Finally got an HDTV!

[drfsupercenter]

Yay!

We finally got an HDTV!

And I had my way... my mom caved in and bought a 50".

So what we got is a 50" Panasonic plasma (1080p of course)... and we got it from Costco, it was about $1280 total. Not a bad price, huh? (We did add a $50 "executive" membership too though)

Now we need to get a stand for it as the one we have now is a bit too small to hold all my consoles... and a Blu-Ray player.

I'm trying to convince my parents that the PS3 is still the best Blu-Ray player out there... but would anyone disagree?
Are there any BETTER ones?

I do want to be able to use Blu-Ray Live or any online updates though... Because of the Xbox 360 I bought a "Wireless Ethernet bridge" so I can make any Ethernet device connect to my wireless router from the basement anyway... not TOO big a deal to have Wi-Fi. But it is nice.

So far I'm really happy with it. It's certainly bigger than the 25" CRT we used to have down there! I'll get some pictures once we get a new table for it.
And I gotta say, it does a pretty good job at upscaling. Our cable is just plain analog, and because my ISP/cable company isn't evil, they GIVE us the local HD channels (FOX, ABC, NBC, CW, CBS, PBS) for free... as well as some "Music Choice" channels. It's nice to not need a cable box (for now!) as the two rear HDMI ports will be used by the Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray player. I've seen some TVs with horrible upscaling... luckily ours isn't one of them. Kudos to Panasonic for not being cheap on that regard.

I'm also kinda curious... on the "menu" of the TV, there's a little yellow box that surrounds all the text and stuff. When I had it open to name all the channels, it seemed to get lighter and darker as the stuff on the TV changed. Is that normal? I seem to recall reading something about plasmas needing around 100 hours to "set in"... did anyone else's TV do weird color fluctuations when they got it out of the box as well?

[admin]

The PS3 is still the best Blu-ray player by value because you also get a very decent media hub (for playing DivX/XviD, audio, photos ...), plus if the Blu-ray standard gets updated again, the PS3 is the most likely to be able to deal with it in software. The downsides are noise (although all my standalones are actually more noisy than the PS3 during Blu-ray/DVD playback) and it's a bit ugly compared to your usual standalone. And also the price will probably come down soon, so you might want to wait 3 to 6 months.

The "set in" time for plasmas means that for the first 100 hours, you should turn brightness and contrast down to as low as possible (not too low so that you can't see anything, but perhaps lower than what you are normally used to). This is to do with increasing the longevity of the screen and to avoid burn-in effects. Most modern plasmas have other functions that prevent burn-in, so the set in time is less important, but it's still worth doing I think.

[doctorhardware]

Hey dtfsupercenter can I com over to your house and play. Or could I borrow your HDTV.

[admin]

Forgot to say congrats on the new TV, drfsupercenter. It's a good brand too, and a great brand for plasmas!

[drfsupercenter]

The "set in" time for plasmas means that for the first 100 hours, you should turn brightness and contrast down to as low as possible (not too low so that you can't see anything, but perhaps lower than what you are normally used to). This is to do with increasing the longevity of the screen and to avoid burn-in effects. Most modern plasmas have other functions that prevent burn-in, so the set in time is less important, but it's still worth doing I think.

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Oh... well I never leave movies on pause for long periods of time, and the station bugs don't stay during commercials.
By default it had grey-ish pillarboxes on my analog channels (I haven't switched to HD cable yet... though somehow scanning found our local channels in HD, maybe the rooftop antenna?)... I changed those to black.

I can't stand "Game" mode... It started hurting my eyes when playing the Wii, I changed it back to "normal". Game makes everything bright and it's almost uncomfortable.

I did notice that the colors change a lot though, like when I'm just sitting on the Xbox 360 menu, it can go brighter and darker... that's not a defect, is it? I'd assume it's just part of the first 100 hours thing.
Plus, it comes with a 2-year warranty through Costco... so it's not a big deal if it is a defect.

How does the DVD upscaling of the PS3 compare to the Xbox 360? I was watching some DVDs (I tried stuff from 4:3 TV shows to 2.35:1 DVD9 movies) and it looked simply amazing. It's hard to believe you can even HAVE higher quality, LOL (And yes, my 360 is hooked up now via HDMI)

[admin]

The pillarboxes are there to prevent burn in - theoretically, black means that it isn't using the pixels, while white means it is using it 100% - grey therefore is halfway in between and so "simulates" average usage.

Not sure what you mean by colors changing, this doesn't happen on my TV, although if you leave it on a static screen for more than say 5 minutes, it will darken the screen. You might want to check if it's some power saving feature of the TV.

I don't have an HDMI Xbox 360 so I can't compare it with the PS3.

[drfsupercenter]

Well, is using black pillarboxes smarter than leaving them grey? I just changed them because I think it looks better in black... I wasn't paying any attention to burn-in settings.

I mean with the menu open, the color of the text gets brighter and darker as the TV show behind it does. Maybe it's just something built-in.

On a slightly non-related note, what is a "Secure HDCP Link"? When I was playing my Xbox 360, I'd flip back and forth between the TV tuner (My TV doesn't have picture-in-picture ) and it would flash "Secure HDCP Link lost" and then "Secure HDCP Link found" a second later. Or something like that. Does it have anything to do with DRM? It never did that when I had it hooked up via RCA.

[admin]

You should use the grey ones to prevent burn-in.

If it's only the menu color changing, then that's probably just a feature of the TV to help keep the menu text visible.

HDCP is the DRM found in HDMI. A link must be established before playback can be allowed. For example on the PS3, if I don't switch on my TV, playback won't start for DVDs and Blu-ray because the HDMI link hasn't been established.

[drfsupercenter]

Well, I was playing DVDs with it, nothing seemed to happen... then again, I switched the channel when the DVD was paused.

Does that only apply to movies, or to games too? I find that a bit annoying... I like being able to switch between my games and TV shows, so I can do both in one sitting.

What would happen if I rented a video from Xbox Live, started it, then changed the channel? It would stop playing? I don't think the Xbox was doing anything to the standard DVDs I was using, if anything it would just pause them.

Do all Blu-Ray players use the HDCP thing as well?