lcd 1080p performance how do lcd 108op units perform with regular cable reception. Is hdtv here now or should I wait a year?
1790092
There is a post on the Economist.com which suggests HDTV buyers to wait for 6 months as the price of 1080p will start falling and those who buy it now it said "will kick temselves in the back". I agree Economist is not the best place for Tech related advice. However, this is more to do with pricing than technology and therefore would take it seriously!
1790093
The original question asked about waiting a year. I've been recommended to do this to in view of the significant price drop. It's nice to have cutting edge technology now, but if the price drops in half by the time I pay off my 0% Discover Card bill, I could be disappointed with a purchase that should last for several years.
1790094
Just buy it if you have the money. But buy it from Amazon or online, as in stores it is like $500 - $700 more. Also, the 1080p is great for DVD's, games and stuff that support it, but there are no TV channels that broadcast in 1080p, and probably never will be due to the large amount of bandwidth needed to broadcast such images.
456169
I have the box, and the info of the channel DOES show its broadcast on 1080 for the channels that are listed as HD in the channel guide. I can tell which are HD as the aspect ratio changes on those channels. The reception is awesome. I have a 12yo tv that I've hooked up the box via AV cables and the signal rivals what I'm getting from FiOS.
821607
I bought one, never worked in 1080p, 720p. Also had several dead green pixles so I returned it and the second one was worse. Consider another one.
615215
WAOOO zachary, i think you are wrong. i got mine and for my surprise it is 1080p. i have a hd dvd player and it is capable of handling the 1080p. My xbox 360 display the image at 1080i, and my HD signal too.So i dont understand why you said that this TV is not 1080p?IT IS...
717526
It's not the Panasonic, it's the Samsung. Many people go out and buy these LCD's with 120 refresh rates only to find themselves with the same thing you are talking about a nearly "too clear" or "soap opera" looking picture. Go out and read the reviews for the 120 refresh sets. Many people find themselves preferring a little extra judder from the 60 refresh than the picture being almost too realistic as you stated; others say it's worth the trade off, it all personal perference. I know for sure the Samsung LCD 600 series are 120 refresh for sure. Being you feed it such a nice clean 1080P signal with the panny and you get the result. Bottom line is that effect is not from your DVD player.
426586
You will improve your picture even more if you drop all of those and put up an antenna. Comcast, Dish, and all the others get their digital signals from the television stations. The same stations broadcast in digital over the air. The only difference is that the cable and dish companies compress the signal to get more bandwidth, so technically, the free over the air signal is your best bet. I live in a major metropolitan area and get about 40 channels for free off the air. (Not counting analog.) It was a major step up from cable. 720p is not the problem. It's doubtful that you could tell the difference on that alone. A 1080i broadcast of a 1960 sitcom will look no better on 1080i than on a 480i broadcast and a 1080i broadcast that is (re)run on a lower definition digital channel will lack resolution despite being digital. It all depends on the source and resolution, and not all digital channels are high def. The problem is that with a bad picture, your new set is very good at showing you every detail of it. When TV went color, there were still lots of black and white shows. When it became stereo, there were still lots of mono broadcasts. These days, you don't see NBC's peacock telling you that the show is in glorious living color, and the TV stations don't flash the "stereo" logo. But they might have a "now in HD" logo. In a few years, that will go away because it will be normal for things to be in HD. Then the cable companies will have to rethink all the low bandwidth channels that they throw at you. But for now, you will get your share of low def shows, shows in a square box, and letterbox within a 4*3 box leaving half the picture blank. The advantage of your Sony is that things will only get better. Having a TV that's better than the broadcast is better than the other way around.
211946
I am also experiencing the "green lines" in 1080p. It looks good in 1080i. I called Philips support and the rep was trying to convince me that my Samsung LN40A550 LCD was not 1080p and I should call Samsung to see why I am seeing green lines. I was also very surprised when they said nobody has ever reported this issue. He had me upload the latest firmware but my unit already had the latest. I tried anyways and it didn't do anything.Anybody solved this problem yet?
1161855
HDTV is definitly here. However, there is a cavet. An HDTV program not produced originally in an HDTV format (720p, 1080i) but what I like to call EDTV format (400i, 480p, 576i, 576p) and has been upconverted from EDTV to HDTV resolutions just can't compare to a natively produced HDTV program. There is alot of HDTV programming, but there is also a lot of EDTV programming out. While EDTV looks better than regular television, it only slightly an improvement. If you haven't seen your first high-definition image your in for a treat. 1080p is a bonus resolution that, at this time, is only supported by Blu-Ray/HD-DVD movies and computer inputs in all their glory. It is not necessary for broadcast or cable television, yet. The only gain to waiting a year is holding on to your money. Yes, the initial outlay for a television is expensive, especially if you haven't seen it in action, but once you have it and start enjoying you'll soon realize I am glad I bought the tv. Until broadcast television and high-definition movies increase the resolution past 1080p, a 1080p tv all your going to need. Just make sure you pay attention to the connectivity on the back of the set.
