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what do i need to know when purchasing a new hdtv
by faith trust and pixie dustPublished Jun 11, 2008
Views: 173
There are a couple things that make a tv a good tv..first of all the size of the tv in conjucntion with the size of the room...Also, LCD or Plasma? LCD and Plasma both claim to have the same life, although LCD has with my experiance a greater fail rate within the first year..Plasmas have a higher contrast ratio, wich to me make Plasma the best choice. The higher the contrast ratio, the best the tv. For LCD there is a new thing they like to throw in....it IS not the true contrast ratio, but they throw it in to throw off consumers. It is called Dynamic contrast. If that is listed, make sure to ask what the static contrast ratio is. Also, look for a TV that has burn in protection. My tv has a pixil shift, which keeps the picture moving at all times to prevent burn in..
Also, the versatility...make sure there are enough of inputs on your tv for each device you want to connect...with HD TV, make sure there are more HDMI and componant (Red, Green, Blue) connections then any other. As far as the tuner, but this really isn't important if you plan on getting a cable box...QAM tuners are awsome! The Qam tuner allows you to get HDTV through a standard coax coming from your wall. I am not sure if Time Warner allows QAM without a descrambler, but the descrambler is cheaper then a cable box. If you plan on mounting your TV, make sure the hole pattern on the back of the TV is VESA standard. That makes it easier to purchase a mount. Weight is also something you may want to take into consideration...Other then that, style and brand is all you have to look at. HAVE FUN!
For a plasma, the viewing angle is much wider then LCD. The standard viewing angle for plasma and some more expensive lcds should be 176° horizontal, 176° vertical. Also, as far as connecting to a PC; plasma and LCD are pretty compairable. My plasma does have a lower PC resolution, but that is not something that was important to me when I purchased it. You can find TVs with PC resolutions of 1920X1280. I would just like to point out that MOST computers cannot reach that resolution without having a seperate graphics card with its own memory dedicated to it. If your graphics card on your computer cannot do that resolution, you are stuck at a lower resolution and your image will ultimately look pretty awful!
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