Summer Of Upgrades, Three
Posted on | September 4, 2007 at 7:07 pm | 11 Comments
Another upgrade I made this summer was to my TV set. I replaced my Sony KP-57HW40 57″ Widescreen CRT RPTV 1080i HDTV-Ready set (almost 6 years old) with a brand spanking new Panasonic TH-50PZ700U 50″ Plasma Widescreen 1080p HDTV.
Yeah, I know it’s a bit of a downgrade going from a 57″ to a 50″ HDTV, but with the extra clarity and brightness that the plasma brings, I don’t really notice. Everything looks so much better on it. Besides, the 58″ version was a bit out of my price range. I was looking to reduce some footprints and wall space in my living room anyway, and this works out well. Look at how thin it is (about 6 inches deep):
You wouldn’t think it weighs that much, but it’s actually 124 lbs and takes two people to lift it onto that TV stand. It still weighs less than my old RPTV set, but it’s not something I’m going to be moving around a lot. You’ll notice in the pictures that the shelves on the TV stand are bare, yet there’s a tower of audio/video components next to the TV. An upcoming project is to move those components to the TV stand and get rid of the tower. That will free up some additional room.
I told myself that I was going to keep the Sony TV for five years before investing in newer technology, and I held myself to that. I’m actually kind of surprised that I went with a plasma TV, since when I first started looking at them years ago, I was not impressed. There were issues like burn-in, the hum at high altitudes, the huge power supplies, the color banding (i.e. “rainbow effect”), etc. But none of those really seem to be a problem with the newer generation of plasma sets, from what I’ve read and seen. Still, I had a hard time deciding to go with plasma rather than LCD or DLP or LCOS or SXRD or whatever. I really like the visual “pop” and bright colors of the LCD TV’s, but on the other hand there’s something fakey looking about them. LCD’s don’t do so well with the darker material. The blackness level on the plasmas is better. The picture just looks overall more realistic on a plasma. And then there’s the size/price issue. Big LCD’s generally cost more than big plasmas.
The first thing I did when they delivered the TV was to tune to an NFL preseason game on one of the Dish HD channels. Wow! It looked much better than my old Sony, and I can’t wait to start watching the Broncos on it. Hopefully they’ll bring the goods this year, so that it’s not only the better picture I’ll be enjoying. The HD material really shines. I think standard definition material looks better than it did on my old TV as well, though I wasn’t able to do a side-by-side comparison.
BTW, I sold my old TV on Craigslist and pretty much got what I wanted for it. It was a big bonus that I didn’t have to move it myself.
Pet Peeve Of The Day: People who see your ad on Craigslist, make an appointment with you to come check out the merchandise, and then never show up or phone, or answer their phone again. That didn’t happen to me with the TV, but it did happen with some other stuff I tried to sell lately.
Latre.
Comments
11 Responses to “Summer Of Upgrades, Three”
September 4th, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
When’s the movie party?
September 4th, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
All that wonderful and insane technology…and no one’s invented a real way of eliminating the unsightly tangle of wires. Whoever can invent a new mode of connectivity that’s as reliable as hard-wiring but less annoying, spatially, will make a zillion dollars.
September 4th, 2007 @ 9:56 pm
Whoever can invent a new mode of connectivity that’s as reliable as hard-wiring but less annoying, spatially, will make a zillion dollars.
They’re actually working on that (Wireless HD or Wireless HDMI, for example). The problem is that the bandwidth is pretty large, and so you almost always have to bring some compression into it, which means you lose data. But I suspect the technology will catch up sooner rather than later.
September 5th, 2007 @ 4:08 am
I read about wireless HDMI and thought it was an April Fools’ joke, but that’s probably just me. Back in my day our TVs had only one cable and that was to the god-fearing A/C outlet, like our forefathers had. What has technology brought us in the intervening decades? TVs that come in 12 pieces that gotta be hooked up by wires that cost more by themselves than the old TVs did. TVs get sharper while our eyes get blurrier – hey Paco, glasses only cost a C-note!
And at the end of the movie, the bad guy is just as dead as he was in black and white.
But that’s just me. It’s certainly not my wife, who is fascinated by any talk of big TV screens… the $70k 108″ model will do nicely, thanks.
September 5th, 2007 @ 9:07 am
TVs that come in 12 pieces that gotta be hooked up by wires that cost more by themselves than the old TVs did.
Where did you grow up – Russia? In my household, we only got a new TV every 15 years or so. According to my dad, they were like the price of a car.
September 5th, 2007 @ 11:59 am
I predict you will very much like HD sports. I’ve been watching baseball & college football on our HD set. The grass is so very green and you can see each blade!
September 5th, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
Yep, I liked HD sports on my old TV (well, football at least), and I like ‘em even better on my new one.
September 5th, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
I like new gadgets, but I like the cash in my pocket even more. If I buy a new clearer higher definition television I would soon acclimatize to that level of picture quality and get no more pleasure out of watching than before [NOTE: My current TV is our host's of two generations ago
So, it must be nudging on ten years old.]
September 5th, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
Yeah, how’s the old 40″ Toshiba working anyway? That is pretty close to 10 years old.
September 5th, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
No problems. I reconverge it every month or so. It amuses much more than a multikilobuck hole in the wallet.
On other fronts, perhaps one day I will go so far as to get a progressive scan DVD player. For one thing, my old Sony player is abysmal at playing DVD-ROMs. I end up watching such things on my laptop PC. Watching an entire movie on a such a machine actually perched in one’s lap is a good way to get your frijoles fried (or even refried.)
September 6th, 2007 @ 5:33 am
> Where did you grow up – Russia? In my household, we only got a new TV
> every 15 years or so. According to my dad, they were like the price of a car.
You bought new – we stuck to the used market (and this was very pre-eBay, pre-Craigslist)
We didn’t even go color until the early 80s. And my Mom still uses that same TV set today, complete with a tiny chip in the screen from when I was playing with a BB pistol I had when I was 11…