Topic: I finally joined the flatscreen TV era

[scottws]

Yesterday, Jennie and I finally made the leap from old-fashioned CRT to flatscreen TV.  We bought a Samsung UN55D8000 55" LED-LCD (edge-lit) and some LG LCD 32" 720p 60 Hz TV for our bedroom.  We are pretty excited about the Samsung because it has WiFi and apps (including a web-browser), plus is 240Hz.  It is edge-lit, but we had to compromise on something to stay within the budget we'd set for these upgrades.  The LG wasn't my first choice as for an LCD TV I would pick Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, and then LG (in that order) for this type of TV, but it was cheap and ultimately it was just a bedroom TV.  Offerings from my preferred company were a couple of hundred more expensive.

The awesome thing is that we bought this with insurance money from our Ohio house.  Our policy is fully replacement, so when our old-school big-screen Sony TV (I'm talking one of those ginormous, weighs-a-ton CRTs) was ruined due to the water we found the replacement cost for that TV was around $2200 the insurance company gave us the money.  It seems ridiculous that we got these new TVs in exchange for that old thing.

Many people were surprised we were still rocking CRTs as we are both technophiles.  But we always were finding other things to spend our money on.  Upgrading to HDTV never really seemed to be in the budget and I really understand why now.  I'm already looking at Blu-Ray disc players for both TVs and the cost to get an HD cable box to replace our non-HD box.

[K-man]

How funny, I'm actually scouring Craigslist daily in a attempt to find a 27-32 inch Sony Trinitron CRT.

[scottws]

Sorry, the TVs we replaced were a 27" mono audio Apex (nice, huh?) and a 50" Sony.  I'm not sure the latter was a Trinitron or not but it was the one that died in the two week rainstorm inside our house.

What do you want a CRT for?

[K-man]

I've got a "classic" setup in the office with an NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis hooked to a Sanyo 27 inch Flatscreen.

only problem is that the geometry in the TV is flat-out terrible.

[Cobra951]

What do you mean by geometry?  You aren't stretching the old 4:3 image to 16:9, are you?  Or do you mean the scaling in general?  My little Samsung does a pretty good job of handling old-console displays.  Gamecube games with a progressive option look great, in fact.

Scott, does that side-lit LED display work well?  My only experience with this tech is a couple of small Vizio's at Sandy's, and I think they're barely passable.  My undisputed choice for big screens remains plasma, though in Florida, 55 inches worth of it is going to cost you a bunch in air-conditioning bills.   

[K-man]

Flatscreen CRT's have some issues with displaying images properly.  Due to some designs there's inherent curvature in the image, noticed significantly when there's straight lines.  This is generally acceptable, but this particular TV's image was very off.  There are really no picture adjustments in the main menu to speak of, so I looked up instructions on how to open the service menu.  I improved the picture some but there's still a significant amount of wave in the picture.  Either I'm not finding the correct setting in the service menu (they are not labeled so the layperson can understand), or the TV's going bad.

[Cools!]

Congrats!

My dad has a 52" Pionneer Elite plasma. It's pretty damn sweet.

[Cobra951]

Flatscreen CRT's have some issues with displaying images properly.  Due to some designs there's inherent curvature in the image, noticed significantly when there's straight lines.  This is generally acceptable, but this particular TV's image was very off.  There are really no picture adjustments in the main menu to speak of, so I looked up instructions on how to open the service menu.  I improved the picture some but there's still a significant amount of wave in the picture.  Either I'm not finding the correct setting in the service menu (they are not labeled so the layperson can understand), or the TV's going bad.

Oh, I misunderstood completely.  When you said flatscreen, I assumed digital panel.  Yeah, it's hard to get used to wobbly-line CRTs again now, even when they're fairly unwrinkled.  I sure do miss their contrast range and purity, though.