As far as TV brands go, you can't really go wrong with Panasonic/Samsung/LG panels. If you're dead set on plasma pay the extra for repair coverage because you know you will need it down the road. Personally I would grab an LED TV at this point.

Rule of thumb: Optimum viewing distance for any screen is approximately 3 times the diagonal size of the viewing area. So, a tv which has an ~65 inch viewable area should be viewed from at least 195 inches away. This is 16.25 feet.

Now, sitting closer than that will not be impossible or wrong necessarily but at this distance you will be able to see the entire screen directly in your main field of vision. Sitting closer will mean that parts of the screen will only be visible in the periphery of your vision, which makes it harder to respond quickly to stuff happening on screen in video games. This is more important for action/shooting games and slightly less so for driving games. This is completely unimportant and unnoticeable when watching movies, unless of course you are stupidly close to the screen.




Try it with your computer monitor. Sit close to the screen while playing for a while, then sit farther back and watch your kill ratio and reaction time improve instantly.

I have a 15inch widescreen on my laptop, I sit ~2 feet away when I'm working so that I can see what i am typing and I have the luxury of time to let my eyes wander across the screen but I can really only focus on a small piece of the screen at a time. When I am gaming i sit as far back as I can while having my hands comfortably on the laptop, lean back in my chair to give my eyes a little more distance from the screen. This lets me see and accurately focus and quickly respond to things happening in any corner of the screen.


I played around with all sorts of peripherals and faster refresh rate screens, more DPI mice, bigger better video cards and fat computer systems, etc. None of that made nearly as much of a difference in my gaming skills as proper sitting and viewing ergonomics did. This is particularly important if you like to settle in for 4+ hour gaming sessions where your eyes and limbs will be growing tired and your circulation can be disrupted.

Spend 1k of that tv money on a super comfortable executive style lounging chair with good lumbar support (hate to admit this but I use a leather Scandinavian Designs chair that I think was intended for breast-feeding, unsurprisingly it is super comfortable for long periods of sitting and has tons of support in all the right places)

 

I have a 55 inch LED tv. absolutely love it. that being said, the whole LED tv amrketing gimmick is just that... a gimmick... if your getting an LED TV make sure its a backlit LED not sidelit and thats its from a reputable manufacturer.

After seeing my Samsung LED tv the neighbor decided to go an buy one on the cheap... it sucks

 

Just mounted my 50" Samsung plasma and I sit about 6-8' away and its perfect. I can't stand how fake a lot of those LED LCD tv's look. My friend has a 55" Vizio LED LCD and I think it looks too much like a cartoon.

 

Any TV can look like that, it's all in how you set it up.

LEDs, like irationalx has pointed out, are only worthwhile when they are backlit, esp if they can do local dimming. I like backlit LEDs, they are best LCDs to date.

 

I spent a lot of time researching last year. That's when I decided on the LG. My wife put on the brakes as our other TV still worked. Well after much cursing and a bit of voodoo the old one crapped out. It's last years model so the price was good and it was still rated higher than this years model. I couldn't be happier with the LH90. It looks great. After a calibration(highly recommend) I'm blown away. I'm at about 9ft from the screen and I wouldn't want to go any bigger.

 

I'm not sure I missed it, but do you only have a 45 degree field of vision?! I think Humans can see to at least 170 degrees field of vision, so I'm sure you can easily see the entire screen of a 65" tv at even 6ft, although, not comfortably.

Why anyone would need to sit 16 feet from a 65" display is beyond me... I'm not sure if you read that somewhere, but it's not a very good rule of thumb, I'm sorry. By that rule of thumb people will 100" screens would be sitting nearly 30ft away... Not likely. 15-17ft would be great.

Generally, sitting too close to a TV means you can either see pixels or see compression artifacts too easily. It's best to have some distance, meaning, don't be 4ft from your 50in, instead sit at 8ft. or at 62" sit at 10ft.

Now, I'm not saying go and be a kid, and sit way up front at theaters, I'm saying pick 1/3 of the way up in the stadium seating section... but definitely not at the back of the theater either.

 

Did you pay for an ISF calibration or was it the more simply adjustment via disc.

 

You called?

Which TV did you settle for?

 

Is it true that Philips TV's are rebadged LG's since the two companies merged?

 

I'm going to go with the Panasonic S2 65". Haven't bought it yet as I'm still doing upgrades to the house. Plan on getting it at the end of the month.

 

It's an excellent buy. You'll get it for less than I paid for my 58PZ800 from Mid 2009 (it's a 2008 model I think).

The V Series (2009) is really awesome due to it's 96hz refresh rate for 24p content. I'm not sure what the refresh rate on the newest TVs are. Mine is either 48hz or 60hz, and since 48Hz is not good (due to flicker), I stick to 60Hz setting (which works fine.)

 

Since I'm not fully "in" on the TV side of the business I'm not sure. Lots of people use Panels from the same companies, and maybe other vendors are shared, but at the end of the day it takes a holistic approach to get the job done right, and people **** it up all the time. So even if, lets say, Samsung and Sony have the same panels, they are far from being the same TVs.

 

Avia calibration

 

Yeah I was looking at the V-series but I didn't want 3D. If I can find a 2009 v series model I'd go for it.

 

My pops picked up a 65" Panasonic two years ago and it's absolutely phenomenal! I'm sure they've improved even more since. If you have the means, I highly recommend it



-Brian