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By Andrew Eisner |
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| It's that time of year again; sixty five men’s college basketball teams in four regions around the country begin playing on March 17th. The women’s teams start their playoffs on March 21st. By April 4th it’s down to the final four men’s teams with the championship game on April 7th in Detroit, Michigan. |
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| Who's Broadcasting in High Definition? |
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CBS will broadcast all games in the men’s tournament in high definition. If your TV set can receive CBS HD over the air or via cable (or satellite) you should be in good shape. In fact, if you compare the OTA (over the air) signal to your cable or satellite, you may find OTA that often broadcasts a higher bit rate, looks better. For the women’s games, fans will have to watch them on ESPN which will be broadcasting many games in HD. |
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| Last year DirecTV offered a "Mega March Madness" package but only broadcast "select games," in HD. DirecTV is not allowed to broadcast games available on local stations and uses the subscriber’s zip code to black out those games. |
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In case you haven’t made the transition to HDTV there’s plenty of time to research the best values and buy a high definition TV for the series.
If you’d rather watch the games on your computer, CBS will be streaming the championship games live and for free. |
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| The Right TVs for Fast Action Sports |
| Basketball can be very demanding for HDTV. A fast moving foreground (the action on the court) against a complex background (people in the stands) make it is challenging to compress, decompress, and difficult to display without artifacts and blurring.
The very latest LCD TV sets that offer features like MEMC (motion estimation, motion compensation), 120 Hz refresh, and fast pixel response can help minimize problems. Sets with these features are starting to appear for reasonable prices. Plasma TVs may still have a slight edge over lower end LCD TVs for minimizing fast motion problems.
To make the job of choosing an HDTV set we've singled out a handful of big screen HDTV sets that are well-suited for fast action programming.
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| Plasma TVs |
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Panasonic VIERA TH-50PZ85U
Consumer Reports raved about this Plasma TV calling it the best Plasma TV they had ever tested. Users agree, giving it high marks for image quality. The price has dropped over the last year and can be purchased for around $1500. |
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Pioneer Elite Kuro PDP 6020FD
If you can afford almost $4,000 for a TV then you should consider this big 60” plasma. Users rave about the rich, warm colors and very deep blacks. |
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| LCD TVs |
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Samsung LN52A650
The Samsung LN52A650 offers 120 Hz refresh with "Auto Motion Plus" to reduce blurring of fast action programming. It gets very high marks from users and also has 4 HDMI ports. The LN52A650 costs around $1900 while the Samsung LN46A650 is a 46" version of this set and costs around $1500. |
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Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR6
This 52" Sony Bravia LCD TV features Sony's Motionflow 120Hz high frame rate technology for better viewing of fast action sports. It includes 4 HDMI ports and a subwoofer. Sony TVs command a premium price and this one will set you back around $2500. |
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LG 47LG70
This 47” LCD TV is on the top of Retrevo’s list of high value TVs. It gets high marks from users who praise the picture and sound quality. It costs around $1600. |
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Sharp Aquos LC32D64U
For smaller rooms, this 32" LCD offers fast 6ms. pixel response but lacks 120Hz refresh and only has 2 HDMI ports. You can buy it for a little under $700. |
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| Rear Projection TVs |
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Mitsubishi WD-73736
Rear projection TVs offer the best value in these super sizes. The 73” 1080p DLP HDTV costs around $2,000. This set gets very good marks from users who praise the bright picture and natural colors. |
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Samsung HL61A750
This 61" DLP Rear Projection TV offers improved viewing angles and three HDMI ports. It uses an LED light engine that means no expensive bulb to replace. It costs around $1800. |
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| Projectors |
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Sanyo PLV-Z3000
This new 3 LCD projector does 1080p as well as 120Hz refresh. It delivers a bright picture and reviewers say it’s fairly quiet. It has an MSRP of $3295. |
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Epson Ensemble HD Home Cinema
It's not cheap but for $6,999 you get a 1080p home theater projector, a 100 inch motorized screen, an upconverting DVD player (alas no Blu-ray), a 5.1 speaker system, mounts, cables, and everything else you need to hook up everything up. |
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Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 1080
If you don’t want the whole Epson home theater kit you can get their 3 LCD projector for around $2,000. It gets good marks from users. |
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Panasonic PT AE3000U
The Panasonic PT AE3000U is another 1080p LCD projector that costs a little more than the Epson but gets higher marks. It will cost you around $2400. |
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| Who's Broadcasting in High Definition? |
| Retrevo crawls the web for expert and user reviews, applies some sophisticated artificial intelligence including clustering, classification, and machine learning along with statistical analysis of large feature sets to come up with a graphical representation of price vs. features. This is called a Value Map.
Each dot on the Value Map represents a product that has been positioned according to "bang for the buck." Users can roll over a dot to identify the product and price range and the click on the dot for detailed information including manuals, reviews, and manufacturer's information. |
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| A "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" representation indicates whether Retrevo's analysis engine thinks the product is a good value or not and also indicates the aggregated summation of expert and user reviews. |
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| Retrevo crawls the web looking for reviews from experts and users and then summarizes the ratings. For example, this LCD TV got an average rating from amazon.com reviewers of 4.0 out of 5. |
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| Retrevo For All Consumer Electronics |
| Retrevo is a great resource for all gadget and gear needs from manuals to reviews whether it’s GPS, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, HDTV or other popular consumer electronics products. |
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Comments
tv article
Where do I start with this article?
At the top apparently. The panasonic is the best plasma that another rating service ever tested? Are you trying to make CR look stupid? If so, youve done it, especially with a far superior plasma right below it (which costs about $3000 more).
Next item, the pdp6020 is not part of Pioneer's Elite line, the 60" Elite is the PRO151.
Ill skip the obvious typo on the samsung since its a copy and paste of the panasonic review. Ill give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it would have been a good review of a good product.
The sony xbr6? Thats the biggest undersell of a top end LCD display Ive ever seen. Youre talking about the SOUND???
The LG is yet another example. The review is about good TVs for sports and you dont even mention the 120 Hz processor? The color depth? Any single specific feature at all?
Then you break into the Sharp 32". Nice product, but Id still drop the extra $200 to get the 32XBR6.
I think Ive gone far enough, but let me finish by saying that when reviewing (theoretically impartially), there is no need to endorse a TV from every manufacturer. Just name the top few and be done...and dont ever compare a 1500 dollar panasonic to to a $5500 Pioneer. Thats just not fair.
Points taken
Thanks for setting me straight on a couple of points (I've edited the list). You're right, CR raved about a previous year's model and the Kuro is not part of the Elite series (we need to fix the product name on our site). Didn't see the typo in the Samsung review and added the 120Hz spec on the LG. Thanks for taking the time to keep me in line. - Andrew