$3000 to spend - DLP vs LCD vs LCoS

[Gatobrit]

Hi,
I have a budget of around $3000 to spend, plus or minus a little.

I am looking for a 42/50" set. I don't want a monolithic RPTV due to space restrictions and also I would like to avoid calibration issues in the future.

I don't need a HDTV tuner built-in since I plan to use a Dish Network HDTV DVR and get over the air channels through this unit.

The room is fairly large with a particularly large window along the right side of the set. I can darken the room but my wife is unlikely to want to sit in the dark during the day in order to watch the TV. Contrast is therefore an issue.

I see DLP, LCD and LCoS TVs out there at around this price point.

I am drawn to the JVC LCoS / DILA sets - the reviews I have seen indicate that the images are more natural than DLP for instance. I am concerned about the lack of ongoing support for LCoS - Philips and Intel have recently withdrawn from the market.

Any suggestions you have would be appreciate.



Thanks,
John

[JonMarsh]

JVC has been doing LCOS for professional applications for a long time- with higher resolution panels then their RPTV - this is just branching out for them into higher volume applications.

Re Intel, Philips, others, Intel never entered the market, they chickened out when they realized their first product concept was a day late and a dollar short, and management pulled the plug on investing more money in something they don't know a lot about in order to develop a competitive 1080P chip. Philips has/had a half backed approach to trying to use a single LCOS chip (like single chip DLP) to get the cost down and profits up. Toshiba bought chips from Hitachi, couldn't ever get enough with consistent enough yeild.

IMO, the only two serious LCOS players are JVC and Sony, and Sony's only doing the high end for now, with their Qualia FPTV and the soon to be introduced Qualia RPTV. But they're going a heck of a job with it, from the techcnial viewpoint.

The best thing anyone can recommend to you, is go out there and look at the sets with some challenging program material (espcially detailed dark stuff, which tends to make DLP stumble a bit, as do most other digitals) and see what YOU like, and what you're willing to live with. It doesn't matter if rainbows or temporal dithering in DLP bugs me, if you don't even notice it. DLP has the best overall contrast ratio's in digital RPTVs, but if it was my money on the line, I'd probably pop for the JVC- that's assuming I didn't go retro and get one of the better CRT rigs, though they are bigger and more time to really dial in. They also still have the best picture. Sigh.... nothing in life is simple, is it?

[Shane Martin]

Sound and Vision has a glowing review of the JVC DILA/LCOS. That is the set that I like right now of the bunch. No rainbows, No screendoor. Just subpar(below CRT) black levels is really the only flaw.

[Kevin P]

With $3K and those choices I'd jump on the JVC DILA myself. It's the best compromise in digital technology right now. DLP is my second choice, and the latest sets are a lot less rainbow prone than older ones, due to the use of a faster, multi-segmented color wheel.

Of course, CRT has the best picture overall, with the best blacks, but the set will be larger and deeper and will require tweaking to get the best picture (esp. convergence), but it's worth it.

You also have to think about how you're going to use the set primarily. Watching movies in a dark room? Watching sports? TV soaps in daylight? HDTV? All these factors weigh in in deciding which technology is best for you. A LCD or DLP is ideal for daytime viewing since it's brighter and black levels aren't as important. For more critical night-time movie watching, CRT, DLP, or LCOS/DILA is best.

[Adz]

Is it true that the picture quality of non-HD cable or satellite channels on these Hi def Tvs (such as LCD, DLP, LCos, etc.) will not look very good and certainly not as good as a regular TV broadcasting the same digital (but non-Hi Def) channel? While upconverting may help some, I understand its still not as good. Is this true?

[JonMarsh]

The problem lies not just within the NTSC signal, but within the combination of the signal quality and the quality of scaler circuits used for the upsampling. Classic sort of case; feed even an inexpensive Sanyo CRT direct view widescreen a good native 1080i signal, and you get pretty decent quality, though not the lines of resolution as with a Toshiba or Sony set. Feed the same set on it's built in NTSC tuner, or an external laser disk player, and boy do things go to heck in a handbag quickly- the result doesn't look nearly as good as a standard NTSC set. Why? Poor resolution or quantization errors in the A/D converter. Cheap upscaling circuits. Possibly mediocre D/A in the output of the scaler. The results look like JPEG pictures on early Kodak digital camers (which were pretty awful- an old girlfriend bought one, and the pic quality on a so called 3 megapixel model was terrible compared to my Sony 1.5 megapixel camera, even on highest quality mode).

Now, take that same set, and feed it the upscaled LD or NTSC signal through a iScan HD scaler or a Lumagen, and it's a whole different ballpark. But remember, those scalers cost $1K and up.

Do you think they put 1K scalers in a lot of these fixed panel TVs? Or in the CRT models? Some, and I mean SOME, of the Toshiba and Sony CRT and digital TV's have pretty good scalers built in, same for some Pioneer, but even though the chips have gotten better and cheaper, they often cut corners.

I wouldn't buy any HDTV without seeing how it does at least with DVD input- especially something with dark scenes and shadow detail.

A lot of the effects which seem endemic to some DVD players, such as the macroblocking in low light level scenes with the FL23XX chipsets, seem most obvious on digital displays, and nearly invisible on a good analog CRT. It's too many steps of D/A and A/D with quantization and offset errors. Seeen that with HTPC driving Sony projectors, also. 8 bits aren't enough when you're doing multiple conversions back and forth.

~Jon

[Adz]

I own a projector and use it only to play DVDs and Hi Def Cable - PQ is outstanding most of the time. The other non-HD channels definitely suck in terms of PQ so I watch those on my "regular" TV in the den, bedroom, etc. A buddy of mine went to BestBuy looking to upgrade and purchase a 50 inch Samsung (or similar brand) DLP Projection TV or a Plasma. Pretty standard stuff at BestBuy. The salesman actually told him that if he's going to use it as his main TV, to be prepared that non HD channels would look pretty crappy compared to his current set-up of a digital cable feeding his old analog 480i TV set. I guess that makes sense given my epxerience but I never thought about it in terms of these mass market HD TVs now being sold at BestBuy, Circuit City and the like, that people are going to use as their main TV in their living room or den where the typical American Household with kids are generally watching MTV, Cartoon Channel, NICK Fox News or CNN (i.e., non-HD channels) a majority of the time. I guess they've had some complaints and are now warning people, eh?

[JonMarsh]

"Some complaints" is putting it mildly....

Of course, broadcast video quality is pretty poor, but that the HD displays do such a poor job of displaying it in so many cases is hard to excuse.

I'm happy NOT having cable, and not having watched most of those shows, and just buying the ones I like on DVD, where the quality is MUCH better.

But I've also heard of and seen reason for complaint with how many of the HD sets do with DVD; like trying to scale 480 to 540P, and not doing such a hot job...

~Jon