It’s been exactly a week since I received my new LCD TV (as of the first revision of this post).
I will say that I’ve learned from my last experience with buying overly large electronic appliances and transporting them up to the living room. Despite the feather-like 70 lbs. of modern flat screens (the rear projection TV was a beefier 140 lbs.), I went with Amazon, who featured free shipping and white-glove delivery for all its big TV’s; that is, they carry the set up to your room, unpack the contents, let you turn it on to verify the picture looks satisfactory, and remove any unwanted boxes. They also ship fast, offer pretty good prices even among online retailers, allow for to up 30 days of price matching (i.e., they refund the difference if the price drops on their own site within 30 days of purchase), and laugh at the prospect of charging sales tax. So yea, I’d recommend Amazon for your TV shopping needs.
Sam-san’s official title is Samsung LN-T5265, and aside from being both slimmer (depth-wise) and fatter (front-wise) than my old set, the real upgrade is in the clarity, sharpness, and vibrancy of the picture. I do try to research the audio/video landscape before I make these big purchases, so while old Pan and new Sam garnered some of the highest ratings of their respective generations, it’s still pretty obvious Sam’s much more capable of handling high-def imagery. LCD’s do have technological limitations, but Samsung’s put in way more options and processing to make up the difference.
Incidentally, the options are really what separates the $1000 sets you see at Costco with the $5000 ones you find at Best Buy.
Seeing how I’ve somehow, stupidly, gone through the process of buying an HDTV twice in three years, I thought it’d be nice to share a few pointers for those so inclined to make a similar investment in the near future, motivated by my ability to (half-heartedly) convince a friend to buy my exact same set:
- Start by determining optimal viewing distance, which gives a good indication of the right screen size to buy.
- Consider the technology running your display. DLP, LCD, and plasma are the main options, so understand the difference in physical (e.g., mountability) and graphical (blurring under motion, burning in) properties.
- Decide how much you want to pay. Sets of all sizes and technologies have dropped so much in price that this decision can mostly come after figuring out the first two.
And if you ask someone to help you at Best Buy or Circuit City, this is about as far as you’d get. Alas, there’s a lot more to consider:
- Understand what you’ll be giving up for the desired price. Screen resolution (720p versus 1080p) and input ports (HDMI, component, VGA, DVI, etc.) are basic options, but finer points like LED backlighting, 120Hz processing, and 10-bit panels (for LCD’s) all make a difficult-to-quantify but definitely noticeable difference in the picture.
- Brand should be a consideration; in my opinion quality electronic equipment pays for itself over time in fewer problems and reduced frustration. For TV’s, the best sets are continually from Sony, Samsung, Sharp, and Panasonic; cheaper brands like Olevia and Insignia have been called out as “disposable” HDTV’s.
- Take a look in-store, especially if you’ve been doing mostly virtual shopping up to this point. You can collect an extensive list of bullet points from online research, but without having your eyes bathed in the soft glow of pixels, such points don’t really matter. Screens and visual perception are two huge variables, so what may seem like a huge deal to Bob from videoexpertforums.com may not even be noticeable to your eyes in the store.
- Upon deciding on a few models, go back to do more research on those specific sets. All the above strategies are really for narrowing down the dazzling amount of choices available, but there’s a good amount of communal information for individual sets – especially the popular ones (e.g., this one on the issues with newer Sam 5265′s) – and the subtleties will most likely trim the field down to that one perfect model.
- Find user-posted pictures – they’re better indicators of real-world display quality than the oft-miscalibrated and mistreated sets at the store.
- Weep as your credit card company repeatedly denies the extravagant charges.
And that’s it! Sit back and let the picture blow you away.
[...] like my PS3. Despite its high asking price and insistence on the best audio and video equipment, there’s a lot of value packed inside that giant black box of immovable shiny metal. [...]