HDTVs, LCD, Plasma, DLP and more...

I'm a big electronics buff. I love HD, I love a sweet surround system, I hate wires, I hate actually seeing any of it (other than the TV).

Back in the day (ok... about a decade ago or so) we were in the days of the Hi-Fi. The bigger your stereo, the more lights and moving bars and things that you could get to flash with the music the better. I was in on that, though I did like my stuff to blend in somewhat. These days the fewer wires, flashing things and visible components, the better.

My current setup has no components in the livingroom, except for the speakers and the TV. Every single thing (xbox, wii, comcast hd box, stereo, computer, etc...) are all in the next room. The TV is mounted to the wall and the wires run through the wall behind it. The speaker wires come through a lower hole in the wall. I got an RF universal remote that works through the wall and I'm all set.

I tell you this, not so that you'll think I'm a TV/Sound System snob, but so that you'll know that I have a bit of experience and knowledge about this stuff. That's not to say that I'm an expert in every facet. I'm a learn by experience sort of guy, though one has to temper that with some book knowledge as I cant really afford to buy a projector, DLP, LCD, Plasma and rear projection system to experience which is best.

But I do attempt to experience them as much as possible. I also have a fairly good understanding of of things like lumens, angle of view, reflectivity, and contrast ratios. I buy things based on the stats, but also based on reviews. Because let's face it, the stats can lie, the specs can be misleading, and collected under ideal, impossible to replicate, conditions. Reviews are the temperance for stats and specs and without them you simply can't make a good decision.

Of course, one needs to temper reviews as well. Most quality control strives to keep things well under 0.1% defects (I'd bet that even that would be pretty high). But if you sell a million of something, thats 10,000 lemons you just dumped on the market. If even 0.1% of those folks get pissed and hit the net and write a bad review, you've got a lot of bad reviews. Usually if the customer support is good, most people will write a review saying they got a lemon, customer support got them set with a replacement, the replacement was good and they were happy.

To my thinking, thats almost better than a straight good review. Lets face it, there are lemons in every product line from every manufacturer. It just happens. Its pretty important to know that if you get saddled with a dud, you're going to get taken care of. The alternative just really sucks.

So with that long-winded ramble now spat out onto the page, I'm letting you know that we're putting together 2 new sites. The first is http://hdtv.helparticlesonline.com, which we are populating with articles about HDTV that seem informative, usefull and will help the newbie and maybe let the old hands know something they didn't as well. The second is http://highdefinitiontv1080p.com. That site is focused on 1080p, what it is and where the best prices on it are. It also features some articles off of the first site as well. Right now its pretty light on the content and has an annoying Amazon.com widget that I'd made to show some of the lowest 1080p televisions on that site, but I think I'll nix that in favor of more text.

I've also gathered up a few thousand reviews which I am filtering down for 1080p and then putting up. The next step is to really dive into the differenece between LCD, DLP, Plasma etc... because the conventional wisdom of a few years ago doesn't really apply anymore and even if you researched the heck out of the whole scene in 2005, things need another look now.

So with that, I bid you farewell, check out the sites, and be sure to have a look at http://lookseeclick.com to search the web for HDTVs and sort by price