The “Break it Down” Blog

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to give a hard list of the rear projection televisions that consumers should keep their eyes out for. This list was compiled by determining a theme of the most discussed HDTVs from the AVS Forum Rear Project Units thread over the last year. Given the most discussed HDTVs I then went to 3 sites, name:

1. UltimateAV
2. CNET Reviews
3. PC Magazine Reviews

and coroborated the comments of the users to the professional reviewers opinions of the sets. The following boils down to what I would consider the red-carpet list of read projection sets on the market now or comming out in the next month.

Summary

Below are the hot TVs for 2006 listed by manufacturer with some tidbits of information about both including synopsis of what has come up in AVS so far. Because these newer models will come in a myrid of sizes from 50″ to 70″, I try and list the information for the 60″ or 65″ models to hit the sweet spot. I will try and indicate how to search for the other related models at different sizes where applicable.

Mitsubishi

The offering from Mitsubishi was anticipated by a lot of people. I learned of Mitsubishi’s offering and following while lurking in the Sony SXRD thread for about 6 months. The new Sony sets were delayed fairly late in the year allowing Mitsubishi to start releasing their sets ahead of time. Folks that were on the fence started to trickle over to the new XX731 models from Mitsubishi and were extremely pleased with the result. This thread started it all, resulting in quite a few folks going out and picking up the TV. The concensus consistently came in positive. The original poster ended up returning his set because he saw the rainbow effect that can be observed with flickering eye motion from single-chip display devices. The majority of people don’t see this effect especially with color wheels increasing the number of colors as well as speeding up rotation. I’ve personally never seen them and almost all the people on the thread don’t see it. You can try to see them by watching a DLP and flicking your eye around the scene during an action sequence, you want to try and see the separation of the Red/Green/Blue colors along the edge of an object. It is most noticable between high contrast borders, like a black background with a white object movie around quickly.

One of the selling points that made the XX731 (57″ and 65″ versions) take off were the price points. Most of the original buyers were walking out with the 57731 (57″ model) and 4 year extended warrenties with 2 bulb replacements included for an even $3k. I had a friend walk out of Ultimate Electronics with no extended warrenty for $2400 even. For a TV that is blowing people’s socks off and making reviewers fairly happy, that’s a fantastic price point to hit (Review).

In addition to the good price point these TVs have a reputation for very good source-input control and handling. The TV supports 1080p over every connection you could want it to (HDMI, DVI and Component I believe).

• WD-65731
• WD-65732 (Adds Dark Detailer and 3rd HDMI connection over XX731)
• WD-65831 (Adds 180watt bulb and high gain screen over XX732)

Sony

Well one of the most anticipated sets to finally hit the streets. The 2006 SXRD thread went on for 131 pages of speculation until Sony finally started to trick out their A2000 models; the big question on everyone’s mind being “Is the green blob fixed?” and “Does the XBR2 look $2k better?”. Unfortunately the XBR2 sets aren’t out yet, but the differences that are known are the bulb wattage, lack of dumbo ears on the A2000 series and the number of HDMI connections on the set.

Fortunately a new thread was started for the A2000 owners that includes some pictures and insight into the set. The consensus so far seems to be “No green blob” and “Looks like the XBR1 sets” and to a lesser extend “Standard definition sucks on this set”. I would also point out for the HTPC users out there, this set cannot accept 1080p over the VGA connection maxing out at 1366×768. You will need to use a HDMI-DVI cable to use your HTPC at full resolution. Also there is no PIP on this model, so if that is important, wait for the XBR2 or look somewhere else.

A user by the name of netadmin put together a collection of shots from his camera with some HD feeds, you can see them here:

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…_Yankees_01.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…_Yankees_02.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_01.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_02.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_03.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_04.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_05.jpg
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/…Dolphins_06.jpg

In addition to this Sony is shipping our review units of the A2000 this week and last week with folks like David Katzmaier already up with his review and Robert Heron at PC Magazine Reviews waiting on his as well.

