Ducati Monster Forum

Hi everyone. As most of you know, I've just moved into my new house. ;D
The house is awesome, but it's empty. I need to buy EVERYTHING.
As of today, my furniture consists of a beer fridge (also has food in it), an outdoor table and chairs, and my camping mat and sleeping bag.
A bed is being delivered tomorrow arvo, and I'll head out and buy a lounge and dining table etc..

Also high on the list is a big-arse TV. ;)

I don't really know too much about TV's these days. I have had my eye on an LG 42" LCD with HD and 200hZ. It seems like a real nice telley. Has anyone got one?

Can anyone tell me the "in's and out's" of LCD, HD, 1080p, 50/100/200hZ?

I'm after a TV that's "pretty bloody good", but it doesn't have to be "the best thing money can buy". :)

wait for cairns duc to respond or Goldie

Hi Dave,

I've just been through this....

I ended up with a Sony 46" LCD - not the best, but not the worst either.. I find the Sony's user interface good to drive - if you play with some in a shop, you'll find the ones that work and the ones that don't....

Be careful getting sucked into all the hype and marketing - differing features 100Hz, 200Hz, motion whatever.... - basically anything you buy today will be superseded shortly. And they'll all look pretty good to the average eye.

Regarding size, rule of thumb is measure what you think your viewing distance will be - couch to the screen - the viewing distance should be around 2-3 times the width of the screen.

Thanks Goldy,
                   I didn't even look at the buttons or remotes, let alone "drive" any. I'll have a go tomorrow.
I don't reckon I need 200hz either. I'm sure I wouldn't notice the difference anyway.
Size wise - anything over 42 will be way too big in the lounge room. It is a "lounge" room for me, not a cinema. I reckon 40 would be fine too. Anything smaller is just, well, too small.  ;)

and dont foget a big ass bed for your guest  [cheeky]

yes i would like a queen size thanks Dave

(http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/3/3_13_7.gif)

The Age old Question, What TV do I buy?

You will hear some varying and wildly different opinions on what is best, You go to one store and they say LCD, you go to another and they will push Plasma.

The Picture quality difference between LCD and Plasma are so damn close it almost impossible to see the difference.

The simplest way to decide:
 - if you have a bright room with lots of natural light during the day and lots of houselights on at night, LCD would be the best option. (Less reflective Screen)
 - If you have a darker room with with nice heavy Curtains and if your into lots of Sports and items with fast motion, A Plasma might be the better option. (I am eying off one of the new Panasonic NEO Plasma panels, very nice [thumbsup] )

But ask the sales people to let you have a play with the Remote, try it out with normal TV as most TV stores will be playing HD material like a Bluray Movie which will make any TV look good (Ask me how I know ;) )

And as much as people don't like them, ask about extended Warranty, I always put extended warranty on every large $$ electrical Item I purchase, my 4 and a half year old 51" Sony TV has just blown up, and with the extended warranty, if they can't repair it, they will replace it, if they can't replace it, they give me a credit to choose another, ask the salesman to work out a deal including warranty.

Also check what they cover with extended warranty, some warranties are better than others, Harvey Norman's for example is very limited, Good guys is much better (Please note I don't work for either of these companies, I'm just speaking from past experiences)

Some other advice when closing the deal.
* Push em hard on price! all these companies are desperate for sales, shop it around, ask for the best price, and don't be subtle that you are getting the best price, tell them straight.

* Don't get sucked in to buying expensive Cables and surge protectors, it's a rort! The basic surge protector and cables are fine (When I say basic, don't mistake that for cheap crap, middle of the road is just as good as the top off the line stuff) Expensive Cables like Monster Cable and Platinum Crest Cables are just there to make the retailer a fortune in profit (Some High end cables have markups as high as 300 to 400% (Again ask me how I know ;) )
 I used to make more profit from the Cables than I would from the TV!

* Get it delivered, I used to be amazed how many people would try to squeeze a huge TV into a tiny Car and then would damage or risk damaging there brand new toy.
If the shop drops it while there bringing it to your place, who cares! That's the shops problem, not yours!

