Finally - I've been waiting for SpeedHD on Dish to buy my first HDTV. Are LCDs suitable for watching racing, baseball, and tennis? Does the fast motion blur them out too much? Anyone have one these 240 Hz LCDs? Is that a noticeable improvement? Howabout LED - same issues? Trying to avoid plasma due to heat and power consumption.

I use an HD projector and it's GREAT. I have an approximately 10ft wide by 8ft tall electric movie screen out of a school. You can't beat these things for the price. I think my projector is a Sony aw15 or something like that. They're about $900. Pretty cheap for a tv that can display HD and can have a max screen size of about 11 feet.

I think projectors are great too. I have an infocus 4805 projected to a 72" screen. Although it isn't technically an HD projector it looks amazing driven by dishnetwork HD...you can probably pick one up for under $300...

only downside--you need a dark room

check out avsforum.com--there is a whole world of people who really, really care about their tv.

We've got cable HD with a 46" LCD HDTV and love it. I've found, though, that HD quality varies with channel and program. The truly HD broadcasts are incredible. Not sure what quality of camera Speed uses, but I still wish my cable provider had HD SpeedTV.

We have a Sony Bravia LCD. Never had any problem viewing sports, and I've been watching a fair amount of hockey latest. (Go Blackhawks!)

Skip

there are lots of choices. A 120hz will look a bit better than a standard 60 tv. I haven't seen the 240s so you're on your own there.

There are only a handful of panel manufacturers out there. Samsung make very nice panels, they are a good choice.

Um not sure who makes Visio's panels but I'm happy with the one in my bedroom. Visio is a relatively new brand that has grown very quickly, in my opinion they are the price/performance
leader. Sony (no baloney) - you always know what you're getting with Sony. It may not be THE best but they are usually up there, but they're priced accordingly. Just remember that all manufacturers have different pricepoints to target, so try to compare apples to apples when you're shopping. A low end Wal-mart Sony for $499 won't have the same features as the same sized $1299 Sony at Best Buy, Good Guys or even Costco.

Good luck! I leave the country today - figures now SpeedHD is available!!!

I finally picked up a 42" Sharp Aquos LCD a couple weeks ago (LN42-D85U ?) and am enjoying it. Irritated there isn't more HD content at this point. OTOH for the first week even the commercials were captivating.

Comcast doesn't seem to be including Speed in HD in my area, which I'm finding highly annoying. SpeedTV is a large part of why I tolerate the outrageous pricing...

Boy was i pissed today! I have Dishnetwork! and had to call to find out about the speed channel on HD! I know it was there but thought i needed a special sign up and pay for that. Just got off the phone with them and it is done! Why know notice?

Do you have an HD tv? Whats the quality of the picture? Don't tell me you've been watcing HD Speed and didn't know it was HD!? Someone here said some HD channels look much better than others. I hope Speed isn't one that would cheap out. I'd have to put down my tea party protest and protest Speed instead. Only so much protesting I can do while I still have a job.

I have 2 HD tv's when Speed has a program in HD they tell you. But with Dishnetwork the HD channel says its a subscription channel. So i called Dishnetwork and they turned Speed HD on for me. But I had to call them.

Yes it is great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And as the story goes, Michael never left his living room again... He just stared at the Speed Channel in HD. His 914 never left the jackstands he loaned from Rob and Rob just bought new ones. Wanda occasionally checked Michael's pulse to see if it was time to call the ambulance again because that Speed Channel can be exciting!

I'm waiting on better prices and the fastest transfer speeds I guess. I have a good tall cabinet 36 inch rca from 96 (it was 2500.00 then) and I'm still happy with it but I'm sure hd will be better. All my friends have hd and when I visit and watch the price doesn't seem worth it to me yet. My son has had a big projection set for a few years and I guess it's ok. His couch is only about 10 feet infront of it. Our tv is only about 9 ft in front of our couch's. I think he also plays games on it. I don't play games. I do watch speed a lot mostly after 10pm. I just changed to direct tv for a better price and dish is better. Dish had gone up to 122.00 on me and direct tv said we would get the same programming for about 90.00. BS. The dish had local channels all on one dish. Now the direct tv needs two dish's and the signal really seems poorer. One newer tv even has speaker distortion and I think it's the signal. Those two dish's plus the hughesnet dish and it looks like a tv station in the back of my house. With the dish network the one dish was mounted on my chimney, a nice obscure place, and they wouldn't use the chimney mount, they said it wasn't grounded and I showed them the ground wire. Also we are getting fewer movie channels. I really got dismayed when the installation guy said that direct tv can get by on less signal. They claim that 70 on theirs is as good as 90 on the dish. I think that is also probably BS and they really think I will settle for less just to save 20 bucks. When I called dish to cancel they said they would give me a 12.00 a month discount for two years if I would stay. I said why did you raise the rates if you wanted to keep me, it was a big pita to switch all the cables to a different corner of the house to get the damn dish's mounted to re-run all the damn cables. Plus after telling the installers about the cable behind the gunsafe they managed to pull it out of the wall and I had to punch a damn hole in the cieling to drop a new cable to the 36 inch tv on top of the gunsafe in our mb. I did all the attic work as the installers were about 280lbs and I didn't want them screwing around in my attic.

