Replacing broken Samsung DLP: 720P or 1080P\Plasma or LCD

[SWKerr]

My current 46" DLP set is apparently going to a slow painful death. The HDMI input now freezes and goes black for a few seconds then starts again. The VGA inputs seems to work ok but then will claim there is no signal when the PC wakes up, unplugging the set seems to fix it for now. OTA sometimes has green blocks and freezes and will not respond to the remote. Looking around the web this seems to be a common issue and requires the replacement of the DMD board. Since I know it will need a lamp at some point an investment in a $300 board does not seem wise.

Any advice on a possible fix would be welcome.

Main Question: 720p vs 1080p and Plasma vs LCD

The current set is 46" and 720p. I am generally happy with it. I have a 42" Plasma that is 1080i and at that size I can not tell the difference between 720p and 1080i for TV watching.
??? At what size is 1080p noticeable in daily use.

The location for the set will not take more than 48" wide set. (Wife firm on this) This seems to limit me to a 50" Plasma or a 46" LCD.
??? Bigger Plasma or smaller LCD.

Money is important here and I am looking for a deal. I will spend more money on 1080p if it will be worth it for better quality. Most of the cheap Black Friday deals are for 720p sets. I am thinking a plasma with 1365x768 native resolution would work fine. My only input here is a HTPC with preferred HDMI input. I believe I can use the full native resolution on most sets with the HTPC.
??? Advice Please!!!

[MitchSchaft]

LCD is the way to go. If money is a big deal (when isn't it?), I'd go for a 720. I doubt you'll notice the difference unless you have a large screen (60"+)and I think the only material that is 1080 these days is blu-ray.

[paulbeers]

The LCD vs Plasma debate has been going on for years. Personally, I prefer Plasma, but each has their pros and cons. It is really what you prefer than anything else. As for 1080P vs 720P. All my sets are either 720P or 1080i (old crt), but my next will be 1080P. For anything below 42", there is no need for 1080P. 42-46 is where I start leaning towards 1080P. Anything greater than 47 is where I recommend 1080P. While it is true that currently television is only 720P or 1080i, the future of electronic content will be 1080P (or greater) so it has its merit.

[reggie14]

A lot of broadcast networks broadcast in 1080i, and it seems like most HD cable channels are in 1080i as well. Nothing broadcasts in 1080p, but there is some advantage to displaying a 1080i signal on a 1080p set.

That being said, it's not clear that you'd actually be able to tell the difference between a 720 set and a 1080 set. It mostly just depends on how far away you are from the TV. For a ~50 inch TV, you can't really tell the difference between 1080p and 720p once you get 10 feet away from the TV.

By the way, it's not clear LCD is your best choice either. Many people think plasma TVs have better color reproduction, especially when it comes to black levels. I went with a LCD TV myself because I move around a lot and LCD TVs aren't as fragile as plasmas.

[SWKerr]

Went out before Thanksgiving to check out the Black Friday deals but ended up sleeping in.

The LCD vs Plasma decision turned out to be easy. The Plasmas come in 50" models that fit perfectly in the Entailment Center. The LCDs come in 52" which is too big for the location. I considered going smaller but the 46" LCDs were still more than the 50" Plasmas. I also thought the Plasmas picture was better. The LED sets looked as good as the plamas but were a lot more expensive.

The difference between 720p and 1080p was generally around $200 in the size range I was looking at. I decided to go for the 1080p just because I use it to surf the web from the couch where I was pretty sure the extra resolution would be noticeable. As it turned out once I got it home at 50" I can see the difference between 720 and 1080 even for TV watching.

I ended up getting a Panasonic TC-P50G15 HHgregg for $999. They had a lower end model for $899 at the same basic 50" 1080p spec but they came off a lot to get me to buy the higher end model. This one has online content access like YouTube and Amazon. Hopefully they will add Netflix at some point making the extra $100 worth it.

One thing that I did not expect was how big a difference 50" was over the old 46" set. The difference in size was much more noticeable than I was expecting. Also as I said above I can see the difference now in genreal TV watching between 720 and 1080. This was not the case on my 42" Plasma.

I just changed the DirecTV STB to output 1080i to the HD-PVR. Hopefully this will not cause any issues as they have been rock solid over the last few months. I got a few things last night without issue but I was expecting the file size to increase with the higher resolution but they appear to be the same size as the 720p recordings.





I Plasma