TV experts needed.

[PrincessChristy]

You need to check with your service provider as well. Some providers won't let you go over the 720p, so it's useless to get the 1080p, well for just watching tv anyways. I as well have been looking into flat panel tvs. I have found that Samsung has won almost all of the awards for best flat panels, with the exception of Sony winning one.

I would go with a Samsung. Lately, Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart have all had the same prices on them. Too bad you didn't get one online last Friday, they were all on sale!

Let us know what you get and if you like it. I need something that is easy to hook up (and when I say easy, I mean plug it in and turn it on). Ha.

Princess Christy

[Doobie]

Many tv's can upscale to that resolution. So if he for instance wants to play a game/watch tv at 1080p he can (not much difference in picture quality, some can tell others can't), but princess is right most providers only put out 720p content. Over the air some companies do both.

Hell get a projector, that's what I did. I got a optoma hd65 off ebay for $650 and it has a native resolution of 1280x720 but it can upscale to 1080p over hdmi. My god it was freakin awesome. I was getting a 120" picture for $650 that had good color reproduction. Btw I could have put it up to 200" if I wanted, sadly the space of my room was not big enough.

[Kesteral]

I would get a projector but I haven't got the wall space. Just one question, if I wanted to connect my laptop to my new TV and watch 1080p videos on there what connectors would I need? I can easily get blue ray quality dvd's on the net, but if I chose to play them through my laptop do I need an upscaler? Or just a regular hdmi cable.

[MomawNadon78]

Depends on the video card and what it can output. I have my desktop hooked into my hdmi port on my TV and it works awesome. My only complaint is buying movies off of iTunes, they're in widescreen format most of the time, so it's not filling my screen.

But omg, Planet Earth is AWESOME in HD.

Most, if not all, of the TV's have VGA ports, as well as HDMI ports. You'll either need to go VGA to VGA or VGA to HDMI. Check what resolutions your gfx card will output, and what runs on the TV.

[Kesteral]

Presumably VGA to VGA wont give me the proper hd resolution? It'd have to be vga to hdmi? Or hdmi to hdmi? I have a hdmi and vga slot on this laptop.

[Balemur]

Originally Posted by Kesteral

Presumably VGA to VGA wont give me the proper hd resolution? It'd have to be vga to hdmi? Or hdmi to hdmi? I have a hdmi and vga slot on this laptop.

VGA to VGA will work but wont give you a digital HD resolution. On analog you tend to have to "play" with your settings more. HDMI to HDMI or DVI to HDMI will work nearly flawlessly with the exception that DVI usually doesn't carry sound. HDMI and DVI are both able to produce a 1080p resolution of the same quality. Also digital connections do not have to be recalibrated once it's set. A 1's a 1 and a 0's a 0... digital's nice.

Originally Posted by Doobie

Many tv's can upscale to that resolution. So if he for instance wants to play a game/watch tv at 1080p he can (not much difference in picture quality, some can tell others can't), but princess is right most providers only put out 720p content. Over the air some companies do both.

Hell get a projector, that's what I did. I got a optoma hd65 off ebay for $650 and it has a native resolution of 1280x720 but it can upscale to 1080p over hdmi. My god it was freakin awesome. I was getting a 120" picture for $650 that had good color reproduction. Btw I could have put it up to 200" if I wanted, sadly the space of my room was not big enough.

It's physically impossible to upscale any picture from 720p to 1080p. You can however upscale to 1080i. The original way to see whether your TV was 1080p was to check its max resolution. If the max resolution was 1920x1080 then it's a 1080p tv. If it's 1280x720 then it's 720p. Additionally, nearly all 480p TVs can produce a 1080i picture but not a 720p.