I think Speed HD is a subscription channel. Maybe you are paying more now as a result. If I go to Speed it defaults to the HD channel, but since I don't have HDtv, it looks the same, other than the picture is too wide for my old 4/3 screen. I just looked at the Dish web site and SpeedHD is not listed as part of any package. Yay.

Look at news releases on the dish wb site may 8th. It was a sub. as i said but it is not now. Another good source of info is Highdeffourm.com.

and no! i am not making all of this up!

First I'd like to qualify my comments with the fact that I have both an LCD HDTV (for 2 years) and a Plasma HDTV (for almost 3 years).

They say:

• Plasma's have burn-in - true, but not near as bad as used to be the case and even now, you'd have to have some strange viewing habits to encounter this problem. Panasonic says you would have to have the same static image on the screen for 4 days straight before burn-in would become a problem.
• LCD's blur with fast motion - used to be true, but with 4ms and lower refresh rates, as are most common nowadays, its not an issue anymore.
• Plasma uses more power - this has been pretty hotly debated. It turns out that LCD's use power at a MUCH more stable rate and Plasma energy usage varies with the image being presented. Most of the intelligent (sounding) info I've read indicates that the power usage ratings are peak measurements and make Plasma look far worse than it really is. I've read that the actual difference may be closer to $10- $20 PER YEAR for the average consumer.
• Plasmas are heavier - I'm pretty sure this is true, but as long as you mount the wall bracket in the wall studs like you're supposed to, it shouldn't be an issue.
• Plasma's have deeper blacks and better color in general - still an issue, but not as much of one as it used to be. Quite frankly, if you're going from normal TV to HDTV, both the LCD and Plasma are so ridiculously far superior, youi're going to be pleased regardless.
• You could get dead pixels with an LCD TV - I have personally encountered this on a computer monitor (Viewsonic), but I've never seen it on an HDTV.
• LCD's last longer than Plasmas - this may be true, but even Plasma TV's are supposed to last 60,000 viewing hours - or 20 YEARS watching it for 8 hours a day. I don't know about you, but I highly doubt that I'll still be using the same TV in 20 years. Chances are more likely that we'll be watching something silly like 4320PQR or something by then so I'll have bought a new TV anyway...

Some other things to think about:
They say that if you're sitting between 8 - 10 feet away from a 42 inch screen, the human eye can't tell the difference between 720P and 1080P.

The Contrast ratings for TV's mean almost nothing. There is no agreed upon standard testing method, so one manufacturer's 10,000:1 may be equivalent to another manufacturer's 15,000:1. At best, you may be able to use them to determine which model from the Same Manufacturer to go with.

I haven't been in the market for a little while, but when I was, Panasonic and Samsung were the big dogs in Plasma. Sony and Samsung were the big dogs in LCD. Pioneer Elites were also highly regarded, but were way over-priced. Like Sean says, Visio seems to be producing a good, inexpensive product, though reliability down the road is a question mark.

Personally, I like my Plasma better than my LCD. My boys play video games on it all the time, they watch cartoon network and nick toons and all that with the logo in the bottom corner of the screen and I've never had even a ghost of an afterimage from that. But I'm not about to tell you that you shouldn't get an LCD. Its like the argument between getting a 6 powered 914 or a big Raby engine. They both have their points, but either one of them will give you a grin from ear to ear. Kind of a no-lose situation.

Just make sure that if you do go with an LCD, you get one with 4ms or less refresh rate. (I think plasma's are at 1 or 2 ms and the human eye can only discern 6ms so anything less than 6 is golden, but don't quote me on that.)

Man, that sounds like good info, only thing is I won't be able to remember it. Now if it was the specs on a double-brested split-tailed mattress thressher I would try to memorize them.

What the ... I won't be able to remember what that split-tailed whatever is and it's only one sentence.

Thanks to all, esp. Nambic, for the info. I went to bestbuy today and they have the new samsung 240 hz led lcds and they are very good (and expensive). They are better than the consumer reports top rated samsung 650 lcd. Bestbuys idea was to put the 240 led next to a dim plasma, so I couldn't compare it to other better sets. Also, the crap video they play doesn't test the performance limits. I'll go to Ken Crane or Pauls for more info. It's true what's said that some research tvs more than their investments.

I had the same concerns about heat and power consumption of plasmas - I was dead set on not getting one. Then I made the mistake of looking at a Pioneer plasma and I was floored at the picture quality stunning at any HD and very good at SD (SD is where the lcds seem to suck.) The power use and heat is not much more than LCD panels, especially if you you the power save functions for everyday use and save the all out mode for movies and races. No blur, no burn in, no issues at all, also no need to go 1080 for anything less than 60". I looked at hi res stills on 2 50" pioneer plasmas and could not tell the difference between the 1080P at 2x cost vs. the 720P - this was at 6 foot viewing distance. I highly recommend vanns.com - no sales tax, free shipping and they are an authorized dealer for most brands. I am just a happy customer.

Steve