Best 50" plasma to replace Tosh 42HP95?

[mtrot]

Around $3000, that is.

Toshiba has offered to refund my purchase price, and I am thinking, since prices are falling on plasmas, of replacing it with a 50" set. I may have to kick in a little extra to make it happen, but that's OK.

I think I am going to try another brand this time. I plan to connect to cable, and watch both SD channels and HD channels.

The reason they are refunding the Tosh is that it has never worked right on the unscrambled HD channels, nor have we been able to get a cable card to work, and they cannot come up with the parts to fix it.

They are offering to replace it with the new 42HP66, but it does not have the cable card slot, nor any memory card slots like the 42HP95.

What 50" plasma with a cable card slot that actually works can anybody recommend? It would also be nice to have at least a SD card slot.

I am a little leary of Panasonic, because my 42HP95 is said to be somewhat a Panny, and I also saw a Panny at BB that was exhibiting the same pixelation and breakups on a HD feed that my Tosh is having the problem with. But perhaps Panny has some new models out now that don't have this problem.

Also, the 42HP95 actually seems to have great image quality, so I don't want to take a step down in that area.

[mtrot]

Anybody?

I did look at some more plasmas today at BB. Actually, the 50" HP caught my eye. It was right below the 50" Pioneer, and it seemed to look pretty good in comparison. The only problem with the HP was that it appeared a little "washed out". I hope this was simply due to the brightness being set too high.

So, the Pioneer had a much punchier image, but I could see more shadow details on the HP.

[oztech]

bump the budget and look at the panasonic you will not regret it.

[mtrot]

[QUOTE=oztech]bump the budget and look at the panasonic you will not regret it.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, but I saw more Panasonics today at BB that were pixelating and breaking up, much like my Tosh 42HP95, which is said to be a Panny. That is the whole reason Toshiba is refunding my purchase. They actually sent a replacement tuner for it, and it says Panasonic on it. I think they have a problem with their tuners.

However, I will do some more research on them. I would like to get the Panny if I can gain some confidence about it not having pixelation problems.

[BradenNapier]

Pixelating and breaking up? No no no - at Best Buy they use a DVR Streaming system that is very very very low quality in many cases...

I personally would reccomend the Samsung 50'' plasma... by far my favorite TV for the price! Panasonics compare to it... but those 2 are the way to go..

Watch out for the HP! I used to work at BBY and theres never been a worse TV in terms of customer issues and problems!

Samsung all the way :-D panasonic works to

[mtrot]

[QUOTE=BradenNapier]Pixelating and breaking up? No no no - at Best Buy they use a DVR Streaming system that is very very very low quality in many cases...

I personally would reccomend the Samsung 50'' plasma... by far my favorite TV for the price! Panasonics compare to it... but those 2 are the way to go..

Watch out for the HP! I used to work at BBY and theres never been a worse TV in terms of customer issues and problems!

Samsung all the way :-D panasonic works to[/QUOTE]

OK, but the other brands there were not pixelating like the Panny's. I say both a plasma and an LCD Panny that were pixelating.

Believe me, I want to like the Panny, and will look at the Samsung.

[optivity]

[QUOTE=mtrot]Around $3000, that is.[/QUOTE]It will cost you a few hundred $ more but I'd recommend doing a "google" search on the PDP-5070HD (http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/v3/pg/product/details/0,,2076_310069733_311066721,00.html). You'll discover the "street price" may be near/in your range. When I purchased my 50PX50U last year... Pioneer was demanding a $2500 premium for their PDPs... and that was too expensive for me. Now that the price gap has narrowed (if one still exits at all) I'd recommend giving Pioneer serious consideration over Panasonic; and it is generally accepted that Pioneer's video processing capabilities are superior to Panasonic.

[thruxton]

I'm leaning towards the Pioneer PDP 4270HD.
The 50 model sitting adjacent to it on the sales floor did not look as good.

It's in your budget range.

Good luck (I too am thinking of a replacement after my Tosh bite the dust)

[mtrot]

Well, Toshiba just picked up my 42HP95, so I now need to replace it ASAP.

I spent a lot of time tonight at BB, looking at plasma and LCD tvs from 42" to 50". I really thought the 50" plasmas would have dropped more in price by now, but the good ones are still pushing 3K. The newer 40" and 46" LCDs look really good, but somehow just not as natural as plasma.

What really caught my attention was the prices for the Toshiba 42HP66 and the Panny 42 60U, I think is the model #. Since I am replacing a 42", I think the wife will settle for another 42, instead of paying 1K more to get into a 50".

Between the Toshiba and the Panny, really very little difference, except the Panny was pixelating a lot like the 42HP95 I just got rid of, and the Panny had a real bad case of "clay face". It looked like some kind of scan velocity modulation effect. However, there may be a setting that will get rid of the clay face. If not, I would not buy the Panny.

I was surprised at how good the Toshiba picture really is. I think the color decoding may be a bit more accurate on the Panny, which you can tell a bit on flesh tones. There were some other scenes in which a blue map in the background looked blue on the Panny, but a little washed out on the Toshiba.

I was loath to get another Tosh after the pixelation problems with my 42HP95, but I understand it is basically a Panasonic, while the new HP66 series is not. I did not see one second of pixelation on the 42HP66 tonight, while I did see pixelation on both Pannys and Pioneers tonight.

I know I have rambled on a bit here, but would appreciate any insights on a good replacement TV. If anybody has had significant problems develop with a Tosh HP66 series set, I'd certainly like to know that as well.

[mtrot]

Well, because of the price BB has this week, I ended up going with the Toshiba 50HP66. I was able to pick it up for basically what Toshiba is refunding me for my 42HP95.

I looked at Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi primarily. The problem with Pioneer is that both the 42 and the 50" cost significantly more than the price on the Tosh. The problem with Hitachi is that they didn't have a 50", they jumped from the 42" to 55", which was way too much money. The Panny 42" they had looked a tad better on colors, but had bad clay face and was pixelating too much for me.

BB actually had the Hitachi 55" directly above the Toshiba 50", so I was able to compare them at some length. I can't really explain it, but the picture on the Toshiba just seemed cleaner than the Hitachi. Both the Tosh and the Hitachi push green a bit, but I can live with that/possibly get a calibration someday. I feel the Tosh 50" is a bargain at this price for the picture you get out of it.

It looks very good and clean on the regular cable channels, and I get no clay face even if the sharpness is at the mid point. The HD looks great so far. I even think it is superior in some ways to the 42HP95 in the dark areas. I think the 1366x768 resolution helps it a lot compared to the 1024x768 of the 42HP95. Even with the significantly larger screen, I don't see any more of the pixels at the same distance. There is also no fan, which was fairly loud on the 42HP95.