Posted on 01/25/2011 3:20:28 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Washington, D.C. (January 23, 2011) -- Best Buy today kicked off a Super Bowl sale featuring 14 Sony High-Definition TVs. The sale is good from January 23 to January 29.
The Super Bowl, which will be played this year on February 6 in Dallas, traditionally is a driver of big-screen TV sales with consumers looking to upgrade their sets for the big game.
During the promotion, Best Buy is offering discounts on 14 different Sony sets, including a
* Sony Bravia 60-inch, 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV for $1,998 ($1,001 off the regular price) * Sony Bravia 55-inch, 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV for $1,499 ($800 off the regular price.) * Sony Bravia 55-inch, 1080p 3D 240Hz LED HDTV for $1,798 ($1,401 off the regular price.) * Sony Bravia 46-inch, 1080p 60Hz LCD HDTV for $763 ($86 off the regular price.) * Sony Bravia 46-inch, 1080p 3D 240Hz LED HDTV for $1,499 ($1,000 off the regular price.) * Sony Bravia 40-inch 1080p, 60Hz LCD HDTV for $599 ($50 off the regular price.)
Best Buy, which announced the promotion in today's newspaper circular, also says that it will offer free delivery of any HDTV priced at $999 or above; the retailer will also recycle your old set.
Among non-Sony sets, Best Buy is now selling a Panasonic 50-inch, 720p Plasma HDTV for $599, $200 off the regular price, and a Panasonic 58-inch 3D Plasma HDTV for $2,799, which is $600 off the regular price. The 3D set also comes with a free Panasonic 3D Blu-ray player and a Panasonic 3D 'Starter Kit," which includes two 3D glasses and a copy of Avatar in 3D Blu-ray.
Last Friday, Sears announced that it's also offering a Super Bowl promotion, selling a Zenith 50-inch, 720p Plasma HDTV for $549.99; a Sony 60-inch, 1080p, 120Hz LCD HDTV for $1,700; and a Samsung 40-inch, 1080p LED HDTV, bundled with a free Blu-ray player and wireless adapter, for $750.
I expect no one to follow my bias, but I will never, ever buy anything from Best Buy. Repugnant “customer service” and return desk from hell.
I’m pretty partial to Philips.
I notice none of the high resolution 1080/240Hz machines are listed.
I had a Phillips TV set a few years ago. It died shortly after the warranty expired.
- JP
For general TV viewing a 720P plasma offers a very good picture at an attractive price. It’s also worth noting that shows on ABC, ESPN and Fox originate in 720P. They may be upconverted at some point by satellite or cable providers, but they’re not going to have true picture resolution beyond 720P. I’d definitely go with 1080P for watching movies in a home theater setup, but 720P is fine for watching most ‘TV’.
Waiting for a name brand, 1080p, 120hz, wifi, 42"+,....under $500....until then, I'll stick with the 20+ year old Sylvania box.
Thanks LVD! It’ll be hard to beat the Xmas shopping season sales, at least until autumn swings ‘round again, and give or take a continued rise in crude prices.
With my 40" Sony KDL-40EX500, watching football has become a completely different experience--it's so sharp you can see individual blades of grass on the field and clearly see the "grain" on the leather covering of a football. No wonder why people are at the stadium less and watching games at home more on home theater setups.
Football .... no way. It was the women’s beach vollyball in the Summer Olympics that demonstrated to me the need for a 72” screen.
but 720P is fine for watching most ‘TV’
True!
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720p vs 1080i HD Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-JXfyvlPh0
Our 209 pound SONY34XBR960 1080i CRT has a great picture as well as our JVC LT-40X887, 720p upconverts to 770p - D.I.S.T. 770p (Digital Image Scaling Technology) with GENESSA Picture Processing.
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JVC
http://support.jvc.com/consumer/product.jsp?modelId=MODL027783&pathId=78&page=2&archive=true
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SONY 34XBR
http://reviews.cnet.com/direct-view-tvs-crt/sony-kd-34xbr960/1707-6481_7-30787600.html
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1080p is best for blu-ray, very limited broadcast are available on DISH and possibly Directv, as for ota, I am unaware if 1080p is offered.
I love the prices of Sony TV’s. You would think that it came with a little Japanese man inside the box to install it when you got home at those prices.
Phillips sucks, ask any salesperson what TV’s have the highest return rates and the answer you will get is Phillips. If you want to go the value route, choose Visio and pick it up at Sams’s or Costco. Anything over 50 inches make it an LG. Oh, and make sure you get a 1080p and at least 240hz now (although 120mhz is OK). Don’t listen to the comments about not needing it, the broadcasters and providers will eventually come around, you want to have the technology to handle it when they do. My 2 cents...
3D Holographic TV’s Very Possible And Will Happen By 2020
(Note: article is from 2008)
http://www.sonyinsider.com/2008/10/06/3d-holographic-tvs-very-possible-and-will-happen-by-2020/
Display technology is a very fast-growing area in the global economy, and Sony has been a huge player in it for a while. In the last twenty years we have seen amazing improvements with such technology. In the last few years however the predominant focus in television technology has been the outro of Plasma and the rise of LCD. A new challenger is being ushered in by Sony, which is OLED, but what are we expecting a decade or so from now? It’s Holographic TV’s, and major barriers that restricted the technology from becoming a consumer electronics item have been broken.
There are people working on the technology as I write this, and its maturing rapidly with each passing year. The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country’s Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020. Sony would obviously be involved with this in some capacity as they have always been at the forefront of display technology. However, it is being reported that there aren’t any real big sponsors from the consumer electronics industry in this technology..yet.
CNN writes, “Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.
“This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images,” he said.
The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes. To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second — but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen. He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 — so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.”
Examples of how this technology would work is a display of a football game on a table, or movie characters able to appear and disappear between walls. The potential is unlimited, and could essentially turn households into a movie set. Imagine a war scene inserted into your living room from an wall-based 3D Holographic Projector, where your couch could be the bunker that movie characters use to hide from suppresive gunfire and grenades. There are also several applications beyond the home the technology could be used at, such as military and medical displays for optimal efficiency and accuracy.
I would hope that if the technology does become mainstream one day that they have a set up system for the room the holographic television is being installed in. If objects and items in your home could be mapped out and integrated into the action somehow. The world would have to update their broadcast and film equipment as well for this technology, since conventional camera work probably could suffice to be a true source for holographic 3D. So, while the thought process behind this is attractive, there are still many barriers and upgrades needed to make it work.
Image courtesy of PopSci.
Does anybody have news about the release date for Panasonic’s 2011 models? I’m thinking of a GT30 or possibly a VT30 in 54 inch. They were announced at CES about a month ago. Yesterday I got an Amazon email promotion about close-out prices on the 2010 models, but it still seems like Panny is making improvements every year.
Same here. I won’t even go into a Best Buy store. It’s a very garrish low-life atmosphere with nothing but loud “music” which resembles a thousand tom toms being beaten incessantly. They play to low life hip hoppers and rappers. Their advertising entices these jackasses to buy loud speakers that will “wake up the neighborhood” and “shatter” their neighbor’s ear drums and windows.” Sorry for the rant but these thugs keep my 91 year old mother awake around the clock driving their mobile aural assault vehicles. Now any asshole can impose his idiotic behavior on someone deep within their sanctuary. And they do this with impunity. Screw Best Buy - they will never get my business.
Dave what brand of tv did you recommend again?
1080P .... Is that pixels? My husband and are stumped. Buying a tv has become very confusing.
Please tell me why you like the of brand...we”re shopping for a t. And our heads are spinning.
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