First Plasma/LCD purchase ever - a few questions..

I recently purchased a Sony 37" XBR6 LCD (to fit a tight closet installation) from Best Buy, a 42" $745 RCA LCD from CostCo, and a 60" Pioneer Elite from Axxis Audio in Colorado.

BEST BUY: It's simply foolish to let a sales person or the displays at Best Buy sway your purchasing decision in any way other than an offer of a lower price. Best Buy's lowest price can easily be beat. It' important to know exactly what you want and what the lowest price that unit is being sold for nationally B&H Photo in NY is a good place to start but even their prices aren't the lowest. The idea is that you have a fairly good knowledge of what a product can be sold for and the seller is still making a profit.

The one positive aspect I received from my Best Buy purchase was a bundled certified (IFxxx?) calibration for $140. I shopped around locally and the best I could get a calibration done for was $345. Historically Sony CRT's were very well dialed in out of the box but this is a new era. My XBR was running at 8000 Kelvin (I believe 5600 is the norm). I'm not sure if there would be a situation were you would need to have a set recalibrated. Once calibrated the LCD's superior brightness is simply a result of a higher Kelvin setting. My Sony gained more depth and a more realistic picture quality as a result of calibration.

The Sony scans at 120Hz and there is defiantly motion artifacts as there are in the best Samsung's (my neighbors). The life span of an LCD is said to be much shorter compared to current plasmas.

COSTCO: The RCA was a purchased based on price and size. The picture quality is surprisingly good and I'd rather have a slightly lesser quality picture on a bigger display any day and this was my son's choice. CostCo offers a limited Concierge Service that can be upgraded for a reasonable price. It's basically very good phone support. If the phone support fails to remedy the problem the they will send a technician for the first 30 or 90 days.

AXXIS AUDIO: The positive experiences by people on the AVS forum lead me to Axxis. I still had trepidation over the shipping of such a fragile and expensive component. A call to Axxis relieved me. I was told to open the carton before the driver left. If the screen was cracked to put it right back on the truck, call and another would be shipped that day. The Pioneer comes very well packed and all was well. The other components I purchased from Axxis were shipped UPS. The display was delivered within 20 minutes of their ETA.

Axxis emailed the next day to confirm delivery. I save just over $1900 over the Best Buy/Magnolia price for this plasma so I splurged on a calibration. I couldn't see any difference after calibration except on the technicians laptop and those were very slight. In hind sight I could of easily lived without the calibration on this plasma. Any warranty concerns can be directed to Pioneer who will in turn direct you to their nearest service center.

This plasma is in a very brightly sunlit room and the picture is not affected. After calibration both the Sony and the Elite are similar in brightness with the edge going to the plasma as are most other aspects of picture quality. If the only display in your house is a 120Hz scanning LCD motion blur may not be an issue. Living with both the shortcoming becomes obvious. Even my neighbor felt somewhat shortchanged after comparing his top of the line Samsung to the plasma during the NFL playoffs.

>04-09-09: Pcking
I understand that Pioneer is getting out of the plasma business and that there may be some bargains out there on their Kuro line.<

Pc, excellent point. I believe they're simply going out of the plasma production and sourcing to Panasonic. They showed a 10G prototype at a show somewhere. The folks over at the AVS are all over this stuff.

I just got of the phone with a friend who was shopping for the 50" Kuro (not the Elite) and he noticed that prices fell to $1800 two weeks ago here in the San Francisco Bay Area. A week later he pulled it together to get one and they had sold out. A week later he could only find them for $2500. Two days latter he found a used Elite on Craig's List for $2500.

>04-09-09: Chadnliz
Dont buy open box, dont buy warranty and dont buy the BS about calibration, the amount spent doesnt justify it and as long as you like how it looks who cares.<

In a showroom environment the brightest picture equates the best choice to the average consumer which is why most LCD's are shipped with the Kelvin or brightness set very high if not all the way up. Leaving the display set at this high level greatly shortens the life span of the display.

Lowering the Kelvin doesn't necessarily require professional adjustment. Accessing the diagnostic menu and adjusting all the parameters to their optimum using the appropriate software does. The custom settings can also be correctly set for day or night time viewing. As I mentioned above my LCD's benefited greatly from calibration with much better shadow detail, color rendition, and less fatiguing brightness, just to name a few.

Any adjustment should be done after a few months of use. As 55dok mentioned a search at the AVS forum may provide you with basic settings that could also greatly improve a displays picture quality over the factory settings.