Looking for a 50" HD TV

IMHO, the SONY 50" LCD has a better scaler than the Samsung when viewing standard definition programming. The putting greens had a "posterized" look while watching golf on a friend's brand new 50" Samsung DLP. I saw the same artifact on the demo set at Best Buys yesterday. The Sony doesn't do that.

Considering 98% of what is on TV is standard definition, the quality of the scaler is a very important consideration when watching all those SDTV shows.

Also, the SONY LCD chip has slightly higher resolution than the Samsung (768X1366 for Sony vs 720X1280 for Samsung). Considering they retail for the same price it comes down to personal preference.

I am also in the market for a set this size and am very disappointed with the quality of conventional "tube" RPTVs. The claimed 1080 horizontal television lines has to be a line doubled 540 raster scans. HDNET looks "soft" on all these sets regardless of manufacturer. The goosebumps you get from watching HD material on a plasma or larger RPTV just isn't there.

For what it's worth, the new 4:3 SONY 40" tube TV KILLED every 16:9 RPTV I've seen with HD material. Too bad you have to deal with those pesky black bars... Good luck.

The best IMHO is the Pioneer Elite 50' plasma screen. Beautiful in every sense. It cost over $10k though.
Vik

Just want to join in the action. I really like LCD Rear Projectors but their color of black is terrible. The DLP Rear Projectors are much better than LCD in my opinion. But I would take a Plasma any day over anything else because of its picture and viewing angle. The only thing holding me back is the price. My favorite Plasma for now is the Pioneer Elite which the price has drop so much.
I work for an audio/video store and our prices for Pioneer Elite Plasma are much less than $10,000.

Bill from www.yawaonline.com

You may already be aware, but the AVS Forum site is a great place to get educated about video. There is a section of the forum for RPTV's (CRT and DLP) here and another for plasma and LCD devices here .

50" are easy to checkout, but Smaller Models are almost non existent.

What really gets me is that places are selling regular analog units and pretending that you are getting a great deal when in reality they are selling stuff that is relatively worth nothing in relation to what the market is moving torwards.

I always liked Mitsubishi,but Sony might be taking the lead there.

Good luck!