If you want to find out how good your price is, send me a PM with the model number and brand, and give me a day of 2 and I'll do some checking to see if the price is the very best you can get.
Classic example, my brother in law thought he had the best price he could get for a 60" Sony TV, a couple of quick calls and I got him nearly a $1000 cheaper than his price.
The money is better off in your pocket, not there's!

Hope this helps!  [thumbsup]

Thanks CD, some great advice there :o

My lounge is very bright, so I'm on the right track there with an LCD.
I am planning on getting an extended warranty too. As you said, there's quite a few $ going into it, and it is cheap insurance.

Push them hard you say? The mattress I bought today retails for about $4K, I paid $1400 ;)

I'll shop around tomorrow, unfortunately Good Guys are only in Australia, not Tasmania. It looks like I'm limited to "Hardly Normal", Retravision, Clive Peters, Myer etc...

Cables??? I'm spending thousands of dollars on a TV and it doesn't come with a bloody cable? >:(

And yes, delivery is a great idea. I saw a bloke today loading his brand new TV into the back of his Triton ute. It had a bit of bubble wrap around it to protect it. I don't think it would have helped in the torrential downpour we got 10 minutes later.

hmmm, plasma or LCD ?  Yellow meanie - you're in tassie, therefore it's cooler than the mainland, I say go the plasma for the extra heat those things generate !   [thumbsup]

I don't watch much TV, just make sure my couch is comfy.  OK  :-*

thats ok Heather we can share beds

No longer the case, in fact some LCD's now generate more heat than the Plasmas!

And no Yellow Meanie, they almost never put any Cables in the box, because there are so many different setups and configurations, if they do put any basic cables in the box (Like an Antenna Cable for example) they are the cheapest nastiest piles of crap they can find. whenever I get a TV or any Audio product, I remove the cables from the box and throw them in the bin.

If you go to Hardly Normal, watch the Sales guys push Monster Cables! They love the stuff, They have a Monster demo cable board that "shows" you the difference between a normal cable and a Monster cable, People fall for it every time. Expensive Cables are the biggest pile of steaming crap in the Industry.

I have seen customers come over (when I worked for another electrical retailer) with Quotes for a basic TV with over $1000 worth of Cables on it!! I have then sent them out with the same TV with the same quality of Cables for under $100

I have found that

http://www.dtvforum.info/ (http://www.dtvforum.info/)

is a good resource for both TV and sound systems.   Including some price threads.

Hmmmmm Cables............

I am a product designer for a company that also manufactures cables (but in a different industry).
I'm not going to elaborate but the extra price does not justify the extra performance (in the industry I'm in anyway). You are essentially paying for a group of designers, lab technicians, sales people and marketers revamping and reviving exisitng product lines, and this does cost alot of money.

Well I've just paid for a 40" Samsung, full HD 100Hz blah blah...
Retravision and Hardly Normal both quoted around $2400 just for the TV. Then if I added extended warranty, cables and a little sound system, I was looking at about or just over $3K :o

I went into Myer Home, who are having a big sale, so their prices were immediately a few hundred cheaper.
The sales-bloke was really cool, and I don't think they work on commission, so he didn't mind giving me even more price cuts on everything. So I've ended up with the TV, 5yr warranty, 1000W sound system / DVD player, HDMI cable, and another audio cable to plug my laptop in, and delivery for $2600.

It gets delivered tomorrow ;D can't wait  [popcorn]

The only thing is, I really wanted to watch "Flash Forward" tonight :'(
Can someone who has a DVD recorder burn a copy for me?  :)  I would be soooo grateful :-*

Wow, I thought it wa sjust me and Goldie who knew a thing or two about the AV industry...

I'll pretty much echo what others have said, and aelaberate a touch on the 100hz/200hz thing.