In the AVS owners thread there is some comment about washed out colors and is typical with AVS, a 50/50 split between folks that “definately see it” and folks that say it’s just a calibration issue. I would tend to lean towards it being a calibration issue given the beauty of the Qualia series and XBR1 sets.

• KDS-60A2000
• KDS-R60XBR2 (revised DRC chip, brighter 180watt lamp, dumbo ears, CableCard support, 70″ version with no dumbo ears and additional HDMI connections to A2000 model)

A user by the name of ‘UMR’ (Jeff Meier) is a professional calibrator and put the A2000 through it’s paces. You can find some of his results here and here. I would encourage you to search the A2000 owners thread for his posts to get a better feel of more information about the set. Jeff was eventually run off because he didn’t declare the A2000 god like. Infact he mentioned out of the box preferring the XBR1 to the A2000 and gave some technical reasons why.

* NOTE: In the original SXRD thread, during all the rampant speculation, there was a fairly decent theory set forth by one of the users that the A2000 series is merely a refreshed and repackaged XBR1 set with all the same technology given the almost identical specifications and part numbers for things like the lamp. While I’m not saying either yay or nay to this theory, I wanted to put it here so people are aware of it and not run off half-cocked thinking that the A2000 is unequivicly a trimmed down XBR2 set. People also referenced this as the reason for the A2000s being out sooner than the XBR2 sets.

HP

I was surprised by the HP series of televisions having never heard about them until Robert Heron at PC Magazine review named it as his prize pick for a rear projection set. When I started to dig into the reviews of the HP I was really surprised to find consistency across the board with praise for the set, namely the picture, control panel placement and sound quality of the TV speakers. This TV also came out with excellent reviews of both input control and allowing 1080p (like the Mits) over almost all connection sources.

After some digging I found the HP Pavillion Owner’s Thread on AVS and again was surprised at the consistency of comments from people. There seemed to be no major qualms with the set or problems. Satisfaction seemed to be abnormally high, but all was not right in TV land.

Strangely enough the discontent about the set had nothing to do with the set itself, but rather with the availability of the set. As it turns out, HP struck deals with TVAuthority and J&R to resell the TV. From what I gathered in the thread, when TVA and JR started selling the TVs they had the 58″ and 65″ versions of the TVs listed for something like $2400 and $2700 respectively, a very far cry from the $3500 and $4200 HP is trying to skin you for on their website (the only other place I can seem to actually find this TV in stock).

As it happens “mysterious” delays of up to 6 weeks started to occur like clockwork from the TVA and JR retailers, offering appologies and shrugs to customers simply stating that their orders for the TVs were not being fufilled by HP. Some reps from HP started to weigh in on the thread saying no special treatment was being leveraged against the resellers orders however that didn’t explain the next-day shipments when ordered from HP.com for double the price when compared to the common 1-month delays when orderer from other retailers.

TVA made a comment that their contract with HP expired and was in the process of being renewed, but general consensus in the thread seems to be that HP is screwing outside orders in hopes of getting people to reorder with them. HP also refuses to perform any price match which seems to be a two-stroke “fuck you” to consumers. I’m not surprised that this set isn’t more popular than it is given HP’s method of distrobution. Instead of getting their name inline with “Best DLP set on the market” they’d rather have their $1500 markup for each set sold. Not a fantastic long term strategy, but I think this is business as usual for HP (Black ink monopoly?).

• MD5880n
• MD6580n

Samsung

Now on to a company who’s TV’s get brought up in every owners thread I’ve ever read. Samsung got brought up so many times in the original SXRD thread that I learned more about that TV there than I did any review on line. The general thought for SXRD-supporters seemed to be that Samsung’s showed noise during fast paced scenes like a soccer game. I sat and watched a few Samsung’s at Circuit City showing a snow skiing event and can say I did notice more noise/pixelation but it was hardly anything that would keep me from buying the TV. The clarify of the image was fantastic and two of the posters to the AVS threads I was lurking in were ICS calibration technicians that preferred the Samsung to anything else “only after calibration”. Aparently out of the box the Samsung does not offer a very flattering picture.

