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New TV for Dorm Lounge

T

trickedoutwizard

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Joined
May 19, 2005
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Hey, I'm on a Hall Council committee for purchasing a new hdtv for the downstairs lounge in our dorm. The lounge is fairly spacious, people usually sit about 12 feet from the tv. I was wondering if anyone here could be so kind as to suggest some HDTV's for around or under $1000 dollars that would work well. We use them mostly for gaming and movies. Thanks in advance.
 
Is this louge fairly lit? Considering the size of your budget and if your lounge is dark enough, I woud suggest getting a decent projector. You can adjust the sizing of your screen and games and DVD's would look awesome on a 100" screen.
 
I was watching QVC and ShopNBC today and they both had 32" lcd set ups for about 1000 dollars each. if i recall, the nbc one was a proto and the soyo was on the qvc. they are both decent tv's. especially for a lounge.
i dont know about your setup at school, but thinking back to when i was at school, im not sure how good a projection setup would be in there. im just thinking about lighting issues and people walking in front of the screen, etc. With the lcd, its just plop and on. so its up to you.
 
i worked for the housing dept. when I was in college and the TVs that we had in the lounge were stolen atleast once per year. We started replacing them with real shitty ones but even those got stolen. We finally got so fed up we just stop replacing it. Hopefully you school wont have that problem and its locked up real good with some security cameras.

What kind of TV were u looking for? Plasma, LCD, or tube? If youre looking for a tube...Phillips has a 30" Widescreen HDTV. Best Buy has it on sale for $699 this week.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7023446&type=product&id=1099394446947
 
batmanwcm said:
Is this louge fairly lit? Considering the size of your budget and if your lounge is dark enough, I woud suggest getting a decent projector. You can adjust the sizing of your screen and games and DVD's would look awesome on a 100" screen.
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While a good idea for some, the hours a dorm would put on it, replacement bulb costs ($300), ambiant light-control issues, dust build-up in traffic areas, and especially theft(!) would make it a bad idea for a dorm imho. I've heard of so many projector thefts in schools it's not even funny. They get yanked right off the ceiling.

OP the greatest combo of screen size & cost (besides a projector) would be some sort of rear-projection set (but you won't find true high-definition rear-projection for under $1000 yet i don't think?). Otherwise for true HDTV 1280x720P, and under $1000, one of your few choices is a 32" lcd television (Syntax or Westinghouse for example).

Does anybody know of a rear-projection TV that's 1280x720P native and under $1000? If one exists then that would be OP's best bet imho.
 
I considered a projection unit, but it just seemed that there would be a lot of setup issues, and replacement bulbs and such are costly. Plus there is a deal of traffic past the television set at times. I am heavily leaning toward a 30-32 inch lcd, it's a harder sell than a projection though because people are attracted to size more than image quality. This might be a bit naive, but are any DLP sets in the low 1000's that we could consider? Also, what 30-32 inch lcd would you recommend the most, (which one scales the best, has the best view angles, etc) or are most 30-32 inch lcd's the same panels from diff. manufactuers? Thanks again.

P.S. when an lcd says it's native resolution is 1280x768, 1024x768, etc. do they normally scale well to 720p? And is 720p what we should strive for (i just assumed it was a better goal than 1080i since I generally think interlaced images look worse regardless of resolution.
 
trickedoutwizard said:
I considered a projection unit, but it just seemed that there would be a lot of setup issues, and replacement bulbs and such are costly. Plus there is a deal of traffic past the television set at times. I am heavily leaning toward a 30-32 inch lcd, it's a harder sell than a projection though because people are attracted to size more than image quality. This might be a bit naive, but are any DLP sets in the low 1000's that we could consider? Also, what 30-32 inch lcd would you recommend the most, (which one scales the best, has the best view angles, etc) or are most 30-32 inch lcd's the same panels from diff. manufactuers? Thanks again.

P.S. when an lcd says it's native resolution is 1280x768, 1024x768, etc. do they normally scale well to 720p? And is 720p what we should strive for (i just assumed it was a better goal than 1080i since I generally think interlaced images look worse regardless of resolution.
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There may be 1280x720P dlp's around $1000 but i haven't researched them recently so i don't know exact brands or prices to look for, i do think there are a few so it's worth some follow-up imho.

In that pricerange there's not many acclaimed LCD's we could recommend, though the Syntax Olevia HVX and HVE series is "better than decent" from what i've read. Westinghouse may has an affordable 32" but i'm not sure of its quality/reliability. A lot of these 32" lcd's scale all input to 1366x768P which may be bad, or may be good. I usually like to think more pixels are better but it all depends on the internal scaler and the source video quality.

Here's a froogle search that can serve as a general reference, you can also modify the search terms to narrow down the options.

I do recommend patient research on any $1000 electronic ;), sry i can't recommend any specific brand though, g'luck either way.
 
You're right, people in dorms don't care about IQ as much as size. Most people don't watch actively in a lounge or whatever, but sit and talk while a game or movie or whatever is going. I don't know if your dorm is different from mine in that regard, but if that's the case I would suggest going with just the biggest you can find for the price. A big bulky CRT would be much harder to steal, as well :p
 
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