After spending some more one on one time with a new 1080p TV, I’m impressed with how much better the picture is than 1080i. Didn’t think it could be that big a difference and boy was I wrong.

This coming weekend Best Buy is running a Reward Zone member promotion for 10-12% off TVs and other goodies. I’ve had my eye on several different 1080p LCDs since buying a PS3 but the price has always been too high for the ones that looked the best. I’ve been tracking this 42″ Westinghouse from $1,800+ down to $1,100 but the picture quality doesn’t seem to compare to other 1080p LCD TVs that were in the $2,000-4,000+ range (formerly in the $3,000-6,000+ range).

Never say never, but I can’t see us spending over $2,000 on a television. In all but one case of television purchases over the year in our family, we’ve spent less than $750. I haven’t seen a 1080p HDTV for under $750 but there might be some really low-end model out there somewhere. As the prices continue to fall within a year we should see 1080p HDTVs for around $750 or less — our household TV buying hotzone.

But I couldn’t wait another year.

Last night we purchased the Samsung 40″ 1080p Flat-Panel LCD HDTV Model: LN-T4066F (see Best Buy online listing here) which regularly sells for $2,299 and was on sale for $1,999. The manager approved the promotional 10% discount a few days early and thus we came home with this black beauty early for $500 off the regular price ($1,799). Nice. This makes the list as the second most expensive TV we’ve ever purchased. Our 61″ Panasonic projection TV which we bought at Sears over 10 years ago — and has since gone to TV heaven — cost just under $2,000.

We also purchased the four year extended warranty ($250) for the TV and a 900 watt UPS tower with surge protector ($179). The total bill with tax ran just under $2,500. None of this went on credit since we’re still in the midst of our no credit cards experiment.

Here’s some additional details and pictures which with compressing for web and my subpar photography don’t really do justice to the actual Samsung LCD TV.

There is a special “game mode” that enhances the TV for videogaming. I have the PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite both hooked up via 1080p. In the case of the Xbox 360, it automatically detected 1080p on boot, but with the PS3 I needed to go into settings and make the adjustment manually.

I noticed right away that the Xbox 360 blade menu at 1080p doesn’t look as good as the Sony PS3 menu. Something about the blade is cloudier looking and I like how whatever game you have highlighed in the games menu automatically changes the background. The Xbox Live content still far surpasses the mostly empty locker of the Playstation Store, but Sony is working on it. Every Thursday you can pretty much count on something new showing up in the Playstation store and I’m guessing, though I didn’t add it up, that for under $200 you can buy everything in the Playstation Store, including the PS1 games.

Compare the Playstation Store text readability at 1080i resolution on our older Samsung TV from a past post:

To this:

Some other picture quality things I’ve noticed thus far include:

- some of our DVDs have noticeable artifacts being played at 1080p.
- the detail on the actor’s faces in the Blu-Ray Mission Impossible is stunning. You can see cracks in the actor’s faces that I never noticed seeing before. Better than seeing it in the theater

The owner’s manual offered in both English and Spanish is a stout 87 pages and I’m still working my way through it. Worth noting are the USB ports that allow use of a function called Wiselink which allows easily inserting any USB storage device with photos and mp3 to play through the TV. Since the PS3 and Xbox 360 can both do that, it’s kind of redundant.

There is a good selection of inputs including: 3 HDMI ports, 1 PC, 2 S-VIDEO, 2 Component, 1 DVI (shared with HDMI port 1), 2 antennae (air and cable). As mentioned above, room to hook up both PS3 and Xbox 360 Elite via HDMI as well as a PC, DVD and older game systems. Below is a picture of the free demo Grand Turismo HD concept v1.2 sporting those realistic looking mountains.

Nope, still no cable, satellite or even over the air channels
Seems almost criminal not having cable, satellite or even over the air reception with the new LCD TV. This now runs up the television total in our home to six total television sets with a 50/50 split between HDTV and non-HDTV:

(1) HDTV 1080p - Samsung - 3 HDMI inputs. Location: Mom & Dad bedroom
(2) HDTV 1080i / 720p - with 2 HDMI inputs.
HDTV 1080i / 720p - only composite inputs. Location (both): Family room
(3) Other non-HDTV - Location: Kids bedroom, one in family room (yes, there are three TVs in the family room)

I’m thinking it will still take another few years to become 100% HDTV in our home. The non-HDTVs will be replaced as necessary with HDTVs.

With this new purchase our family’s streak of being without television is approaching 400 days and could be in jeopardy as NFL preseason starts in less than a month. Then again, it might just be used as a really nice game monitor and to play DVDs and Blu-Ray movies.

I’m curious how many readers have 1080p televisions? For those who don’t, are you waiting for the prices to come down like we have for awhile? For those with one or more 1080p TVs, are you able to go back to buying non-1080p sets now? As I type this, I’m realizing our last three TV purchases have all been progressively better HDTV sets. There was only $100 difference in the two other HDTV sets, but this one is well over three times the cost which is unusual using our historic buying patterns.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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