Well, my friends $1,000 Infocus X1 has an excellent picture, especially considering it's price. Noone that has viewed movies at his house sees the rainbow effect so no worries there.

I have been to the local CineMark many times and before you walk in, the huge banner to the 2 bigger theatres states that it's equipped with a DLP projector. It looked absolutely fantastic.

I am selling my Pioneer set in the spring and picking up the X1, just to get used to DLP. Then a little while after, I plan on getting a Runco DLP projector, and Im sure by then the DLP 2 will have been upgraded.

By the way, the X1 has the original DLP chip, and I still saw no rainbow effects. It's put onto a 92" Da-Lite High Contrast screen, and looks amazing. Xbox looks great on it too

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Play it LoUd!!

Hello. I personally have a 36" flatscreen Sony direct view XBR 4:3 in my game room & the 60" Sony Grand Wega II XBR LCD 16:9 in my living room and love both. I've been a production manager for Sony for 8 years now - however I am VERY unbiased even though I get a HUGE discount on all Sony gear. As a matter of fact I recently traded my PS2 in for an Xbox. Plus even all of my home theater audio equipment consists of all Infinity speakers & a Denon receiver & DVD player. As for the TV's - I've had the 36" for 2 years now & the LCD Wega 60" for 8 months. Directview sets by far have the best viewing angles. But this is where I believe the advantages end. All plasma, DLP, & LCD PJ have much better resolutions & much longer lives plus no burn-in for DLP & LCD which is big for me seeing I use my Xbox often. I auditioned the Samsung HLN567W 56" DLP for 90 days before I got my Sony 60" LCD to see which I liked best (luckily my brother owns a relatively large home theater store and he let me do so). The Samsung DLP was very nice indeed - however the rainbows are too apparent, especially during dark scenes & viewing from angles which is VERY annoying. Also the Sony LCD has higher resolution & more pixels which easily gives it a better picture quality at all times regardless. And though both do have great picture quality you'll definately find especially when viewing progressive scan high resolutions & HDTV the Sony LCD has a much brighter, clearer, crisper & overall better picture. As for the 'black levels' this is a complete non-issue. People blow this way out of proportion. The black levels are very good on the new generation Sony LCD - actually just right. Not too black like direct view sets & yet not too light. I find it better this way as it is MORE theatre like. When you go to the theatre & the screen goes blank/black it looks MUCH like the Sony LCD giving THE best theatre like experience IMO. The theatre movie screen never gets pure black like a plain direct view CRT set. Anyways enough rambling - please feel free to e-mail me with any questions. Have a great experience!

Greg

We just hung 2 plasma screens, 1 a Sony the other a Zenith, and a smaller Toshiba LCD at the Fleet Center in Boston. The Sony Plasma and the Toshiba are fed by component, High Definition from Comcast. Granted, the Zenith isn't fed with HD but the Sony blows it away for clarity. The Sony fed with HD and Digital Cable had an awsome picture!!! It fell short when fed with an analog signal, The local channels of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox.

The Toshiba LCD was just as impressive as the Sony, but on all channels. This might have been due to the smaller size of the screen.

One of the things I was surprised at was the amount of time it took to install each and every one of these flat screens properly. By properly I mean all the cables aresnaked in the walls and completely hidden from view. It took us around 30 man hours to install each of these!!! With dropped ceilings!!! Granted the more you do the faster you get in the installation. I just thought my fellow Outlaws would be interested in this information to be used when purchasing one of these screens. Jim

At my workplace we have the 42' versions of the Samsung, Panasonic, Sony (TS series and WX series), and Zenith plasmas side by side along the back wall. We also carry the Pioneers, but my store will not be getting display models on that one. Anyhow, the Panasonic wins this race, hands down. Unfortunately it's not an HDTV it's an EDTV. However, the picture is far better than any of the others so what does it matter if it technically can't display HDTV resoloution.

For me that (no HD) would be a deal breaker. I already run quite a bit of HD signal to my current TV, and I plan on running a lot more.

As far as picture, I looked at getting one of the Sony XBR Plasmas. As far as I can tell, they have by far the best picture. At the moment though the benefits of plasma dont offset the high price vs. DLP for me. Though currently I am running a 65" Toshiba RPTV

So you know. I am normally not a sony fan at all, but they know what they are doing when it comes to TV. I believe they use Hitachi glass but use all their own internals.

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Stott

stott, edtvs play hd back, just at lower resolutions. those panasonic edtvs have been getting good reviews for a while now, and they are a great deal for the price. you should compare them side by side before you say every hdtv plasma is better just because its hd... the panasonics do lack a little reliability though.

I attended CES and checked out the soon to be announced InFocus 4805 front projector. In the "bright" convention setting, the picture was nice and bright and very stunning, as good as many of the plasma, lcd, rear proj sets that I saw. Supposed to be coming out for something like $1300ish and competing against the Optoma H30, both of which uses the same guts. The 4805 gave a very respectable picture for this price and the unit was super quiet, I could barely hear it running. At this rate, front projectors are going to be high on my list for the price to image size to quality that they offer. I did not see the Optoma, did anyone else see it or the 4805?

Well, after a much belabored phone call with my owner, my 'plasma wall' now is fully stocked. In the 42" size we have the Sony TS, XS, and XBR, the Toshiba Cinema Series, Panasonic EDTV, Zenith, Samsung, Pioneer, Pioneer Elite. In side-by-side comparisons the winner is the Pioneer Elite (PRO910HD) the close second, (and much cheaper) is the Toshiba Cinema series. This is a universal review by the 10 employees in my store. If you have the budget, the Pioneer PRO910 is the one. It has the HDTV tuner with it, and HDMI ports (2), and the best looking case material of the bunch (although the toshiba is not too shabby, and I believe these two sets may come out of the same factory, as the stands and manuals are nearly the same. I'll have to do some research into that one).

Has anyone had a chance to see the new Sony Grand Wega 70" RPTV? SLL? I've never cared for LCD's too much in the past (window screen effect, color skewing, poor blacks etc.) but it seems Sony has made huge strides in this area recently. I had been drawn to the big Samsung Tantus DLP RPTV's but I'm starting to have second thoughts about them. I do see the rainbows but it doesn't jump out at me, I almost have to strain to see it. One thing I am seeing and haven't seen mentioned anywhere is a granular sparkling like quality in very bright objects. It has the appearance of sunlight sparkling on new fallen snow. I wonder if it is related to the screen material because if the object moves the sparkles don't move with it? Could it be that my eye/brain has trouble integrating and converging the separate RGB color pixels into white and is this related to the rainbow effect but on a different scale? I can't wait to see a 3-chip DLP unit to note any differences in my perceptions. I do hope they come down in price soon.

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Tekdredger

[This message has been edited by tekdredger (edited January 14, 2004).]

yes i have seen that sony, and it is junk. the other series of sony lcd projections are better imo. granted they are not 70", and maybe that has a little to do with it, but that 70" everywhere i have noticed it looks unspectacular.