The Home Theater Room and Finally Getting a HDTV (2006)
As you can see from the connection diagram at HomeTheaterNetwork.com, I firmly believe that the home theater room should be the center of any home network. The staple of any home theater is the HDTV, and in early 2006, HDTV prices finally dropped enough where I thought it was worth purchasing one. Picking a HDTV technology wasn’t easy, but I was able to narrow it down. Plasma wasn’t an option because I planned on connecting my HTPC to the HDTV, and I didn’t want any burn-in issues. SXRD had the best picture quality in my opinion, but its high price caused me to scratch it off the list. I trusted DLP technology more than D-ILA or HD-ILA so that left LCD and DLP. It was the screen door effect vs. rainbows. I decided to go with DLP since I didn’t need a flat screen, and I always thought the picture quality of DLPs matched Plasmas. Also, the price was a few hundred dollars cheaper, which is always a convincing argument.
New 1080p DLPs were just coming out, which meant all the 720p models were on sale. I spent a large amount of time at the AVSforum.com reading everyone’s inputs on different brands, and I also went to many stores looking at different models. I decided to go with a Mitsubishi 720p model, but I couldn’t find the discontinued TV anywhere. My next choice was the Toshiba 46HM84. The reason I picked the HM84 series is because it had the HD2+ chipset. The HD2+ doesn’t use wobulation to double its pixels, and I thought it gave a sharper picture than the HD3 chipsets.
I was planning on getting the 46” version of the TV, but Onecall gave me a great price, and it wound up being $100 more for the 52” version. Naturally, I went with the 52” size, and I wasn’t disappointed. The picture quality was stunning. I think I spent the whole first week just watching DiscoveryHD. What a world of difference from the 12″TV-on-the-box.
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