7 Comments

  1. As somebody who doesn’t know much about HDTV’s your website has proven to be an amazing resource. I don’t plan on buying one for awhile but your site using real words and great explanations between your findings on Plasma and LCD has helped me greatly. Great post and thanks for sharing your findings.

  2. I was just about sold on the Mitsubishi LT-46231 until I went to CES 2007. There I saw a new breed of of LCDs that have a 120Hz vs 60HZ ‘frame-rate”.

    The Sharp 46″ ’92’series are now available! Along with the 120Hz ‘frame-rate’ they have a 4ms. response-time. But that’s where the features end, like the Sony XBRs, no cable card, no ‘TV-Guide’, no PIP or POP! Plain-Jane!

    My question is, have you seen these 120Hz ‘frame-rate’ sets? Are they worth it? Or is it just a new gimmick to sell TVs? In the Sharp booth @ CES the ’92’ series looked good, but you got to figure the display programming is designed to make their set look good. It’s not the real world.

    I’d much rather have the features of the Mitsubishi LT-46231 and save money each month on my cable company bill by not having to rent a cable box. But, I’m a avid sports fan and am wondering if I’ll actually notice the 120Hz difference in fast action sports?

    Also, the Mitsubishi says you can use ‘TV-Guide” to program recording to their D-VHS via Fire-Wire. My question is, do you have to leave the TV on all the time? Or does it go into some sort of low-power hibernation-mode when setup up to record?

    Finally, any idea if you can record directly to an external Fire-Wire hard-drive from the Mitsubishi LT-46231’s Fire-Wire port? That would be “Way-Cool”!

  3. I haven’t seen any of the new 120 Hz sets yet, so I really can’t comment. My personal opinion is that a high-end video processor will make more of a difference than a faster refresh rate. Watching the Super Bowl on my TV, I noticed no video issues during game play but the video did break-up a little during full-screen wipes (crowd shots before/after the commercials.) I’m not sure if it was the display or the video source, but my Sony front projector didn’t have the same problem (but it also was down-scaling to 720p.)
    In my opinion, Sharp spends as little as possible on features and sells their sets based on resolution and screen size, which is not that important when it comes to image quality. I’d much rather have a decent on-board scaler, deinterlacer, cable-card slots, and QAM tuner.
    The TV doesn’t have to be on to record and it does work with external drives, D-VHS recorders, and PCs with special software. Check out my Owners FAQ Post.

  4. I have also been performing an exhaustive search of all options for TV’s….Ideally I’d go with a LCD panel with a size around 50-54″. It seems the pricing is still quite high for those sets and they are all about to convert to LED backlighting with variable output. I am in a debate whether to go with the LT-46131 (not as big as I’d like), go rock bottom with a $1000 Mitsubishi wd-52531 1080i rear projection, or hold out for 12-24 months as panel prices drop on the +50″ LCD’s. I have to say the picture on the LCD’s is superior to the rear-projection, DLP, and even Plasmas….. If only Mitsu had a 52″ LCD in that model…..

  5. Kurt: There’s always going to be something better just a few months away. If you wait for LED backlights, there will be something after that that is even better. I think you should go look at the sets available today and if you’re impressed with how they look, pull the trigger. The current models are very high quality and any enhancements will only be slight increments in quality, not a complete revolution. When comparing a 46″ set to a 50″ set, there is not a huge difference in size, especially when you factor in front projections systems at 133″ for about the same cost. If you want and can afford one now, go for it. 10 years from now, there will be some major improvements available and you can worry about “the next great technology” then!

  6. I guess I’m caught up in the Texas syndrome “bigger is better”. I have a 7 year old Sony Wega 36″ CRT – pretty much the best SD picture you can get. a 46″ TV when showing SD will be the same size as the 36″ – which when spending a lot of money annoys me. Also, I’d be super disappointed if Standard Def didn’t look as good as it does on my CRT!! Thats probably my main worry as a Direct TV user. I do plan to feed OTA for HD and use DTV for the rest. There seems to be a lot of SD content still though. I really like the Sharp 52″ LCD however there seems to be a lot of debate about banding issues…..cloudiness issues on the Sony’s. GRRRRRR. Your point is well taken, it seems there will be no end to the improvements!!! TV’s are turning into PC’s in that respect!

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