First Plasma/LCD purchase ever - a few questions..

I recently purchased a Sony 37" XBR6 LCD (to fit a tight closet installation) from Best Buy, a 42" $745 RCA LCD from CostCo, and a 60" Pioneer Elite from Axxis Audio in Colorado.

BEST BUY: It's simply foolish to let a sales person or the displays at Best Buy sway your purchasing decision in any way other than an offer of a lower price. Best Buy's lowest price can easily be beat. It' important to know exactly what you want and what the lowest price that unit is being sold for nationally B&H Photo in NY is a good place to start but even their prices aren't the lowest. The idea is that you have a fairly good knowledge of what a product can be sold for and the seller is still making a profit.

The one positive aspect I received from my Best Buy purchase was a bundled certified (IFxxx?) calibration for $140. I shopped around locally and the best I could get a calibration done for was $345. Historically Sony CRT's were very well dialed in out of the box but this is a new era. My XBR was running at 8000 Kelvin (I believe 5600 is the norm). I'm not sure if there would be a situation were you would need to have a set recalibrated. Once calibrated the LCD's superior brightness is simply a result of a higher Kelvin setting. My Sony gained more depth and a more realistic picture quality as a result of calibration.

The Sony scans at 120Hz and there is defiantly motion artifacts as there are in the best Samsung's (my neighbors). The life span of an LCD is said to be much shorter compared to current plasmas.

COSTCO: The RCA was a purchased based on price and size. The picture quality is surprisingly good and I'd rather have a slightly lesser quality picture on a bigger display any day and this was my son's choice. CostCo offers a limited Concierge Service that can be upgraded for a reasonable price. It's basically very good phone support. If the phone support fails to remedy the problem the they will send a technician for the first 30 or 90 days.

AXXIS AUDIO: The positive experiences by people on the AVS forum lead me to Axxis. I still had trepidation over the shipping of such a fragile and expensive component. A call to Axxis relieved me. I was told to open the carton before the driver left. If the screen was cracked to put it right back on the truck, call and another would be shipped that day. The Pioneer comes very well packed and all was well. The other components I purchased from Axxis were shipped UPS. The display was delivered within 20 minutes of their ETA.

Axxis emailed the next day to confirm delivery. I save just over $1900 over the Best Buy/Magnolia price for this plasma so I splurged on a calibration. I couldn't see any difference after calibration except on the technicians laptop and those were very slight. In hind sight I could of easily lived without the calibration on this plasma. Any warranty concerns can be directed to Pioneer who will in turn direct you to their nearest service center.

This plasma is in a very brightly sunlit room and the picture is not affected. After calibration both the Sony and the Elite are similar in brightness with the edge going to the plasma as are most other aspects of picture quality. If the only display in your house is a 120Hz scanning LCD motion blur may not be an issue. Living with both the shortcoming becomes obvious. Even my neighbor felt somewhat shortchanged after comparing his top of the line Samsung to the plasma during the NFL playoffs.

Interesting info Vic. I hope to be TV shopping sometime this year too. I was always under the impression that a professional calibration is a lot more involved and the results are better than anything you can do with a DVD, but as Vic pointed out it would appear on the actual set you are dealing with. One thing I would NEVER buy is a floor model though...you have no idea how long it's been sitting on the floor and running constantly every day during their operating hours. Most floor models have their settings so high to make them bright to the passerby and this can't be good over the long haul!

I understand that Pioneer is getting out of the plasma business and that there may be some bargains out there on their Kuro line.

Plasmas consume much more power than LCDs, which means higher electric bills.

You should be able to buy a 720p 42" plasma or comparable for less than $1,000 at Costco.

The Samsung plasma 1080p 50" has a great picture, from my personal experience. You won't get one for $1,000, however.

Best Buy rarely has the best buy.....

A Samsung LN37A550 would be an excellent choice which would fall well-within your budget. Entry level 1080P. I own the LN32A550. Do check out AVSforum.com Tons of info. Plasma's run hot and consumer 3X the power. Definately compare prices. I would personally not buy the extended warranty. Professional ISF calibration? My set looks most exc. w/just a few simply picture adjusments. I'd wait on the ISF calibration till I lived w/the set for awhile. Good Luck!

LCD and plasma technologies from the better manufacturers have been fairly reliable according to Consumer Reports, and I would think if anything is going to go wrong with them it will probably surface in the first few months. I know my Panasonic plasma gives 1 year parts and labor, so I'm not sure an extended warranty is really worth it in this instance.

As far as calibration, I think it depends largely on the TV itself and how comprehensive their user operated and service menu controls are along with how the TV is set up at the factory. The best thing to do is read the reviews from the better magazines/webzines and see what they had to do to get the TV optimally set up. For an example, with the newer higher-end Panasonics running their auto-calibration settings seems to get pretty close to optimal and makes professional calibration less or unnecessary. My slightly older Panasonic on the other hand needs to be adjusted through the service menu to get the best results.

I wouldn't buy an open stock item for reasons mentioned previously, and I wouldn't take the advice of any salesman unless it completely agreed with what you read in places like this. They're for the most part worse than useless.

Best of luck.