What's a good TV for living room for family? purchased

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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
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What's a good plasma tv for living room for my family? It needs to be 50" and wall mountable. It has to be consumer type and accept general inputs from cable box and such. I've been out of TV sets in forums for years now so I'm behind. Who's better... Samsung or Panasonic? And what model? Hurry hurry I don't have time bye thanks

Cheez:eek:
 
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tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
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This isn't something you "hurry" when you purchase. I dunno anyone who drops 1.5k+ in a hurry. Unless you really don't care about money.
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
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Too late gus. We went out to go TV shopping 5 minutes after I posted a thread here... Got the Samsung 50" PN51 something and a wall mounting bracket all for $850 before tax. This is a Smart TV + Wifi.

piasabird said:
I like Samsung myself but never used a plasma.

Maybe try this forum??? There are some real plasma fanatics that hang out there!

http://www.avsforum.com/f/198/plasma-flat-panel-great-found-deals
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Avsforum is a fail... bunch of fail moderators and they are numb... I used to be famous there and was a avsforum junky but the moderators took away my access to post threads.... They were good back 8~ 10 years ago but now is a fail.... :D


tential said:
This isn't something you "hurry" when you purchase. I dunno anyone who drops 1.5k+ in a hurry. Unless you really don't care about money.
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It's not for myself. It's for my MUM and DAD's. I am not too worried about it as long as the price is low enough for them with descent PQ. If I were in the market for a new TV I would get a Panasonic TH-50BT300U professional monitor for much higher price but I don't have money I'm broke... well I have money but saving it for another big power cable for my audio so the TV will have to wait for several years... My current Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY is 9 years old and still running like a tiger tank... not a single issue with superb PQ. ;)


cheez
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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They will be watching movies and stuff from AT&T U-Verse but also will want to watch some DVD and Bluray movies. What's a good Bluray standalone player for TV's like this? What has good PQ for cheap and compact? We don't want no big huge boxes as the TV is placed on the fireplace wall... No audio receiver and speakers as it will look messy. They will use sound coming from the TV itself.


cheez
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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What's that USB port on the TV for? Can I connect a USB thumb drive or external hard drive and play movies off that? Does anybody know??


thanks,

cheez
 
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Soundmanred

Lifer
Oct 26, 2006
10,780
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cheez said:
What's that USB port on the TV for? Can I connect a USB thumb drive or external hard drive and play movies off that? Does anybody know??


thanks,

cheez
Click to expand...

Did the TV not come with a manual?

Also, the "edit" button is next to the quote button at the bottom of your posts.
 
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tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
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642
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cheez said:
What's that USB port on the TV for? Can I connect a USB thumb drive or external hard drive and play movies off that? Does anybody know??


thanks,

cheez
Click to expand...

Yes you can connect a USB thumb drive or external drive if you want.

Edit: Should be able to. Like user said above me, manual would know.
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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tential said:
Yes you can connect a USB thumb drive or external drive if you want.

Edit: Should be able to. Like user said above me, manual would know.
Click to expand...
Awesome sweet! thankx. I don't have the manual with me as the TV is located at my parent's house. Besides I don't looking through manuals.. so boring. D:


cheez
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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tential said:
Yes you can connect a USB thumb drive or external drive if you want.
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I'll be damned.... it works. I connect the USB thumb drive to the TV and it works. Recognizes the device immediately and it played every video file I threw at it (MPEG2-TS, MP4, AVI, MPG, MKV, etc). I am impressed!

Problem with the video player software nowdays is lame though. Anything that's not high def (less than 720p) it literally blurs the images. These Dumbo's think that's the way to display images.

