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Originally Posted by dmbphan041
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There are some good ones in there, but basically when it comes to movies you cannot beat plasma. THe PDP-5010FD from Pioneer is better than their 5080.
The -800 series from Panasonic which are filtering out now are excellent.
I'd use places like
www.hometheatermag.com,
www.soundandvisionmag.com,
www.stereophile.com,
www.hdguru.com, etc., to get proper reviews. Cnet have their opinions, but I don't see them ever doing real tests on the units to check for 3:2 cadence, deinterlacing, full 1080p bandwidth, etc. All of these things should be of growing interest to people now that we have true 1080p sources on Blu-ray.
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Originally Posted by chevman
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May I say, that's an excellent choice you've made!
Here's some recent and revealing articles on plasma.
The first one is a shoot-out between the new LED-based LCD set from Samsung and a Pioneer plasma. The LED with “smart dimming” certainly leaves most of its LCD competitors in the dust, but when put up against a good plasma, it’s game over for the LED.
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/fea...-round-ii.html
The second article is a bigger shoot-out between LCD, LCos, plasma and DLP. There are seven sets tested altogether.
http://www.hometheatermag.com/lcds/208hdface/
These are the seven sets tested:
Samsung HL-T6187S LED DLP RPTV
Sharp LC-52D64U LCD HDTV
JVC LT-47X898 LCD HDTV
Mitsubishi WD-57833 DLP RPTV
Sony KDS-60A3000 SXRD HDTV
Panasonic TH-50PZ750 Plasma HDTV
Pioneer PDP-5080HD Plasma HDTV
Now the Pioneer won this match-up, but it was both the Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas that were rated as being in a league of their own over the other sets. You can read all the opinions on the last page of the article. Here are some highlights:
But there was no doubt about it—plasma is king.
~David Birch-Jones
Deep blacks and a viewing angle that allows more than one viewer to watch are big sellers for me, which explains why I was drawn to both the Pioneer and the Panasonic. Go with either, and you'll be happy.
~John Higgins
I kept going back and forth between the two plasmas: Pioneer and Panasonic. I knew they both looked the most natural and pleasing to me, with excellent blacks as well. I couldn't decide which I preferred.
~Maureen Jensen
So the key strengths or plasma are; realism, blacks, motion resolution and colour accuracy. You may hear a lot that people with bright rooms or uncontrolled lighting will want to avoid plasma, but to quote one of the main reviewers of televisions from the HD Guru website:
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So why are consumers passing on better performing plasma TVs and spending more money (per inch screen size) for poorer performing large screen LCDs? Because they produce brighter pictures and consumers mistakenly believe “brighter is better.” However, unless one lives in a retail showroom or has set up an ultra-bright, high ambient light viewing environment that mimics a showroom, the HD Guru™ cannot understand why anyone would pay more to buy a top-rated LCD set when a less expensive top-rated plasma set will outperform it while still providing up to three times more light output than necessary in any typical home environment.
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Originally Posted by Mickey Carson
Glad to hear that. I was checking out the SR705 on Crutchfield the other day...it's tempting.
I've seen you on a lot of the home theatre forums that I lurk at. I see the avatar and say "hey it's doby."
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Yah I do enjoy all the HT stuff and audio and you'll find me in quite a few places, but most often the Blu-ray.com forums, AVS and Audioholics.
Crutchfield have a cool area on their site called "Scratch and Dent" with some great savings.
However I'd like to point out that the powerful Onkyo TX-SR805 is on Amazon right now for $671 with free shipping! It's THX Ultra2 certified and has a big jump up in reserve power over the 705.
Either way you're getting a great receiver, but the extra $150 for the 805 would be money well spent!