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

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.

>04-09-09: Pcking
I understand that Pioneer is getting out of the plasma business and that there may be some bargains out there on their Kuro line.<

Pc, excellent point. I believe they're simply going out of the plasma production and sourcing to Panasonic. They showed a 10G prototype at a show somewhere. The folks over at the AVS are all over this stuff.

I just got of the phone with a friend who was shopping for the 50" Kuro (not the Elite) and he noticed that prices fell to $1800 two weeks ago here in the San Francisco Bay Area. A week later he pulled it together to get one and they had sold out. A week later he could only find them for $2500. Two days latter he found a used Elite on Craig's List for $2500.