Also most people probably don't know this but the 2 main LCD panel makers are Samsung and LG. Sony, Samsung, and "nearly" all of the other 40"/46" LCD panel tvs are using Samsung LCD panels. LG, Phillips, and "nearly" all of the other 42"/47" LCD panel tvs are using LG LCD panels. The reason they don't look all alike is because of what those manufacturers put inside their TVs. Each have their own little differences in what they consider quality. Note: I say "nearly" all because there are some smaller companies that produce LCD panels but ALL name brands in stores use either Samsung or LG panels.

Everything you didn't want to know about HD TVs:
I'll put this into a more gaming aspect most of you should understand. This is how "HD" TVs work.

1080i (720p):
First off, both NTSC and PAL have two different standards. The average 720p resolution tv produces 60 fps in NTSC and 50 fps for PAL. Here's the issue. When you upscale to 1080i that fps is cut in half leaving you with 25-30fps. Additionally, a computer cannot convert properly to these tvs and have to use the 3:2 pull down function to work. If the tv does not have that function then the conversion wont be converted too nicely (Improperly sized screen "black spaces" and/or random lines/streaks running through the image). This 3:2 function also allows your computer to run above your tv's rated max fps.

1080p:
Independant of region like 1080i, nearly all 1080p resolutions are 24fps (Very few 30fps 1080p TVs out). Ever see that a 1080p shown as 1080p/24 or 1080p24? Those last 2 numbers are that tv's FPS. The great thing about 1080p tvs is that even though they're only rated for 24 fps that 24fps is for playback in movies. Connecting it to your computer can yield up to 60fps displayed on screen. Just like the 1080i TVs, the 3:2 pull down function is required to properly convert computer videos. If the tv has this function then you "shouldn't" notice any problems hooking your computer up.

1080p (120Hz):
All 120Hz 1080p TVs that I know of are currently set at 24fps. What's neat about these newer tvs is that you no longer have to use that annoying 3:2 pull down function. It can even handle your computer's fps rate up to 120 fps for games.

Complaints:
Making pictures look "too good" can sometimes make them seem worse. Feeding a low resolution signal through a higher resolution tv shows a "not as good" type resolution. If you're running HD watching a 1080i feed then both 720p and 1080p will look nice but running a 480p/720p feed through a 1080p resolution creates a more "grittier" look and tends to look worse than if you just left it in its original format.

Future (those of you that bought a new tv probably didn't want to hear about this):
So what's coming out next? The next tvs coming out will be a 1080p format with 120Hz and able to produce 50-60fps. Shortly afterwards a new resolution will be released. Announced about 4-5 years ago, the new resolution will become 2560x1440. This will also officialize 1080p as the new standard (just as 720p was for the past 5 years).

Conclusion:
I probably forgot to add something to the aforementioned info. I was trying to keep it as simple as possible while not confusing myself at the same time. =p As for current tvs Sony and Samsung are the best. LG is definitely 3rd. If you plan on buying a high end TV then Sony is better than Samsung. If you plan on buying an older model (not this year's model) then here's the general rule: Samsung tends to be more "fluid" (better motion in games/movies) and Sony tends to have a better picture. Note: Anything below that usual 4-5k dollar mark is not this year's model. Don't kid yourself saying it is just because you bought it this year. =p

[clowndog]

Alriight, I'm confused. I thought most HDTV's (720p, 1080i and 1080p) operated at 60Hz and the newer models were moving towards 120Hz. While Hz and fps do not have to be the same, they usually are for TVs. So most current HDTVs operate at 60Hz or fps which happens to be the frequency that US television (I'm US biased because I live here and have read about this issue in reference to US numbers) is broadcast at. Now, the fancy new Bluray/HDDVDs are put out in 1080p/24 because movies are recorded in that format (24fps). Because 24 does not go directly into 60 there is a fancy little trick they use to convert 24 to 60 called the 3:2 pulldown to try to correct to the fps to display on a 60Hz TV. It's not perfect and lots of people complained so the natural progression was to make a TV that operated at a frequency that would work for both movies and TV, 120Hz. That way movie frames could be repeated 5 times (120/24) and TV frames could be repeated 2 times (120/60) instead of needing to repeat frames a different number of times (60/24 doesn't equal a whole number).

