Samsung HL-R5067W 50-Inch HD-Ready DLP TV
Wife wanted it, I fell in love with it...
I was mad when my old CRT set blew last week, even more upset when my wife told me she wanted to replace it with a $2000 HDTV and measuring 50\\" (requiring an upgrade in our furniture and AV cables), but after buying the 5067W at my local BestBuy and setting it up I couldn't be happier.  But, with every big purchase and life changing event (SD->HDTV) a small amount of advice before taking the plunge would have made things go a lot smoother, so let me tell all of you who are thinking about buying this TV a bit of the details that I had to figure out on my own.   <br /> <br />First, as an owner of a PS2 I was not very happy about the review here that stated the 5067W had a full second delay when using a console.  After further research I found that most DLP sets suffer from this as a result of the time it takes to upconvert the analog signal, but one small bit of information I found made all the difference in the world.  The Samsung set has a GAME mode you can select for any of the various inputs that drastically cuts down on the delay, and to do away with it completely I recommend buying a set of component AV cables for your game system for a full digital to digital signal (plus it looks fantastic). <br /> <br />Next,  HDTV... As a DirecTV subscriber I was upset that it would cost me an additional $550-600 to convert my Tivo and dish to an HDTV set, and furious when I found out that only 3 of the four major local channels and five additional total choice stations were available in HD.  In my mind it wasn't worth the money to convert my service to HD for such a small number of channels.  I was also upset when I saw how crummy a SD broadcast looked on the new TV (due to the 640 lines being upconverted to the higher HD resolution of the set... its like taking a low rez photo and magnifying it to twice its size).  The solution?  Buy a $40-50 HDTV Indoor  Over-the-Air antenna!  Having the typical bad/fuzzy experience with bunny ear antennas in the past I was highly skeptical about the quality a simple antenna would produce, especially for HD broadcasts... I thought I was going to be proved right when I plugged in a Terk antenna I bought and tuned to our local Fox station only to see a bad reception with a lot of snow... of course what no one bothered to tell me was stations broadcast HD on a different channel!   <br /> <br />After fixing that problem we watched our first HD broadcast Monday night (\\"24\\") and I'm now a believer.  This set is awesome!  HD looks fantastic and our overall experience couldn't be better.  This set has more inputs than I have components, with the VGA input being a personal favorite, allowing me to run my iBook on the TV (crystal clear picture) and using iTunes and iChat at levels I never thought possible.  The remote needs more work, and less TV Guide plugs, but the on-screen menu is a joy to use. <br /> <br />I highly recommend this TV and a Terk HDTVa antenna to go with it for local HD broadcasts.