1080P HDTV (52"+) Recommendation

[alimoalem]

Hey everybody. I'll just get right to it.

We currently have a 65" projection TV that is dieing. We want to replace it with an LCD that is 52" or bigger. We were walking around Costco today and saw some TVs. We think 55" is ideal, 52" is fine, 65" is too big (and too expensive). The room has light coming into it in the day but not that much.

I've been looking at reviews and threads on AT. I didn't find much. Are there any good sites that review TVs? All I found was Cnet.

Anyway, I'm thinking Samsung has the best offering right now. We're considering the following (but definitely open to suggestions):

Samsung LN52A630 (is the difference between this and the A650 matte vs reflective screen?)
Samsung LN52A650 (the red border is fine with us)
Sharp Aquous LC-52D65U (doing a quick 10 second look, it looked better than the Vizio and Sony next to it at Costco).

Also, is there any real difference between the Samsung LN52A750 or A850 and the A650? Any other TVs we should look at?

Thanks for any help.

PS: Any B&M's we can check out that have the TV's?

 

[s44]

You'll probably regret losing the size, particularly if you take advantage of the flatness by wall-mounting it (making the effective size smaller). Why not the 67" LED DLP?

Anyway, the Fry's sale on the A630 is great -- too bad it's sold out on the delivery side.

 

[Trashman]

I sorta agree with post above, you may regret going smaller, unless you thought that your 65" was way to big, i went from a 50" rear projection to 58" plasma, was suprised that it acually made the room feel smaller, watching it is awesome of course.
Only thing i wanted to say is that you have to watch sports on an LCD, should be plenty of basketball on, i know this varys from each and everybody but fast moving objects on LCD is not good in my opinion, even the 120Hz models looked wierd to me...I originally wanted an LCD but soon looked at the plasmas and dlp's.

 

[alimoalem]

Thanks for the posts.

We don't watch much sports. The thing about the size though, yeah, we thought about how the screen would be pushed back but my dad said he wanted an LCD. I'm not too familiar with DLP's...could you guys do a quick comparison so I can try and convince him?

How is the picture compared to an LCD? Is the LCD better than the DLP picture-qualitywise in any way? And how are DLPs when it comes to rooms that have sunlight coming into them during the day?

 

[s44]

IMO DLPs look better dead-on (though I haven't seen this year's high-end Samsung LCDs). No SDE, amazing colors. The LED models (Samsung HL61A750 and HL67A750) don't have rainbow effect or bulb issues. The downsides are possibly geometry (the screens themselves aren't flat glass, but a somewhat floppier thing that can bow a little if your cabinet isn't exactly right -- though this can be adjusted) and some off-angle washout, most noticeably vertical. The latter shouldn't be an issue if you have the set at the correct height.

They aren't glossy, so the glare issue isn't that bad. If you're worried and go LCD you should get the A630 for its matte screen.

 

[quiescentTrance]

You might want to keep checking Fry's for the A630.. when I was looking last week it was out of stock for delivery at one point but then a couple days later came back. Gone again, but you never know. Seemed like a great price and I was looking for pretty much the same thing.

 

[gar655]

LCDs suck. Get a plasma.