[Balemur]

Originally Posted by clowndog

Alriight, I'm confused. I thought most HDTV's (720p, 1080i and 1080p) operated at 60Hz and the newer models were moving towards 120Hz. While Hz and fps do not have to be the same, they usually are for TVs. So most current HDTVs operate at 60Hz or fps which happens to be the frequency that US television (I'm US biased because I live here and have read about this issue in reference to US numbers) is broadcast at. Now, the fancy new Bluray/HDDVDs are put out in 1080p/24 because movies are recorded in that format (24fps). Because 24 does not go directly into 60 there is a fancy little trick they use to convert 24 to 60 called the 3:2 pulldown to try to correct to the fps to display on a 60Hz TV. It's not perfect and lots of people complained so the natural progression was to make a TV that operated at a frequency that would work for both movies and TV, 120Hz. That way movie frames could be repeated 5 times (120/24) and TV frames could be repeated 2 times (120/60) instead of needing to repeat frames a different number of times (60/24 doesn't equal a whole number).

Yes, everything you said is true, including the 5 times repeated 24 times 5 = 120Hz. This was their fix to get rid of the 3:2 pull down conversion so many people disliked. The problem is that all current HD material is currently broadcasted in 24fps. This is due to the fact that the 50-60fps broadcasts would require completely different equipment.

Interesting Digression: (Below not required to read as part of my reply. =P)
The conspiracy I came up with that applies to all products is that manufacturers want more money. Which makes more money? Selling the latest technology known to inventors or selling what was invented 5-10 years ago but never released yet? By selling old technology never released to consumers you get to sell both technologies at premium prices instead of having to cut prices thus providing less profit. These older inventions, like I said, are still considered new to the consumer market place.

Note: There's several different technologies that are considered "new" today that were released decades ago.

1. PCI-E released 2004 to the public as the new video card standard over AGP. Originally created in 1998 and used as PCI-X. The only change between the 2 is PCI-E has fewer pins and PCI-E is now a serial type bus instead of parallel. It can be argued which is actually faster due to the fact that serial doesn't have cross-talking at high speeds like parallel. However the total transfer rate speed of both is 4.3GB/s (1998 PCI-X) and 2.5GB/s (2004 PCI-E 1.0) or 5GB/s (2007 PCI-E 2.0). The latest PCI-E 3.0 is 8GB/s. Really not much of an upgrade considering how long it took to increase the transfer rates.

2. My favorite... the Wii and Wiimote. lol A technology so old that uses nearly the same technology as the power glove (1989) but with a few upgrades. The wii itself is just a wireless infrared gamecube with a faster CPU added. I actually wish the wiimote dropped the stupid infrared sensor and instead used a gyro sensor for a tiny bit higher price ($5-10 or even cheaper when bought in bulk). A Gyro sensor detects yaw, pitch, and roll which allows accurate readings instead of the annoying wii mote's infrared that doesn't always react. (Wii Sports boxing - Throwing 20 hooks and it punches your opponent once in the stomach)

[Kesteral]

Toshiba 42X3030DB - 42 Inch HD Ready TVs - Electrical Experience >

I've gone for this, and while the contrast is a little lower I still think it's a damn good TV for that price. It's the best deal I've seen, a complete bargain. I just wish they showed the proper contrast ratio, but it should still be pretty decent with dynamic and it has a lot of features that makes the picture look better.

[G2]

Toshiba 42X3030D Review – 42" Regza 1080p LCD TV Test

Read before you buy. But so far looks good.

[Kesteral]

I've read three reviews for it, that HDTV one wasn't too good but the other two I read from cnet and trustedreviews give the TV 9/10's. They also state that the TV was brilliant value for £1000, I'm getting it for half that so I think this is a brilliant offer. I just hope the static contrast isn't too bad. Fucking toshiba don't tell you.

[n00b3h]

posted but doesnt even matter