Avoid expensive cables, I use HDMI cables from WES that cost me about $15 for a 2m cable. I've installed 3tv's this weekend, and have yet to have a single one fail or ruin picture quality, and I've put up at least  50 screens this year. alone. I find well priced cables of  reasonable quality can often be found at computer shops. in Sydney anyway.

I have heard that "Cablechick" is a good online retailer of well priced cables. Never tried them myself though, as I have my own sources within the industry. Also, make sure the cable is long enough. The number of times I have walked into a job where the client "had everything", and the Harvey Norman sales guy sold him a 1m Monster cable for what is a 3m run... Measure the length from tv to equipment, then double it. You should be safe :) 3 - 5m cables are the go for wall mounted screens, 2 meters for the screen on a desk top with equipment underneath, and a meter if  the component is sitting on the same surface as the TV.

100hz/200hz - this is basically refers to how many times the screen is refreshed every second.. There really is very little that can be seen by the human eye between the two, so don't insist on 200hz,

These high scan rates are usually used in conjunction with some sort of frame interpolation system, "smooth motion" or "motionflow", these give you a picture that looks very crisp and smooth, but at the same time, un-natural. When you watch a movie with such a system turned on, it often looks like it was shot with a handycam. Some people (usually those with very little clue) think this makes for a better picutre. Personally, I'm a bit of a purist, I want the movie experience in my home to be as close as possible to the cinema.  

If you have ever seen the raw footage of a movie (usually seen in "making of" sections of special features in DVD's and Blu-Rays), you'll notice the footage looks remarkebly like high quality handy cam footage. Very different to what you see as an end result. This is because movie houses actually pay highly trained people lots of money to put in motion blur,colour and contrast adjustments, even grain, to achieve the look the movie maker wants.

The motionflow systems effectively remove some of this stuff, by adding in frames that did not exist. EG, a movie plays back at about 25 (for simplicity) frames per second in a cinema, when you have a 100hz tv with a smooth motion system turnbed on, it "makes up" 3 of every 4 frames. The result is a smooth picture, at the cost of some of the "cinema look".

I'm not totally against such systems, I think they are cool for sports, and even cartoons, but I'd turn them off for movies and video games (the processing time causes a slight lag for video games).

In terms of which TV - I'd skip over LG. My picks for LCD would be either Samsung or Sony. For plasma, Panasonic, and the 8 series Samsung looked pretty good too, though not sure of the pricing. I tend to put "ease of use" as part of the TV watching experience, but no one really offers a proper remote anymore (with discrete buttons for inputs) though Sony and Samsung to make it easy enough to be able to remove inputs you are not using, this limiting the amount of button pressing between inputs. LG are fine int his regard, I just see more LG's getting waranty repairs than the others. I'd rather spend an extra $100 and have a lower chance of a warranty issue.

*wonders in amazement at how much crap he can dribble whilst sipping a latte at Mecca*

If you have any more questions on specific models, let me know.

Cheers,

Z...

Zee I think we need to talk ;) ;)

EDIT: Oh and well done Dave, making a decision is something I've never been able to overcome [roll]

Better make it a large bed as it looks like we are all sharing  [roll] [cheeky]

what all of us , i fart and snore  [evil]

Thanks for the warning.   [cheeky]

yer great bazz thanks for that [roll]

we can play dutch ovens  :D

And in a vast Majority of Industries, it is more than Justified to pay the extra for better Cables.
But for the average audio/visual setup, it is just overpriced crap and hype, and thanks to a number of performance comparisons, it has been proven that some of the biggest and most expensive Cables made little to no Difference to the quality of the Picture/sound.

Sound and Image Magazine a number of years ago did an interesting comparison, they compared some medium priced cables through to Extreme high end Cables. The Medium Cables performed the exact same quality job of picture and sound, they even included a full electronic test to ensure it was accurate.
Value for Money and quality, the Medium priced Cables won every time.

..And, you wont be as pissed off when your new kitten chews through your $40/m Nordost speaker cable...

Z...

Whist I generally agree with all sentiment regarding cables "marketing" cables, I can tell you from 1st hand experience that there is instances where it really does count, but those instances usually require two things not found in a typical home setup - extreme resolutions and distance.

