Looking to get a few Plasma or LCD TVs for the house - large size 52" at least

The 52" 8 serie LCD Samsung is one of the thinner screen on the market and pretty nice picture, all of that for a low $2500 those days... tought to beat that, right?

What do you guys think of the 9 serie? Is it worth it? Would you go 9 serie over the 8? Which Samsung is the real deal?

I like Sony, I like the XBR8 but they are asking close to $7k for the 55".

What so good with that XBR8? Is it worth the money?

I am thinking to go with the 60" Kuro Pioneer Plasma.

What do you think? Also, is the 151FD really built cheap and you would recommend to get a 150FD instead?

Thanks for the help. Much appreciated

 

I was going to buy the 55XBR8 since I had the XBR3 & 5 so it would make sense to go to the 8 but everyone including a Sony rep said to get the Pioneer Elite which I did and have never looked back, yes the XBR8 is a nice lcd, maybe one the best ones on the market but for me personally looking at the two side by side, the Elite blew the XBR8 out of the water and for the money, tv's get outdated so quickly it is not worth paying top dollar when the XBR9 will be out in less then a year.

 

LED backlighting is the way to go for LCD TV's.

Once you have seen a black scene on an LCD TV with LED backlighting instead of CCFL, you will be sold.

I have the first gen Samsung LED the 81 series, but the 9 series is even better, since it has even more LED elements.

SBR8 is SONY's first attempt at LED backlighting.

 

You can't go wrong there. I have had 2 Pioneer Plasmas (5070-HD and an ELITE) and they are both incredible.

 

One other point, if you ever want to use your new TV for computer work, which both my wife and I do, you can write off plasmas.

For instance, we sometimes run Word with black letters and white background for a few hours in one sitting. This will absolutely kill your plasma.

Also, if you do want to use your TV for computer work, make sure you set it up to 0 overscan for proper pixel mapping, otherwise you will not see your Windows taskbar.

 

That is not true, burn in was an issue with plasmas about 4-5 years ago. Not anymore.

Plasma > LCD for home theater, hands down. Pioneer plasmas are about as good as you can get.

 

This is pretty much the case. BUT BEWARE: this does not apply to the first 200 hours your watch the new Plasma! The first weekend after I bought my Pioneer Elite I played Gears of War on it for about 6 hours straight. You can still see a light burn-in of the ammo graphic in the upper right-hand corner. It has faded a lot, but it is still there if you know where to look. When I purchased my 5070-HD I let it play all day and night for about 2 weeks before I played any games on it. Now it doesn't matter how long I play, nothing burns in for more than a few hours without fading away 100%.

Moral of the story: Run your plasma for about 200 hours on Discovery HD before playing video games on it or watching anything with a fixed graphic for long periods of time.

 

I saw it with my own eyes.

FHD1 running Blu-ray that was accidentally paused at the Discovery logo.

I don't know if the screen ever recovered, but when I left the store, the residual image was still there.

Have you seen any LED backlight LCD's? The blacks actually have way better measurement than plasma because when it's black, the backlight is 100% off.

 

OK, just to be clear. So if I leave a Word document (bright white background with black lettering) up on a properly broken in plasma screen for one night (let's say 8 hours), say the mrs is up working on documents for her firm, it won't dstroy the screen in anyway?

That would be cool, because the FHD1 I saw certainly couldn't do it. That was what swayed us from the Kuro and into the Samsung 81F series LED backlight LCD TV.

 

personally I have the Pioneer Elite 50 inch, and it's amazing.

The newest ones, 1080p, 60 inch Elites are, well....... go and see them for yourself.
Kind of pricey when you comare them to other general store type tv's..(anything you can find in best buy magnolia/ultimate), costing about 8grand for the 60 inch, but resonably priced when comparing them to off market top of the line plasmas ($30K).

Elites are the way to go for a great home theatre picture at a 5K-10K price range.