New Giant Television

I would go with a Mitsubishi DLP rear projection, great picture and even better if calibrated.

The Editor of Widescreen review listed his order of preference in responce to a letter to the editor.

1) Projector
2) DLP Rear Projection
3) Plasma
4) LCD

I bought the 73" Mitsu DLP (73c10, IIRC) a few months back. It is a very big television that is pretty reasonable in cost. Dell sells it for +/- $1200. The set has good+ image quality and a lot of sq inches in an efficient cabinet, although it's a little quirky on power up (no signal, followed by the dancing mitsu logo, followed by your picture) and power down (a ghost image lingers for +/- 1 minute).

The 73" flat panel set from ??? that was just introduced is probably better, but almost 3X the cost. It wasn't available 2 months ago when I pulled the trigger, but I'm not sure it would change my mind. DLPs seem to have a life of 5ish years IME, so I put off the bigger purchase til later when the declining tech cost curve should continue to work in my favor.

Marty

PS Everyone I've talked to says the Mitsu Lazer-Vu sets (the only other <$5K option that I know of)look cool, but are more expensive than traditional DLP and glitchier (even tho they were supposed to be more reliable).

The Mitsu's are up to 92" Dlp, and should b realeased soon. that should be big enough! I beleive price is around $5000

If you don't want to use a front projection set-up, then your only really good choices are the very large Mitsubishi 73" to 92" HDTV's, which can cost from $4,500 to $7,000, or the new Panasonic TCP65VT30 65" VIERA 3D HDTV's or last years Panasonic TCP65VT25 65" plasma's. Personally, I think the Panasonic's have a much better picture than the Mitsubishi's. So your choice comes down to whether you value the largest viewing area, or whether you want the best picture quality. The Panasonic 3D is the best in picture quality even if you never want to use its 3D capability. And you can get them for under $4,000.

To me the 65" plasma is plenty large and I'd rather have the superior image and darkest blacks, along with the best contrast.

Greg

Greg,

The entry level 73" Mitsu is available under $1200 (from Dell - see my post above). I agree that this isn't the very best image quality available, but it's actually pretty good. And, 73 diagonal inches of image does make an impact.

I use it every day and, aside from the operational quirks I mentioned, I can't bitch. A pretty unusual value proposition in the current market, IMHO, though admittedly not for the coinessuer.

Marty