I went out yesterday and bought a new TV, my first in about 10 years. My last TV was an excellent Zenith/Inteq 32" monitor. Excellent picture quality and wonderful features. It was billed, back in the day, as being HDTV "Ready", complete with a tuner that supported some 18 different formats. None of them were the ATSC standard that was settled on.

But, as nice as it was, it was getting tired, and would sometimes loose its settings for no reason.

So I bought a 42" Philips unit. 1080p, 120Hz, and some other nice features. I also bought a BlueRay player as well as the Watchmen BRD.

I had to return the first TV I bought right off the bat, given that it had a cluster of stuck pixels right in the center of the screen. Perpich's was very nice about it, and even unpacked the second one and hooked it up in the store to let me check it out.

I have to say that I am very impressed with the picture quality. I was not expecting very good black performance from an LCD, but it showed that it was possible. Blacks were black (that is, mostly devoid of light), and color saturation was good without looking too artificial. Even my brother, who is for video what I am for audio, commented on the film-like quality of the picture in a positive way. There was also no sign of motion blur. In the store, I could tell the difference right away between the 60Hz ones and the 120Hz panels.

HD content, like the Watchmen movie is as good as you would expect, but, its performance with analog quality sources (that is, 480i from cable or regular DVD) is at best poor and at worst, dismal. Most analog material looks like a bad YouTube rip, though there are a couple of stations (cable) that look much better. I don't watch much television any more, but I do have an extensive DVD collection, and am less than happy at how DVD's look.

They are better in the BlueRay player, which apparently upscales DVD's to 1080p, but it's still apparent that anything less than the native resolution of the panel just will not cut it.

HDMI has proven to be a bit of a headache. One of the first things I had to do was "update" the firmware in the TV so it would play the Watchmen disc. It played fine, and at 1080i from the component video inputs, but when I used HDMI, Big Brother Hollywood came, guns ablazing, telling me to drop my eyepatch and put my hand on my wallet... So, I had to spend 15 minutes searching for, downloading, and installing fracken firmware so I could play a bloody movie. Apparently, we as consumers wanted this "Added Value", so I have to play along. Funny thing is that it probably would have been easier to just get the movie through, umm... alternative sources.

So, a big thumbs up on the performance, color quality, picture and so on. A huge thumbs down for all the pain to get it to that point.

I went out yesterday and bought a new TV, my first in about 10 years. My last TV was an excellent Zenith/Inteq 32" monitor. Excellent picture quality and wonderful features. It was billed, back in the day, as being HDTV "Ready", complete with a tuner that supported some 18 different formats. None of them were the ATSC standard that was settled on.

But, as nice as it was, it was getting tired, and would sometimes loose its settings for no reason.

So I bought a 42" Philips unit. 1080p, 120Hz, and some other nice features. I also bought a BlueRay player as well as the Watchmen BRD.

I had to return the first TV I bought right off the bat, given that it had a cluster of stuck pixels right in the center of the screen. Perpich's was very nice about it, and even unpacked the second one and hooked it up in the store to let me check it out.

I have to say that I am very impressed with the picture quality. I was not expecting very good black performance from an LCD, but it showed that it was possible. Blacks were black (that is, mostly devoid of light), and color saturation was good without looking too artificial. Even my brother, who is for video what I am for audio, commented on the film-like quality of the picture in a positive way. There was also no sign of motion blur. In the store, I could tell the difference right away between the 60Hz ones and the 120Hz panels.

HD content, like the Watchmen movie is as good as you would expect, but, its performance with analog quality sources (that is, 480i from cable or regular DVD) is at best poor and at worst, dismal. Most analog material looks like a bad YouTube rip, though there are a couple of stations (cable) that look much better. I don't watch much television any more, but I do have an extensive DVD collection, and am less than happy at how DVD's look.

They are better in the BlueRay player, which apparently upscales DVD's to 1080p, but it's still apparent that anything less than the native resolution of the panel just will not cut it.

HDMI has proven to be a bit of a headache. One of the first things I had to do was "update" the firmware in the TV so it would play the Watchmen disc. It played fine, and at 1080i from the component video inputs, but when I used HDMI, Big Brother Hollywood came, guns ablazing, telling me to drop my eyepatch and put my hand on my wallet... So, I had to spend 15 minutes searching for, downloading, and installing fracken firmware so I could play a bloody movie. Apparently, we as consumers wanted this "Added Value", so I have to play along. Funny thing is that it probably would have been easier to just get the movie through, umm... alternative sources.

So, a big thumbs up on the performance, color quality, picture and so on. A huge thumbs down for all the pain to get it to that point.

The black quality is one reason why I bought my Philips LCD. It's an older 60Hz model, but it still has excellent picture quality. Everyone I know who sees it is impressed.

i remember seeing my first bluray after i got a bluray burner for my pc.the first br movie i seen was the original stargate movie,and wow new level of clarity.back in march i upgraded to a 1080p hd as well.i cant believe how good movies and games look on this thing.i hope you really enjoy yours i know i have been enjoying mine.:D