Hello all! I was wondering if I could perhaps get some advice on LCD tv's, as until recently I was mostly focusing my search on plasmas.
Allow me to explain my situation:
Approximately one month ago I purchases a Panasonic 42PZ700U TV to take with me when I move to my new apartment this week. I chose that set because of it's abilities to do very deep blacks, the high marks it received from various review sites, and the fact that it is a 1080P set. Once I brought it home and played with it for awhile my father became a bit envious and offered to buy the TV off of me. His reasoning was that I wouldn't need to cart it with me to my apartment so it'd save me the hassle. I agreed, and my original plan was to simply purchase the same set again over amazon this weekend and have it delivered to my apartment.
After speaking to the Panasonic Plasma Concierge service on a whim I became a bit worried, though - I posted about the conversation in the Panasonic Owner's thread in the plasma forum . Long story short I'm very much a heavy gamer and I planned to use my TV primarily for gaming, but the concierge service told me that playing any game for longer than 20 minutes could be potentially damaging to the TV. The replies that I received in that thread were only somewhat helpful as the models referenced all had anti-burn in of some kind, while my set did not. One of the posts advised me to come here for advice, thus hear I am.
Presuming that my worries about burn-in on a Plasma are founded, I figured that LCD would be the way to go. Let me tell you a bit about what I'm looking for:
Budget: $2-2.5K
Screen Size: 42" or 50", though the importance is far more on picture quality than size
Usage: As mentioned above, this will primarily be a gaming tv with frequently long periods of heavy action on screen. As such I need a tv with minimal to no input delay as well as one where ghosting, tearing, and other such LCD issues are not a problem.
Signals: I'll be hooking both 1080P signals up to the set as well as good old 480i/p, depending on if I'm playing next gen games or old school SNES. Because I tend to sit rather close to the tv I think the 1080P is worth the premium in my case.
Cables: I'd like HDMI, Component, RCA, and DVI/VGA if possible. This will not be part of a home theater system, so any nifty features like digital audio out would just be gravy.
Restrictions: I really, really want a TV that displays images well regardless of what resolution the source is at - I don't want my 480i signals looking worse on my new TV than they did on my 9-year old SDTV. The 42PZ700U does an excellent job of this.
What do you guys think? Is that a reasonable set of requests for a LCD TV, or should I be looking at a different technology? Am I right in worrying about using a Plasma TV as my main gaming set? And what sets would you recommend for me to look at?
I really appreciate any advice you can give - I'm kinda lost in the woods right now, and very much worried that I may end up making a very poor purchasing decision without your help.
Allow me to explain my situation:
Approximately one month ago I purchases a Panasonic 42PZ700U TV to take with me when I move to my new apartment this week. I chose that set because of it's abilities to do very deep blacks, the high marks it received from various review sites, and the fact that it is a 1080P set. Once I brought it home and played with it for awhile my father became a bit envious and offered to buy the TV off of me. His reasoning was that I wouldn't need to cart it with me to my apartment so it'd save me the hassle. I agreed, and my original plan was to simply purchase the same set again over amazon this weekend and have it delivered to my apartment.
After speaking to the Panasonic Plasma Concierge service on a whim I became a bit worried, though - I posted about the conversation in the Panasonic Owner's thread in the plasma forum . Long story short I'm very much a heavy gamer and I planned to use my TV primarily for gaming, but the concierge service told me that playing any game for longer than 20 minutes could be potentially damaging to the TV. The replies that I received in that thread were only somewhat helpful as the models referenced all had anti-burn in of some kind, while my set did not. One of the posts advised me to come here for advice, thus hear I am.
Presuming that my worries about burn-in on a Plasma are founded, I figured that LCD would be the way to go. Let me tell you a bit about what I'm looking for:
Budget: $2-2.5K
Screen Size: 42" or 50", though the importance is far more on picture quality than size
Usage: As mentioned above, this will primarily be a gaming tv with frequently long periods of heavy action on screen. As such I need a tv with minimal to no input delay as well as one where ghosting, tearing, and other such LCD issues are not a problem.
Signals: I'll be hooking both 1080P signals up to the set as well as good old 480i/p, depending on if I'm playing next gen games or old school SNES. Because I tend to sit rather close to the tv I think the 1080P is worth the premium in my case.
Cables: I'd like HDMI, Component, RCA, and DVI/VGA if possible. This will not be part of a home theater system, so any nifty features like digital audio out would just be gravy.
Restrictions: I really, really want a TV that displays images well regardless of what resolution the source is at - I don't want my 480i signals looking worse on my new TV than they did on my 9-year old SDTV. The 42PZ700U does an excellent job of this.
What do you guys think? Is that a reasonable set of requests for a LCD TV, or should I be looking at a different technology? Am I right in worrying about using a Plasma TV as my main gaming set? And what sets would you recommend for me to look at?
I really appreciate any advice you can give - I'm kinda lost in the woods right now, and very much worried that I may end up making a very poor purchasing decision without your help.
