anybody got a flat screen TV mounted on the wall?

[J-Luv]

i'm looking at getting a plasma tv and i want the flat screen mounted on the wall. but i notice the installation packages are starting at $400....has anybody done this themselves? is it hard? what about concealing the wires?

[Sybersnake]

a friend of mine just told me that the gas in plasma tv becomes inactive after almost 2 1/2 years of constant use.. so depending on how much tv you watch, you could get 5 years out of a plasma tv. After that.. its junk.

Its easier to have the guy do it for $400.

[Markp.com]

ugh, flat screens mounted on walls sooooo chav!

[zakp0]

I own more than one plasma at my place. They're costly to manage (coz they only run for a couple of years before you have to have the gas changed), but dad's rich so heh...

I think I'd go for the Triple LCD tv's instead...they cost the same too here.

[J-Luv]

and what problems do the LCD have? do they come in flat screen versions? i just dont want to hog up my wall space with a huge projection TV ya know?

[zakp0]

LCD's havent got problems that I know of. Dead Pixels maybe, but ofcourse you'll be checking for that before you get it home right? If you've got the money to spend though, HDTV's all the way baby!

[J-Luv]

HDTV? i thought the flat panels have to be either LCD or plasma? the only HDTV's i see are the big ones that sit on the floor

[zakp0]

You get LCD HDTV's too. You CAN hang em...unless you're getting one of em 50 incher ones...

My aunt's got one of those hanging on her walls. Its a tiny 30 incher. Unfortunately she wont be getting digital cable till like next month...so she's stuck with silly quality analogue tele. When she DOES get digital though, Playboy Channel's gonna look awesome on that

[Sybersnake]

I own more than one plasma at my place. They're costly to manage (coz they only run for a couple of years before you have to have the gas changed), but dad's rich so heh...

I think I'd go for the Triple LCD tv's instead...they cost the same too here.

I don't know who told you that the gas can be changed, but to my knowledge the gas is actually in millions of individual pockets (like bubble wrap) and is impossible to change because its manufactured with the gas inside the glass.

[PAlexC]

LCD and Plasma have terrible motion blurring. Watching any sport on it sucks.

If you're going to drop that kind of coin, get a DLP. It'll last you much longer and won't suffer from burn-in. Samsung makes the top ones on the market. They're thin enough (maybe a foot deep for a 50" set), and weigh relatively little (90 or so lbs.) do you don't need to buy an expensive heavy-duty TV stand.

You can't just 'hang' an LCD or Plasma on the wall, it needs to be supported and mounted. Not worth it. You can't re-arrange the room.

Or, wait for OLED.

[PAlexC]

Personally, I think now is the worst time to buy a hi-def set.

At the end of this year / beginning of next year the new game consoles are going to drop, and they're all (except Nintendo) focusing on hi-def. This is probably going to drive the costs of hi-def sets down to encourage people to buy one to go along with their new game console.

Also, the digital switchover deadline is coming up. People with old sets may just suck it up and buy a new one if the prices are right, rather than screwing around and buying a converter for an old TV on it's way out.

I say wait if you can. If you can't, spend no more than a couple hundred bucks on a CRT that'll hold you for 1-2 years.

[OpieNC]

I used to sell televisions. let me lay down the facts for all of you.

Plasma can not be recharged, but it will survive a number of years as long as you are not some kind of TV junky.

it will not blur for motion. the refresh rate on plasma and lcd is the highest of any kind.

LCD tv's are like plasma but smaller. they have the same resolution (which most are HD capable or integrated) but can't reach the same size because of weight issues. (LCD = liquid crystal display. liquid = bad in big sizes).

