Just get this one and charge admission

http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_el...ma/default.asp

 

HAHAHAHAHA you guys are a trip!!

I do love the latest and greatest, but this is more/less a secondary TV. The main 61" will be in the theater room, but this one would be the casual viewer occassionally having videogames played on it for game parties.

I will look into the Sony, but damn... the one I saw in store was outrageously priced!!! sheesh!! anyone wanna chip in to the fund? lol

 

Reading up on the XBR series, everyone seems to complain about clouds appearing in the corners. For that price, I cant justify Sony getting away with that

Does anyone know anything about Phillips LCD's?

 

I just bought a 37" Vizio LCD Widescreen from Costco. I am pretty impressed with the picture quality. It's comparable to my 50" Samsung DLP. And, less than half the price.

 

my pops have a vizio 47 inch 1080p lcd that was only 1600 bucks from costco, quality is great.

 

I might have to settle for that then. I am lost in finding a set that doesnt have issues that bother me.

 

If you can wait, panel pricing will drop further this year and larger panels will supplant the 42" - 46" sweet spot by Super Bowl time next year.

As for gaming, if you want an economical LCD panel for multipurpose use, get a monitor without the HD tuner and all that other junk that TV minded consumers look for. If you already don't have one, a multimedia PC can support all the HD processing management software to add back the missing features. The best part is that even with monitor/TV changes, all the features and interfaces remain the same since they reside on your multimedia PC.

Main things to look for in a gaming LCD panel will probably be response time, brightness/contrast, and resolution. For FPS type games like Halo and the like, you'll want < 12ms of response time. Ghosting and artifacts are usually the result of slower response times on panels or inefficient processing. Newer monitors will utilize the newer CCFL backlights which are brighter and use less power. Don't pay attention to contrast ratios as you will see some manufacturers advertise crazy contrast ratio numbers. This is due to the fact that contrast is measured by the max cdm output divided by the amount of cdm output when producing black. Some panels produce black by simply turning down the backlight to numbers less than 1cdm which will produce extremely large contrast ratios. 1080p resolution is the goal with most avid gamers which is 16:9 aspect ratio with 1920 x 1080 resolution to produce crisp images for TV and PC/consoles. Watch out for 1080i as interlaced resolution schemes will not go over well for gaming and action movies.

DVI and HDMI will probably consolidate into a single HDMI standard so going with HDMI will be the way to go, but I think I read somewhere that HDMI still has some kinks to work out. There is also some DRM scheme for HDMI that is also being tossed around. IMO, DRM for HDMI should be killed as the whole HD-DVD code outbreak fiasco has shown.


Good Luck!

 

Sony KDL40XBR3 is what I have; it's LCD, piano black, and down right awesome!

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...atpanel_32to40