It's in my living room right now. I'm still reconnecting everything, but I played a couple of high-def Xbox games, and they looked great. The one 480p game I tried seemed more pixelated than I remember, but I still have my analog KV-36FS12, so maybe I'll try to A/B it at some point. The tuner is scanning through the digital channels right now. It says it'll take 50 minutes-plus -- I made the mistake of cancelling it, thinking I'd be able to view what it had scanned thus far, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The cable guys are supposed to swing by tomorrow afternoon with a STB, but I wanted to see what I could pick up with the built-in tuner. I'll post tonight with whatever I find. As far as video quality goes, I haven't watched enough to be able to tell (no DVDs, no high-def channels), and I'm not familiar enough with the 960 to be able to say one way or the other. Geometry seems fine, as far as I can tell.
Edit -- Initially I posted some pretty negative comments about the way an armful of DVDs I tried looked, but that must've been all the sunlight streaming in. I'm used to watching everything in the dark, and now that it's pitch-black outside, I'm left with fewer major complaints about the set. I do need to continue fiddling with the settings, but it looks really nice at night. It seems to depend heavily on the material. I watched part of a Canadian movie called Decoys that was shot on HD video, and it looked excellent. Film-based material wasn't as impressive -- I watched Princess Mononoke a couple weeks ago on my analog VVega, and I seem to remember it looking considerably sharper than it does now. Spirited Away looks excellent, though. I spot-checked a couple episodes of Angel, and they also seemed to look better than they did when I watched them on my analog set recently. When something looks good, though, it's eye-popping -- even though I have a 480i image being pumped to the TV, Monsters Inc. looks as good as anything I've seen at any resolution. Still, I think a healthy viewing distance is necessary -- the image looks pretty lousy close-up.
Yet Another Edit -- The built-in tuner is a little flaky. Not too bad, but I was scrolling through everything once, and I was able to see a slew of channels, including a couple in high-def. When I went back to add those channels to my favorites, I kept getting an error. Then I wasn't able to tune in anything. I turned the TV off and back on (not a speedy process; the TV takes between 15 and 20 seconds to start up), and I was able to see everything again. I'm going to be using a STB anyway, so it's not a big deal to me. Your mileage may vary. I can only get in two HD channels, one of which isn't broadcasting anything but a logo at the moment, but the first legitimate HD show I watched on this set -- Joan of Arcadia (or whatever it's called) looks perfect to my eyes.
Other random comments -- I'm not a fan of the rounded top of the set. Now my center channel won't fit up there. I'll try to rig something to prop it up. The bottom of the stand is cut in such a sharp 'V' that the lowest rack is almost useless. It's neat how the stand and the TV look like one nearly seamless unit, but I would've preferred something less aesthetic and more useful.
), maybe you'll be able to contribute more than I can. I don't have a strong high-definition point of reference.
