Upgrade Time! Big Screen HDTV or Audio/Speakers? (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Jacob]

Your room is smaller than mine. 57" will put in the closet or next door. Unless your looking to a bigger house in the relative near future, it would be way, way too big. Go look at the little Toshiba, it's a great size for smaller rooms. Mine is in a room 10 x 12 with a similar viewing distance. The larger sets, will show their pixels at that close a range. I bought mine at Best Buy last year for near $2k, and it sure beats CRTs. Now if you want to go into my main theater, then we're talking front projection and tunes.
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[Mike Kao]

Well the pixelated material (TV, VCR, video games) would all be in 4:3, which would shave off quite a bit of viewing screen since this is a widescreen TV correct? Wouldn't I effectively be reduced to about 40" of viewable material? If that is the case than I don't think it should be a problem from 6-7' away right?

 

[Gordon Moore]

Audio backs up the visuals, but the impact will come from the screen size (except for the LFE). Wicked sound and a small screen loses something (as does a big screen and poor sound). Find the balance, in my opinion, I'd say upgrade the screen because the audio side of things is adequete and unless you put big money into your upgrade, it will not hold the justification that upgrading the screen will provide (it will be a night and day difference and not neccessarily so with an audio upgrade(read: more subtle). Personally I'd look into the DLP/ HTPC solution, and hold off on HDTV/ready for now, especially if the majority of your viewing is for movies. Keep the TV you have for regular broadcast. Definately consider projection.

 

[Dustin B]

I think it comes down to more the amount of TV vs Movie viewing you will be doing rather than a video vs audio makes a bigger difference arguement.
If you are still watching a lot of TV then I don't think buying a nice HD ready 16x9 TV is a wise move. You'll either have to watch every thing stretched horizontally or risk burn in on your nice new set. Plus there is the issue the others mentioned of uncertain standards with HDTV. Although if your TV viewing is limited and you watch a lot of movies than a nice 16x9 set tied to a good prog scan DVD player would be what I'd recommend first.
You could buy as big of a 4:3 set as you can afford that is HD ready and has anamorphic squeeze. But again, if you had the choice you'd rather have the broadcast TV smaller than the movie since its rez will be lower. This would only be good if your TV viewing is a lot more than your movie viewing.
If you decide the video is what you want to upgrade I think the best option is what a few others recommended above. Keep the 32 for broadcast TV and get as good of a DLP or LCD projector as you can. Although I think it would be nice to have more than $2500 for this.
Not really knowing your complete situation or habits and making a generalization, if it was me, I'd do the audio upgrade now and wait for the TV thing to settle down a bit. If your sub is lack luster, making a slight improvement to your speakers and a big improvement to you sub will have a dramatic affect. Then save and save so you can get a really nice projector or RPTV later on(in both cases hopefully one that is based on a technology that can't suffer from burn) that will be a little more future proof as well.
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Dustin
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[Scott Merryfield]

Also, I forgot to mention that my theater room is relatively small (approximately 10' x 11'), and viewing distance from the telivision is about 6'-7'. Keeping this in mind, would 57" be too much?

I have noticed other members here state that they sit this close to that size screen, but I tried sitting 7 feet from our 56-inch Toshiba (56H80) when we first purchased the set. The eye strain, even when watching DVD's, was too much for me. We rearranged our family room, and the main seating area is now about 12 feet from the screen. In my case, 9-10 feet is the closest I would feel comfortable sitting from a 57-inch set.
Toshiba has a new 50-inch 16x9 model, and Mitsubishi sells a 47-inch 16x9 set. These may be a better size for your room.
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