PQ when playing HD files, doesn't look as good as my 9 year old plasma TV with HTPC through DVI connection. I still need to tinker with the video settings in the Samsung...


cheez
 
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billbobaggins87

Senior member
Jan 9, 2012
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Formating issues i would imagine look into the playable media and how the tv handles it so you can save it properly tothe drive... Its 2013 cant that tv just be setup on your ntwork or use a media pc
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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91
billbobaggins87 said:
Formating issues i would imagine look into the playable media and how the tv handles it so you can save it properly tothe drive... Its 2013 cant that tv just be setup on your ntwork or use a media pc
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I don't think it's formatting issue. It's just the way the software is programmed... this happens with the playback software for both Windows and Mac OSX... not just TV's. So I set the sharpness to 88 so that the SD contents look less blurry... Now guess what? Play the HD file and it's TOO sharp because the smooth filtering is removed when playing HD formats. I have to change the sharpness back to 40 or something too look half descent. :rolleyes: If the engineers programmed the software to show all images as RAW (pixel by pixel, no smooth filtering) then I don't have to change around sharpness every time... plus the SD digital contents would look sharp too, lolz.

No my parents don't want HTPC hooked up to it. The TV is placed on fireplace wall and they want everything as simple as possible with least number of hookups. The wireless network hasn't been setup yet.


cheez
 
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tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,348
642
121
cheez said:
I don't think it's formatting issue. It's just the way the software is programmed... this happens with the playback software for both Windows and Mac OSX... not just TV's. So I set the sharpness to 88 so that the SD contents look less blurry... Now guess what? Play the HD file and it's TOO sharp because the smooth filtering is removed when playing HD formats. I have to change the sharpness back to 40 or something too look half descent. :rolleyes: If the engineers programmed the software to show all images as RAW (pixel by pixel, no smooth filtering) then I don't have to change around sharpness every time... plus the SD digital contents would look sharp too, lolz.

No my parents don't want HTPC hooked up to it. The TV is placed on fireplace wall and they want everything as simple as possible with least number of hookups. The wireless network hasn't been setup yet.


cheez
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This is why you're supposed to research the TV first. Hence why I said check over at AVSFourm.com to make sure people are buying your TV. I'd headover now though and ask what calibration settings to use. Most decent TVs are being purchased by hundreds of people over there. At least one person has set up calibration software so that it looks good. My panel had multiple calibration profiles on there. After calibration is looked much more accurate and just better in general . After you calibrate, then just fiddle a little more to get it to your personal taste (some people like high contrast/saturation etc.)
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
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Like the title said, the Samsung 51" Smart TV video quality got raped by a 9 Year-old Panasonic TH-50PHD7UY plasma monitor with HTPC no comparison.

This is after careful observations and all the TV settings in the Samsung I could tinker with. Samsung ran off the USB thumb drive for video playback. For 720p mkv file playback there was just no way in hell the Samsung could even touch my 9 year old TV. Granted, the video processing is done in the ATi radeon x1950xtx video card with a playback software written by russian scientists so I guess it's not a fair comparison :D but still, the TV is 9 years old... The difference in PQ is so huge I could not describe. Samsung provided dull, soft and muddy picture and loss of detail. The Panny on the other hand gave razor sharp, crisp, clear picture, like looking-out-the-window PQ. The transparency is unreal and clear as breeze.... It's like an object / person's face was actually coming out of the TV screen. The colors are more accurate and natural, whereas the Samsung provided VERY "processed" look. The flesh tones were so unnatural, very processed look.

I also played some 1080i MPEG2 files and the Samsung looked "less bad". My 720P Panny still raped it. It was just naturally sharper, crisper, clearer and breezier. The pictures were more authentic. Motion handling was also better. Pretty much beat Samsung in every category except for pure black level testing in dark scenes.

And don't even get me started on the 480p playback.... the Samsung was so dull and blurry I could not tell where the eyes of the person is located. It's like I'm going blind... This Samsung isn't the only TV that does this, even the Macbook Pro had similar problem, everything was just sooooooo blurry. With my Panny HTPC it's razor sharp, like watching a high def when playing 480p. Every single god damn pixels are very well defined. Huge difference.

KO guys.... KO for now.


I am glad I didn't go out waste money on buying a new TV. I expected the new TV's with new technology would trump the 9 year old Panny by light years but I was seriously wrong.. I'll keep my 9 year old plasma until it dies...

Who knows, the Samsung PQ may change if I run HTPC through it via HDMI...


:colbert:


cheez
 
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