I ment to respond toBLaurvick. I have no info on what Directv is doing regarding HD locals, however, using a plama with a built in upconverter or an addl scaler will produce an image that is pretty darn close to HD!

is is true that plasma sets will not display a standard sat picture as well as a Rear Projection HDTV monitor?

Why wouldn't they? As long as it has a composite video input it will. Who makes up this stuff...LOL Probably some company trying to sell an HD Sat reciever with the screen...

i just thought that CRT technology was better than plasma at this stage of the game. So i can go ahead and buy a plasma tv and not downgrade my sat picture? I am talking about standard tv and not hd. we only watch pre-recorded stuff so we are talking direct ultimate tv here.

i actually packaged up my zenith 1080 because we got too used to having PVR abilities and didn't want to give them up for a HD picture.

Thxs.

Ugh. Plasma TVs are way cool, but still way behind in picture quality. Seriously, I've been viewing them carefully, right up to the $20,000 mark, across many manufacturers. With a HiDef signal, they look really good, but not nearly as good as a tube set. With a DVD picture, they are just acceptable. Again, not nearly as good as a tube would display.

And on regular cable? Barf, man! Slow redraws, obvious digitization, and so on. Nice and bright, though. Hell, a good HiDef TV tube display shows all the problems on regular cable... you can just imagine what they look like on a plasma. LCD, on the other hand... wow! ... Mike

Not for a long time. They haven't got the bandwidth yet, and since the merger fell through, they still have to try to get SD locals in several more markets.

they don't even carry discovery in hd and dish does!!!

very disappointed. one of the big reasons i got the zenith 1080 was to watch discovery in hd.

Mike Riley wrote:

"Ugh. Plasma TVs are way cool, but still way behind in picture quality."

Wow. One can't really argue subjective taste, but your observations on plasma picture quality are so totally different than mine, and hell, everyone else I know, that I have to chime in. Your statements might have applied two or three years ago...but NOW?

Tom Norton of Stereophile Guide To Home Theater, a technical reviewer who obviously sees a heck of a lot of great displays, declared the Fuji 5002 50" plasma had the most amazing picture he'd seen anywhere around it's size range. In fact, for PQ alone, he preferred it to a $60,000 projection set-up! How can a technology that is "still way behind" in picture quality pull that off?

Myself, I bought a plasma on PQ alone. I'd auditioned every CRT out there, as well as seeing most RPTVs. I work in film post production and we use pro-calibrated Loewe TVs (Aconda), Front Projection and RPTVs. I watched the olympics in HD every day on the Aconda, and I've done many side-by-side comparisons of the Loewe sets to the best Fuji/Panasonic plasmas. The Aconda has the edge in the *lower most* black scale - retaining slightly darker blacks and a bit more detail.
But on every other count the Loewes look like really good "TV," whereas the Plasmas can look "real." (Not only that, the CRTs simply cannot render detail as precisely as a fixed pixel device, obvious when you're
watching something like a hockey game in HD - the plasma renders tiny text and detail on the player's uniforms that the CRT blurs into illegibility).

---"With a DVD picture, they are just acceptable."

People who own some of the best CRTs visit my house (some of them are AV reviewers), watch DVDs on my Panasonic plasma, and uniformely declare it is the most impressive, realistic, three-dimensional image they've ever seen. (Not that great FP systems don't have some big advantages).

"regular cable? Barf, man! Slow redraws,"

As with anything, et depends on the display and set-up.
in terms of realism, depth, color richness and detail, I'm getting much better NTSC pictures on my Panny plasma than I ever got from my (very good) Panny CRT.

Slow redraws? Are you sure you're not talking about LCDs? Ain't no slow redraws happenin' here. Then, the kicker:

"LCD, on the other hand... wow!"

NOW you're talking about slow re-draws. Also, a picture that alters with every move of your head. And absolutely GOD AWFUL NTSC images (on the bigger LCDs).

I'm happy you know what you like. But as far as our evaluation of picture quality, I think we're are living in separate dimensions :-)

Big H.

okay, who is right here? this is driving my nuts. the plasmas i see at sears look like crap but i don't put much faith in that because they are probably not calibrated and the store lights are too bright and probably are using crappy cables.

sloko,

I'm right :-)

Seriously, go over to the AVSForum.com and investigate the plasma discussion forum. You'll see that the vast majority of plasma purchasers are deliriously happy with their display. Many have replaced big CRT tvs, RPTVs with a good plasma, and they are uninimous that the plasma outperforms the other displays. On PQ alone, some have stated they prefer their 50" plasma over their very expensive Front Projection set-ups.

Look at the best plasmas: Any by Panasonic, the non-Alis Fujitsu plasmas (i.e. their 50" models), the Pioneer Elites.

It's tough to evaluate anything in stores of course, because they neglect set-up issues and picture settings on most displays. When I auditioned plasmas, (and CRTs), I brought my own DVDs, and I insisted that the display have a "dedicated" set-up, i.e. a direct connection from DVD player to the display, rather than taking a split feed off a Video switcher. As well, I adjusted picture settings...and even lighting conditions in the store...so that I could see what each display was capable of.

Nothing compared to the best plasmas for sheer realism - the beauty and richness of the image. Everyone who sees my plasma makes remarks like: "It makes movies come alive," "I feel like I'm there, on the movie set," "I've never seen an image like that."
(My video-phile brother-in-law, who owns an expensive wide-screen CRT, originally tried to convince me not to buy plasma, because what he'd seen in stores had dissapointed him. When he finally saw my set-up he did a 180 degree turn-around, stating I made the right choice - it smoked any CRT he'd seen).

And this is with DVDs. HD can be even better.
My Panasonic plasma does virtually CRT-level blacks. The only thing missing vs. a CRT is a bit of detail in the very lowest end of the black scale. However, the plasma's other attributes put the general viewing experience beyond what any CRT can do.

Even though I'd seen how good the Panasonic plasma looked in my store demos, with proper set-up at home it
blew me away by performing even better than I'd hoped.
As I wrote, even NTSC looks great on the Panny.
Practically everyone on the AVS forum who receives their plasma writes how blown away they are by the image.

If you like viewing DVDs and HDTV, and a 42" or 50" plasma suits the display size you want, I'm positive wouldn't be extremely happy with a good plasma.
(If you shop/research your purchase carefully).

Big H.

okay thanks I will start doing some research. Up to this point I thought it wasn't even worth researching yet.

Does anyone have any experience with the Hitachi
42 HDT20? How does it compare with the Panasonic models?

What ever happened to free enterprise? Two companies wanted to merge, why is it the government's business to block such an action? The Echostar stockholders wanted this, so did the DirecTV stockholders. Why is the government standing in the way of consumer choice?

"We will kill them all........most of them."

There's so much sad stuff in this thread....

I can't even figure out where to start.