1220264
William: Since you've had the 9040 for a week now, could you please be more specific and give us some details about what you have experienced? Does it do a great job of upscaling non-hd material to 1080p? I plan on buying one, but need to hear from someone how it performs when hooked up to an HDTV and/or Home theater system.? I would appreciate any additional information you can provide so I can learn a little more prior to pulling the trigger on this a/v receiver. Thank a lot William.
2223784
It is an interesting question that people ignore. The output you get on the screen in totally dependant on what the quality of the signal is going in. In the computer world there is a term, "garbage in garbage out." Consumer guide used to specifically test how TV's interacted with a cable input. I do not see that they still evaluate this signal input issue. The reality is that all signals are far from equal. I have Cablevision in NYC and find the signal abysmal. I am in a apartment building where the signal is being split 90 times and it is obvious the signal is extremely devalued. My brother in NJ gets Comcast directly into his home and his 1080P picture is the best I have ever seen. In general there are two issues which you may not be able to control, the inate abiltiy of the specific TV to process a cable input and the quality of the signal. I hope this has helped. It is my understanding that satellite and Fios are by far the highest quality signal. Cable is a crapshoot.
1119115
I think we're experiencing image burn-in on our 2 1/2-year-old 1080p LCD TV. When an HD show is on, there are now visible vertical lines marking where the sidebars of standard definition programs would be, almost as if a standard size screen were placed over the widescreen. There's also some shadowing in the top half of the standard screen area. This is most noticeable when the picture background is light colored. We had no idea this would happen. We were considering buying the Samsung model you've got, but we spend more than 5% of our TV time watching standard definition programs, and many of our DVD/Bluray movies have black bars on top and bottom. Maybe we'll just get by with our current set until the image burn-in problem is eliminated.
1341298
Is the convertion from 1080p to 720p the reason I get two grey bars left and right when I tune into a HD channel? If not, why do I get those bars? The picture is quite good but not full left and right.
671574
Sorry I missed your question earlier, but hopefully you can change your mind about the Panasonic. Viera has awful color and any SD source just looks atrocious. My experience with this SONY is that most SD cable looks sharp and clean, with good motion handling and less noise that you'd expect from the typical LCD. It all depends on how you're viewing your SD cable. Most cable providers send digital, analog, and HDTV network channels thru their line. I have a splitter on my cable line, sending one output to the set's RF input and the other to my cable box and then thru S-video cable. SD cable boxes today are mostly SD-digital. The digital SD stations actually look quite good, far better than you'd expect from an LCD. SD-DVD is even better, and BluRay looks best if your player can downscale to 720p (the SONY's own built-in 1080 downscaler is likely not as competent as the one on your BR player). The HD feeds thru your cable line look outstanding with 1080, 720, nd even 480 signals -- pure analog SD thru that line is tolerable, but not nearly as crisp as the SD-digital versions of those same channels. Thru your cable box, pure analog stations look a bit grim, red, and undersaturated; but digital-SD stations look very clean, almost as nice as SD-DVD. I'd avoid the Panasonic. In fact, this SONY might not be perfect (you'll have to use the RGB controls to tone down the really heavy Red), but it's the best 26" LCD I've seen in a while. Samsung makes a 26" that looks good in reviews, but build quality and reliability are extremely poor, and the Samsung suffers from motion artifacts that look much worse than with the SONY.
2014212
Wrong. It looks great at any distance and the improvement over 1080p is obvious at 10'. I have one and I know this. I recommend you go to Best Buy and see for yourself. There has been a lot of nonsense about people can't see the difference at more than (pick your number) feet. Simply not true.
267145
From what I have read about my 1080p flatscreen. The picture is automatically upconverted to 1080p
1382448
As far as I know nothing is even broadcast in 1080p. I've tested both connections Component and hdmi with my HD cable which is 1080i and the difference is not even visible.
370208
It accepts a 4K signal then down converts to something slightly better than 1080p in that it adds 16 million sub pixels to the down converted 4K signal. So 4K picture slightly better than 1080p but not a true 2160 picture. TV is incredible though!