2. home-theater
  3. 1341240705

Help with plasma TV choice

Greetings,

I would appreciate comments/suggestions to help me with my choice of plasma TV. This TV will be our first HT set-up, and will be used in a weekend home. It will be used for DVD playback, movie downloads, and the kids' video games (Wii). NO cable or satellite. Video signal will be supplied by an Oppo DVD player, and/or the TV's (or Oppo's) internal Wifi connectivity for movie downloads. As such, I would strongly consider a dedicated display, but don't seem to be able to find one in my price range.

Size-wise I would like something in the 55-60 inches diag range, and I
would like to spend $1300-2000 (street price), or so. After some research at a local dealer, I am pretty sure my choice can be narrowed to either
Panasonic or Samsung. The Samsungs' picture quality looks somewhat better to my eye, but I have concerns about screen reflectivity given reported issues with the Samsungs and the fact that there are many windows in the room where it will be used. The Panasonics in general look very good but somewhat subdued and less bright and defined than the Samsungs.

Rest of the system will be a Totem Dreamcatcher 5.1 setup driven by a B&K 307 receiver.

Thoughts? Thanks.
frogman
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
5,775 posts
 
Panasonic.
theo's avatar
theo
2,724 posts
 
Keep in mind that the dealers are some what biased in the way they set
up their televisions. Sometimes they have special incentives from a
manufacturer to move a certain brand. My experience in recent shopping
is the Panasonic is the tops and LG would be second in plasma. In your
price range the Panasonic GT50 Can only be beat by their VT50. But they
cost about 500 more than the GT50. And the differences are very very
minute.
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
Very very happy w my Panny plasma.
Post removed 
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
Hi Frogman - sorry if this gets posted twice, something weird happened on my end.

Basically, all of the sets, no matter what brand, are calibrated to look their best in the much darker environment of the stores. When you get them home, they will appear MUCH more bright and sharp in your room, too much so in fact, so be prepared for that (people will look almost etched onto the screen). What you will want to do, no matter which brand you buy, is have it professionally calibrated once it has been in use for 250 hours, I think it is (unless you already know how to do this yourself). I did this, and could not believe the difference it made. I watched the guy carefully and could do it myself in future. So don't worry about your windows, you can calibrate it so it looks ideal in your room.

As far as specific brands, I would choose the Panasonic (which I did). I'm very happy with mine, no issues whatsoever. However, if there are issues, their customer service beats Samsung by a mile. Also, once they are outside the store and in someone's home, I do have a preference for the look of the Panasonics - the Samsungs are a little too sharp in the home environment for me. The Panasonic's colors, again after recalibration, look more real and lifelike. Mine looks fantastic, and I'm sure you would be very happy with one. And FWIW, the sound on them is quite a bit better than the Samsung's, though since you are going to run it through a home theater set up, perhaps that won't matter so much. I don't have a home theater set up and don't run mine through my audio system, I figure I will save the tubes for audio!
More to discover