what kind of television do you have or want to have?

I have a Sony flat-tube I purchased in 2002. There's a lot of glare at certain angles when I have my lamp on, but it works very well.

some cheap Chinese made LCD. Its ok.

I have a Pioneer. I liked it better than the Panasonic.

from age 13 until age 25, I didn't have a tv. then I got a 17 inch panasonic, for about 12 years. I thought that that was the biggest, best tv I would ever want. 2 years ago, when I went to buy a new tv, I couldn't get anything under 21 inches, and for ridiculously little money, I got a 27 inch panasonic. I can't imagine ever wanting anything more. maybe in 12 years I will.

I have a 32 inch panasonic, but I am in the market for a 50" plasma screen I am doing the research and trying to decide wht is the best TV I can get for my money.

I have a 60” Sony 3-chip LCD rear projection HDTV. Jon.

Plasma sucks, IMHO: It's susceptible to burn-in. Jon.

I'm concerned with that as well. What would you recommend instead?

LCD, either rear or flat. The problem with DLP is that some people, myself included can see the dreaded color wheel ‘rainbow’ (which is like flashes of colored light), which makes it impossible to watch TV with a DLP TV. An additional problem is that you don’t notice the rainbows while you are in the showroom, regardless how many hours you spend there. Its when you get the TV home, that the ‘sightings’ being. When they come out with 3-Chip home DLP TV’s, which eliminates the rainbow problem by bypassing the color wheel in favor of a 3-ship RGB system (like the rear tube and rear LCD projection systems) then DLP will be worth the monetary investment. Jon. Edit: I forgot about SXRD, HD-ILA or variations thereof…they will be just as good (well SXRD is better than) as LCD.

Plasma does not suck. How many people do you know that had the burn-in problem with later generation Panasonic or Pioneer plasmas?

I owned a Panasonic 42PWD6UY EDTV plasma for the past 18 month and have been very happy with it.
If I had to upgrade now the top choice for me would be a Panasonic 8th generation 50" or 65" plasma.

Dimitry

It really depends what you do with the TV. People that play video games on them are SOL, because the constant display of bar menus and other stationary icons leads to burn-in. The same goes with people who watch a lot of CNN, because they end up having the stationary news divider lines burned into the set. Also, when watching 4:3 TV on a 16:9 HDTV unit, you will have the black bars on either side of the picture, which as well can lead to burn-in.

Why not LCD and avoid any risks at all, and just watch whatever you want to watch whenever you want to watch it without worrying about burin-in?

Jon.

I'm vaguely interested by Predicta, but pricing is silly.

27" (?) Samsung flat-tube that works wonderfully. As opposed to the 31" Phillips flat-tube that we bought and which stopped working after two weeks.

I think we paid 320 at Best Buy for it. Something like that. We love it. But obviously don't have a thing for huge tv's.

bob

I used to play video games on my plasma and 95% of my source material is in 4:3. I use the intellegent zoom mode on the TV to stretch the image to 16:9. It would take days of having the same image on the screen to leave some sort of ghost or burn in image. The latest generation plasmas are even less susceptible to burn in.

LCDs are fine but I prefer plasmas because of the rich, vibrant, life-like colors and as well as deeper blacks. LCD are also a more expensive than plasmas of comparable size though the price gap is shrinking.