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Flat Panel TV Question

AMCRambler

AMCRambler

Diamond Member
So I'm thinking about getting a flat panel tv for my parents for christmas. They've been getting by with the biggest POS 27in ever for way too long. The speakers in it crapped out so my dad hard wired external speakers to it and the remote sensor busted so you can't use a remote with it anymore. It's definitely time for a new set, but my old man is too cheap to buy one himself.

The one hitch is they don't have a cable box. They just get standard cable and don't need a box, nor do they want to pay the cable company the monthly fee for the privilege of having one if they don't need it. Are there any LCD tv's out there with a built in tuner that will accept the coax straight out of the wall and tune for them? Everything I'm seeing doesn't look like it has a coax input. Are there any other options for hooking it up? They have a VCR so I guess they could use that for a tuner. Kind of a crappy way to do it though. I'm looking to drop $4-500 on a flat panel tv for them that I can just plug in and they can use. Any suggestions?
 
All of them do.

All consumer level screens (HD LCD's or plasmas) - have a tuner built in. They are typically an ATSC/QAM and analog CATV tuner. Most if not all also tune QAM or have a cablecard slot for "digital and premium channels". In most locales Comcast sends the local HD channels (over the air) over QAM unencrypted. In my locale I get several cable channels on QAM as well.

My Sharp LC-42D65U tunes cable channels 2-135, as well as the HD versions over QAM of the local stations, as well as 20 or so clear QAM channels like NBC Universal sports, ION, QUBE, FOOD, Lifetime, Nick, Oxygen, and a couple more in 480p.

The benefit is that connecting directly looks better than using a box. But they lose any digital cable channels, or premiums. Doesn't look to be an issue for the parents though.

If your pops likes football convince him to put an over the air antenna on the roof again. Football OTA is much better than the stream the cable company puts out (they compress it about 2/3 - they all do).
 
So if it lists an NTSC or QAM tuner it'll have a coax jack for the cable in? Cool. Some of them call it RF antenna input as well I think.

We're a good 100miles from New York City and Albany here in NY so I don't think we'll pick up any over the air digital channels.
 
what brands you looking at ?

returned a SANYO because of a horible TUNER and would just lock up for no reason.
 
i dont think id spend several hundred dollars on a proscan, def get a well respected name brand, have you looked at any panasonic's ?

samsung, sony, panasonic, pioneer, sharp, LG are all well respected brands, its my understanding that panasonic has the best customer support if ever needed, i looked hard and read many reviews before i settled on a panny 50" G15 plasma, after returning the sanyo i added funds that were already tight and ordered from amazon, the 7 day shipping wait was almost unbearable.

heres a great price though, and its a G12 model, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-105-_-Product
 
Just remember that a 37 or 40 inch will give more vertical height than they have now, thus a larger SD image will not look as good.

Also, now that SD image will be upconverted to a 720p/1080p image (depending on the set you buy). So, again, unless you go with a high end set that has good SD conversion, it won't look as good. Kind of like zooming in on a 600x400 image to fill your 1080p computer monitor.

However, if they mainly watch the locals (probably the only HD channels they'll get from cable without a box) they should be very happy with the improved picture HD quality.

A 32" LCD will give almost the same vertical height as a 27" CRT (4:3)
 
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