Wife tells me I can buy an HDTV, should I do it? Help me with my options! (1 Viewer)

[james e m]

Recently my wife and I bought a new house, which means we have a bunch of people who are coming over to see it. They always end up seeing my home theater equipment and they always end up saying something like “Now all you need is 50” TV!”, which is true, but since we just bought a new house we have no money.

That is why I was so shocked when my wife made a mention of using a 10% off coupon for Best Buy to buy a $2,000 HDTV. I hadn’t planned on buying a TV for a year or two. So I’m left wondering what I should do?

I’ve told myself that I am content waiting for the newer technologies to mature. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? The coupon is only good until the end of the month. To confuse the issue even more, my best friend’s brother works on big screen TVs for Sony and I’m pretty sure he can get me some sort of discount, but I don’t know how much.

By the way a FP is not an option and I spend about 80% of the time watching cable and about 20% watching TV. So I want quality PQ when watching standard cable.

The viewer sits about 8 feet from the TV, so what size TV should I be considering? Also, my speakers (which are non shielded) will probably have to be right next to the TV because of space limitations.


So as I see it, here are my options:

OPTION 1:

Go out and buy a nice 50”+ CRT based TV and hope that I can be happy with it for 5-10 years.

OPTION 2:

Try to convince my wife (which will be no easy task) to shell out a little more cash for a DLP (Samsung) or LCD (Sony, Zenith, Hitachi?) option. Even though I know improvements for each technology is on the horizon (HD2 chip?).

OPTION 3:

Don’t use the coupon and try to spend more money on a TV in about a year or two from now. I’d like to say I could spend $3,000 on a TV then but who knows, this may be a one time offer from my wife!

OPTION 4:

Talk to my friend’s brother about a discount on a Sony LCD TV. Although, I feel I wouldn’t be able to talk to him until I was sure I was ready to buy.

Thanks,

James

 

[Steve Schaffer]

James,

The fact is that in terms of best picture quality the crt based rptv is still superior to the DLP, LCD, and Plasma sets. Better blacks, fewer digital artifacts.

The real bonus is that crt based rptvs are also the least expensive. Most of the 50"ish crt based rptvs are available well below that $2k price point and represent imho the best value in HDTV today.

Calibrated properly you should be quite happy with one for the next 5-10 years.

From an 8 foot viewing distance a 50 inch set would be about as big as you should go, definitely not over 55-57 inches.