Club409

So I have a decision to make about a wedding present from my dad. We can either take his current TV free of charge (~30" high def not flat panel) and he will get us something else such as a receiver and some surround sound or something like that. The other option is a brand new TV (probably like a 42" or so) but I'd be on my own for speakers and such. Thoughts?

on a related note which TV should i get? my dad thinks the 40" sony bravia xbr 1080p is the way to go. i know sony isn't going to be a popular choice in this group but if it has the best picture then i might go for it. when we were in melbourne i remember the sony looking distinctly better than the others but i feel like that was largely due to the quality of the feed they had it hooked up to. i know non-sony's are considerably cheaper for the same size but if my dad's buying...

here i come to save the day!!!!

yes my tv is indeed a 46" mitsubishi (also as evidenced by the mitsubishi logo on the 1080p sticker ;) ). i would highly highly highly highly recommend against the sony not only for the general shittiness that is Sony Corp but also due to the displays themselves. their 1080p displays (possibly lower too?) have an abnormally high defect rate specifically with (patches of the screen appear lighter or darker than the rest of the screen)

the degree of clouding varies set to set but you're more likely than not to get one with at least some clouding. if you are one of the few lucky people to get one without any clouding or other defects it is a pretty good set but knowing the company and the chance of defects it wasnt worth it to me.

another reason i went for the mitsu over the sony was the mitsu has one of the best upconverters of all sub-$5k TVs. its even as good if not better than most upconverters in upconverting DVD players so you can just use a regular DVD player without any loss in quality rather than buying a new upconverting DVD player. at Circuit City they had it right next to a Sony 720p* set both running a 720p feed and the Mitsu upscaling from 720p to 1080p looked BETTER than the Sony!

*in case you don't know most if not all "720p" LCDs aren't really 720p (1280x720) but actually 768p (1366x768 or something close to that). so the 720p Sony had to upscale the 720p too but it still should've looked much better since it only had to scale by ~7% whereas going all the way up to 1080p has to scale by 50%

unfortunately the mitsu has been discontinued because they're going to announce a new product line soon. but that also means if you CAN find it anywhere it'll most likely be at a good discount. its the LT-46131 (or LT-46231 same thing with a few extra bells and whistles like built in IR blaster for controlling other devices). the only real major issue with the Mitsu is a noisy power supply which is fixable by a service tech under warranty (rather than requiring a whole TV replacement under store policy like clouding and banding) and is much less common.

the other top contender is Sharp which like the Sony has major defect issues but instead of clouding it has color banding ( specific colors will have bands of dark and light areas) as the major issue. again if you can manage to get one without issue its a good set.

Samsung's another good set has some issues as well but not as common as the Sharp and Sony but from what i read picture quality isn't quite as good especially on low def sources.

if you're like me and need to do a lot of research before you buy i highly suggest checking out AVS Forum and reading up on some of the various models. there are lots of helpful people there that can answer all your questions. a lot of people have different opinions on which set has the best picture quality but ultimately you should go check the tv out in a local store if possible to see which looks best to you. some stores may even let you change to different sources to see how they compare with standard def inputs.

and one last note: if you buy from a local store for the love of God do not buy into all that crap they try to sell you especially HDMI cables. the cheapest most stores have are $70-100 but you can get them online for under $10 at Monoprice

very long and very much appreciated. i've seen discussion of remedies for the clouding issue including a firmware update but i think i'd prefer a TV that just doesn't have the issue. looks like circuit city currently has the 46" mitsu for $2100 which looks like a damn good deal. i'm probably looking at that or the 42" sharp.

wow thats a pretty good deal on the mitsu