A New TV: No. Not yet.
I've looked around, and I know that people have all been buying newer TVs these days, and I wonder why? At this point, and I mean now, I do not see what I've been looking for in a TV. It has to be about $500.00 top end, have a decent size (30"+) and not have a huge technological downside. Nothing I can see for that price really sizes up to anything acceptable.
I keep seeing people shelling out $1,000 for a television, and for as much as I watch TV - that's bullshit. I'm not paying that much money for a TV I intend to watch literally movies, and play video games on. I don't have cable, since I get all my news from the web, and most of my entertainment - no ALL - of my entertainment does not come from TV. There's not point to watching a sports game if you are not into sports, and national news is covered online. Therefore, I'm not really seeing the point. My generation was raised on television, and I think I'm one of the first to really just wholesale drop TV. There's nothing on television worth watching, and I'm sure as hell not about to spend money on an object that is going to beam data to me only about 1/5 of the time.
I think what bothers me the most right now is that HDTV's, LCD/plasma collectively speaking - both have drawbacks as far as buying a TV goes. For one, an LCD TV comes with an annoying "lag" that makes your vision of the picture blurry when viewing very fast imagery. It also totally messes up your video game experience as your button presses will be offset by the TV. I'm not a huge gamer, but the games I do play casually like Guitar Hero - are totally made useless by this problem. So go with a plasma you say? Well, yeah the plasma does solve the gaming issue, plasma also does have the solution for the "there is no black in LCD" problem as well.
However, plasma still is not future proofed. What does that mean? Well, plasma screen TVs do not come in 1080p, and if they do, then they are insanely expensive. Now, that being said there is not a lot of content in 1080p, and won't be for another ten years or so - it doesn't bode well for me if grab one up now and content does come flying out of the woodwork. 1080p is really just 1920 x 1080 pixels of resolution, which is what people keep referencing in "SUPER HI-DEF" shit.
If I was forced to pick between the two, I'd certainly get a plasma, but due to the nature of technology, and where television is about to be heading I'll stay my hand for about another year or two at least. I want prices to come down, and I want sizes to become more bang for the buck, and I want to see both plasma and LCD screen TVs get better. They just are "beta" stage for my needs, and beta is not good enough. I need production models that are good for everything. Gaming, movies, and the occasional splurge into computing if I wanted.
I keep seeing people shelling out $1,000 for a television, and for as much as I watch TV - that's bullshit. I'm not paying that much money for a TV I intend to watch literally movies, and play video games on. I don't have cable, since I get all my news from the web, and most of my entertainment - no ALL - of my entertainment does not come from TV. There's not point to watching a sports game if you are not into sports, and national news is covered online. Therefore, I'm not really seeing the point. My generation was raised on television, and I think I'm one of the first to really just wholesale drop TV. There's nothing on television worth watching, and I'm sure as hell not about to spend money on an object that is going to beam data to me only about 1/5 of the time.
I think what bothers me the most right now is that HDTV's, LCD/plasma collectively speaking - both have drawbacks as far as buying a TV goes. For one, an LCD TV comes with an annoying "lag" that makes your vision of the picture blurry when viewing very fast imagery. It also totally messes up your video game experience as your button presses will be offset by the TV. I'm not a huge gamer, but the games I do play casually like Guitar Hero - are totally made useless by this problem. So go with a plasma you say? Well, yeah the plasma does solve the gaming issue, plasma also does have the solution for the "there is no black in LCD" problem as well.
However, plasma still is not future proofed. What does that mean? Well, plasma screen TVs do not come in 1080p, and if they do, then they are insanely expensive. Now, that being said there is not a lot of content in 1080p, and won't be for another ten years or so - it doesn't bode well for me if grab one up now and content does come flying out of the woodwork. 1080p is really just 1920 x 1080 pixels of resolution, which is what people keep referencing in "SUPER HI-DEF" shit.
If I was forced to pick between the two, I'd certainly get a plasma, but due to the nature of technology, and where television is about to be heading I'll stay my hand for about another year or two at least. I want prices to come down, and I want sizes to become more bang for the buck, and I want to see both plasma and LCD screen TVs get better. They just are "beta" stage for my needs, and beta is not good enough. I need production models that are good for everything. Gaming, movies, and the occasional splurge into computing if I wanted.