DLP's are the tradeoff between flat screens (LCD and plasma) and projection tv's. for the cost, they are your best bang. They have awesome clarity and don't take up as much space as the projections. you can get them up to 73". and the leading producer isn't samsung, its LG.

for your application, i would get a good sized LCD with an integrated tuner. it will be pricy, but the integrated tuner is going save you money in the long run. on jan 1., there will no longer by analog broadcasts. that being said, i do not mean there will not be any analog video left on the air, it just won't be broadcast over the antennaes. all tv stations are making the transition because with HDTV you do not get any snow or "artifacts" along with the signal.

by getting an integrated set, you won't have to buy a tuner box to hook up to your wall mounted LCD.

if you weren't so sold on having a tv on your wall, i would suggest getting a DLP. you are going to save money by doing so and get a tv of larger size. the clarity is going to be there as well as mobility that you won't be able to get with a wall-mounted flat screen. even on a 52" dlp, the average depth is somewhere around 18" (that number was guesstimated).

2 cents.

[J-Luv]

Personally, I think now is the worst time to buy a hi-def set.

At the end of this year / beginning of next year the new game consoles are going to drop, and they're all (except Nintendo) focusing on hi-def. This is probably going to drive the costs of hi-def sets down to encourage people to buy one to go along with their new game console.

but if more people start buying hih def sets just to get the consoles wouldnt they probably 'raise' the price before they lower it? chance to make more money...

[J-Luv]

if you weren't so sold on having a tv on your wall, i would suggest getting a DLP. you are going to save money by doing so and get a tv of larger size. the clarity is going to be there as well as mobility that you won't be able to get with a wall-mounted flat screen. even on a 52" dlp, the average depth is somewhere around 18" (that number was guesstimated).

okay so everybody is basically telling me plasma tv's are a waste in the long run...

how does this DLP compare to an LCD as far as clarity?

[PAlexC]

No, hi-def set prices will drop to encourage people to buy them. Raising prices would encourage people to keep their current TV's and get a converter, or do absolutely nothing since your cable/dish box handles the signal for you.

As far as the switchover date, I thought I read it got bumped to 2008, but I could be wrong. That whole thing is going to be a mess, and is a big excuse to hand boatloads of money/customers over to dish and cable providers. I don't know what they exect people who don't use a service to do.

DLP kicks LCD in the nuts over clarity. The drawback is that since it is a rear-projection set, the vertical viewing angle is significantly reduced. But when you're sitting square in front of it, it's amazing. However, unlike LCD or Plasma, it doesn't matter if you're not sitting far enough away from the screen so your eyes won't pick up artifacts.

As far as motion blur Opie, I've seen it, often. Maybe the top of the line sets reduce it significantly, but the prices at that end are nuts. When stores put a plasma next to a DLP, and send the same signal to both sets, it becomes glaringly obvious.

AFAIK Samsung rules the DLP market, unless LG has something new I haven't seen. But to be fair, I haven't looked in awhile.

[indivision]

Unless I am misunderstanding something, I disagree with spending extra to get a tuner built into the tv. If you plan on having cable tv, which I assume you are if you are investing this much into watching tv, the latest cable recievers are also HD tuners. On top of that, the new ones have a load of extra features (DVR, etc.) that I haven't heard of being integrated into a tv.

I've also heard that plasma's are crap from a tv repair guy. He said, "I like them because they keep me in business. But, I would never own one." He recomended rear-projection for now because the technology is more reliable. Of course, he said that as he was repairing my rear-projection tv!

[PAlexC]

Well, the original idea was that with the new tuners, you could just run coax into your TV without a cable box. There was supposed to be a smart-card slot in the tuner, and your cable co. would provide you with the card to grant you access, not an actual cable box.

Last I heard that idea was dying out. I'm sure the box makers don't like it, and neither do the cable co's who make a nice chunk of change off of them.

Too much is up in the air right now, I still say wait.

[indivision]

I think waiting would be wise now too. Of course, you will be missing the big screen experience of Hell's Kitchen though.

I think the smartcard idea died out because cable companies saw how lucrative the Tivo-DVR market was becoming and jumped all over it with upgraded boxes.

[PAlexC]

Hell, the only reason I didn't buy a DLP set was because hockey was cancelled.

[TridenT_Boy3555]

We dont have HDTV But we got a 55incher :-D It's nice...Really great for playing Halo 2 on it etc.