Regardless after announcing the LED-powered DLP a lot of people got interested. For the few folks that had seen it or early reviewers that had commented on it, it wasn’t perfect. There were comments of ’speckling’ and some non-uniformity to the brightness of the image, I remember the term ‘overbright’ being used, but that’s so subjective I’d hate to take it to the bank.

I’ve included the link below for reference. Not very much is known about this set and it’s been delayed over and over and over already which would indicate some sort of problem in the pipeline, who knows.

• HL-S5679W

Conclusion

After reading reviews and threads about all these sets I have narrowed my choice down to two sets, neither of which have been professional reviewed and I am waiting to hear the result of before deciding. For those of you that are in the group of “Why would you choose anything other than an LCoS-based set like the Sony for picture clarify?”, I would say that was true last year, but with the new DLP sets using mirrors set closer together and in some micro-cases, overlapping, there is no longer that screen door effect. In fact, most of the newer DLPs shipping look absolutely fantastic if you are just standing there stairing at them in the store. Any DLP with a color wheel runs the risk of rainbows for the few select people that do see them, so choosing something like the Sony could be a deciding factor for you if you see the rainbow effect.

Lastly size is important to me. When I originally went HDTV shopping last year my intention was to get a 50″ TV, namely the KDS-50XBR1 set. All I will say is that it’s amazing how easily you can increase your ’smallest acceptable size’ for a TV when it’s playing a high definition signal. Needless to say over the past year my preference went from 50, to 55, to 60 and now 65. 70 is still to high of a price point and I am concerned for my 11′ viewing distance, maybe too big? There is some sharpness lost when expanding those 1920×1080 pixels across a larger and larger screen unless your viewing distance is so large as to not notice it. I think 60-65″ is the sweet spot for my viewing distance and unless you sit what feels close to your TV, it will likely be for you as well. I wouldn’t rule out a 60″ or 60″ TV just because you have a 27″ TV now and think that is “way too big!”, give it a chance and view them in the store. My guess is if you see them often enough with an HD signal on them, you will slowly have your preference for a larger monitor increase.
The first set I chose is the Mitsubishi WD-65732. This offers the same fantastic image as the 731 that I have been reading rave reviews of in the owners thread for months now but adds a dark detailer (iris) to the set to make dark scenes look even darker/sharper. Assuming this set is $3500 or less I would say it’s a winner. I saw the retail price on the XX831 set, which IIRC, was close to $5k which was too much of a jump for it to be worth the overly bright bulb and high gain screen over the 732.
My second choice would be the Sony KDS-60A2000. What started my entire search for HDTVs was originally seeing the KDS-50XBR1 at Circuit city last year and almost gasping the picture was so sharp and clear. After researching the TV and learning about the “Green blob” I became very concerned with the quality of the construction of the first generation XBR sets, along with most everyone else in the thread.

After the announcement of Sony’s new lineup the big question on everyone’s lips for months was “How much better, if any, is the picture on the XBR2?”. The issue being that the 60A2000 was at an attainable $3500 price point without dumbo ears while the 60XBR2 sat around $5000 or higher with dumbo ears. So far the personal commentary on the set is that it’s quite good, fantastic even. But the smaller set size than the Mitsubishi, higher cost and potential for quality issues down the road have some people hesitantly sitting back and waiting. If not waiting for the XBR2 reviews, atleast waiting to see how the A2000’s are doing after 6 months of use.

I am personally trying to wait until January, so every retailer can get all their sets out and all the sets comming out now will have a chance to get some more long term feedback on them. Come January I think my choices will look quite good, with everyone’s cards on the table. (Digg this)