cable or satellite box, or a set-top Off-The-Air (OTA) tuner box for an antenna signal. The first two are very common for most folks, but if your family gets it's TV signal off the air via an antenna, then you'll need to find an OTA tuner box, which are getting hard to find these days. Although good used ones are probably pretty common.

A couple of reviews for those Westinghouse 1080p LCD panels:

42"
http://www.hometheatermag.com/lcds/506west/

47"
http://www.ultimateavmag.com/flatpan...1006westlvm47/

They liked the 42" better... interesting, you'd think both models would enjoy the same pros and suffer the same cons. So, take both reviews to heart regardless of which one you might consider buying.