<techno babble starts here>
I'm talking sending greater than 1080p resolutions over 20 or more metres, typically from multiple sources distributed to multiple end points via matrix switchers, often to receiving devices with differing native resolutions, aspects and the like. This requires the use of fibre transmission, EDID managers, scalers  etc. Then we get into SMPTE vs VESA formats, copy protection... the list goes on and on..... yeeesh, video used to be the easy part of AV!

... back to your normal programming.

Nick, that's techno porn speak !! chuck in a few more TLA's !   ;D[thumbsup]

frankly, I'm glad you and zee are around. So much friggin techno babble with TV's these days....oh, the good old days of black & white!  8)

TLA's require me to move more in the ITC convergence space of my business than the traditional AVC space. Lets take it to the sidebar to discuss some more :-)

Aaahhhh the good old days "before" TV........  ;D  ;D

Shit now I'm showing my age.....  [bang]  [bang]

PS: Thanks for the great advice from you all...... I'm looking as well....  [coffee]  [coffee]

and of course it's diffecult to say "buy a sony" they have what, 5 or 6 levels of LCD these days.

I think 200hz is a rort....well it is....to my eyes!

will say one thing about HDMI cables....the upscaling of DVD through a blu ray is amazing....that seems to work really well (I was sceptical)....so do get a hdmi cable...just don't blow hundreds on it.

black and white huh? ???

No doubt, but for the average setup with a TV sitting on a stand with a basic Home Theater in a box, but for specialist applications like you suggest, of course the better quality cables will outperform the basic cables, If you look at most specialist installers they make there own cables. I'm am referring to the Monster Cables Myth that even the most basic of setups will look better with there mega $$$$ cables installed.
Sorry I should have specified I was referring to the average home theater system, when it comes to Custom or high end home theater setups, then all bets are off.  ;D

Try it out!! Turn that colour knob all the way down....ENJOY !?  :P

I'm not a Racist, I own a Colour TV  ;D

Whoo-Hoo! A truck turned up this morning with my telly ;D

I really wanted to set it up straight away. But it was such a beautiful day, I had to go for a ride instead ;)

A few hours later another truck turned up with:

A bed for Matty, Jukie, Betty and Baz.
A couch for Heather.
A coffee table for us to put, umm, coffee on.
A dining room table and chairs.

Then I went for another ride [moto]



The telly is set up and works a treat. I've also hooked it up to the sound system via the HDMI cable.
I can't get sound to come out of the external speakers though. :-[

I have an indoor antenna plugged directly into the TV. I would plug it into the sound system but I need a different plug.
Can I get TV surround sound with this set-up? Or do I have to plug the antenna into the sound system?

your a legend Dave thanks for the Bed

(http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/4/4_17_209.gif)

No worries Jukie, and it's a Queen size, just like you ordered ;)


I just tried a DVD and I get awesome surround sound. Can I get it with normal TV too?

now we can play dutch ovens    (http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/10/10_15_5.gif)

Yup, you'll need an optical cable to plug from the optical digtal out of the tv to the optical digital in on the receiver.

Z...

Thanks Dave.  Sorry Jukie the dutch oven is all yours  [laugh] I'll share the couch with anyone else who doesn't wanna play dutch ovens too!

Couldn't agree more. The systems we work on are strictly professional applications - mostly professional tools, and some professional toys thrown in! No residential work at all!

ok guy i need you to convince me that i have purchase the right thing. We have just brought a Pioneer 50" full hd, plasma tv with a Yamaha digital sound projector and also got a Pioneer blue ray player. Does this sound alright or have i done the wrong thing 

Sounds pretty good to me!

Movie nights at Betty and Jukie's place ;D

 [popcorn]

Sounds good to me.  ;D

The movie nights or the system?

both can you bring on tourismo  ;D

Bazz I struggle to carry my licence when I head out on the bike ... buggered if I know how I am going to do Tourismo let alone carry a TV.