The Lady Geek's Topic of the Day: Choosing a New Television

Tales of the Lady Geek

 The Lady Geek's Topic of the Day:  Choosing a New Television

Greetings dear readers today is a beautiful day in Philadelphia, the sun is shining brightly, the humidity is at a minimum and my favorite coffee shop has a two for one special on these delightfully addictive double chocolate chip cookies.  After I returned home yesterday from a house call, setting up a network that included my client's new 3D Television, I was greeted at my door by four decidedly sour faces. "Mommy, something's wrong with George.", my littlest son said despondently, and I immediately ran to the living room to assess the situation at hand.

Dear readers, as of this writing, I must bring sorrowful tidings. After thirteen years of loyal service and performance, my favorite 'old school relic', a lovely 1998 Toshiba 60 inch projection screen television named George has finally started to show his age. His color seems to be permanently stuck on bright orange for people and dark blue for background while his sound has become quite choppy and sketchy.  George the television has provided countless hours of entertainment, family bonding and even education but now his time has come.  Please indulge me as I call for a moment of silence in remembrance of our friend, George the Television....

Thank you.  Now, as you have gotten to know me by now, my next statement should be of no surprise.  Let the research for my shopping trip begin!

With the advances in the television world, choosing one that's right for me and a good fit for my family is going to be difficult.  So I prepare accordingly.  Dressing in my, "Hunter Gatherer" outfit, a comfortable pair of nicely fitted linen shorts, lightweight white gauze top, comfortably walkable tennis shoes and a deadly pair of sunglasses, I know that before I step into a single electronics store, I have some research ahead of me.  

Heading to my local coffee shop, armed only with my tablet and an extra large double mocha latte, I quickly discovered how greatly the televisions of today have advanced since that beautiful winter day that I found my George.

That long ago day, the only decisions I really had to make was what screen size I wanted, if it had a screen protector from small fingers and bouncy balls, if it had enough ports to connect my various gaming and entertainment devices and if it had the proper port to connect my old 1ghzt desktop to it. Heck, to be honest, when I first purchase this television, I had only just decided to start a DVD collection.  Man, those were the days.

Today, especially in my field, I've seen so many options and choices that I can immediately see how much actual work I'm going to have to put into finding George 2.0.  It can seem daunting to the average person, looking at HDTV, Blu-Ray technology, 3D options, 720p, DLP. I mean, really. It's going to become a complicated event really quickly if I don't take the time to decide what my family actually needs in a new television, so I did what any good geek girl does in my situation. I hunkered down and made a list of my top four family needs.

1. Keep everyone involved safe: the Television as well as the small people in my home

2. Watch shows and Blu-Ray comfortably with the family

2. Play multiple game consoles

3. Stream media

4. Not replace it in less than 5 years.

Now that I've decided on what we need, it's time to do the work to narrow down the the list of choices. First things first. I have several safety considerations when bringing an expensive piece of electronics into my home, the least of which would be my smallest children. Not counting the Geeklings, I have a puppy and three cats so securing the device is the first step. I don't like the idea of mounting a television to my wall because, secure or not, the thing could definitely accidentally slip and kill a small person. Well, that thought pattern could take some ugly turns, so let's just say that I need to purchase a sturdy stand and find some form of child proofing thing for the expensive addition to my home.  That's the easy part.

The second thing would be comfortably enjoying my Television activities. We like 'em big around here, some of us have worse sight than others and we all like the ability to enjoy actually seeing the entire picture, so for us, bigger is better. Now the question becomes how big is too big for our home?  I know from the amount of time I've spent both working in electronic retail establishments and researching products at electronic stores that screens that are too big in small spaces can make you miss some of the action, conversely, screens that are too small in any place makes you lose that immersion quality that we've all come to know and love. 

With that concern in mind, I hit Google and came up with the following rule of thumb that oddly agrees across the board: to watch television comfortably, sit four times the screen height away from the screen. So our watching area is eleven feet away from our television which means that a sixty inch screen is the perfect match for the family.  Whew, that was easy. So now I know I'm looking at another sixty inch television that comes with a stand. Man how I love progress! 

Third and fourth on my list are every techno geek's main concerns, Gaming and media streaming.  Now this presents a slightly tricky area to the average user.  Basically there are three types of screens, Plasma, LCD and LED.  LED is really the same thing as LCD except it has extra lighting in the construction that renders a better quality picture.  Also, we have the decision to make between 720p and 1080p quality. This is basically the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV video modes which are characterized either by either 720 or 1,080 lines of vertical resolution. Translation? The higher the number, the better the picture. 

Now for gaming, there are certain things you must think about before just springing for the coolest looking television in your budget.  For serious console gaming (like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3) we must take into consideration the things like sharpness, motion blur, image retention, lag time, contrast, black levels, image burn-in  and, in the case of the next big thing, 3D gaming, cross talk. 

From what I was able to find out, LED, LCD and Plasma are relatively similar enough on most of these fronts, with two very close exceptions. 

Those dark words? Yep, Burn-In

The number one exception is burn-in.  Burn-in is caused by physical properties of phosphor and how it reacts to light and electric impulse.  Plasma gets it in the same way old fashioned CRT (tube picture televisions) used to get it. By having an image, like a paused DVD or game stay on the screen long enough to blow out the pixels and cause a dark ghost image that never leaves.  Plasmas are more prone to burn-in during their first 200 hours of use.  I don't even like the idea of that.  Period.  In the course of gaming, sometimes you have to pause for as long as an hour where there's no save point if you have to run after a child or go to the bathroom. So, no. Not for this Lady Geek.  

The second exception is concerning 3D gaming.  Cross talk occurs if the two images that make up the 3D picture aren't perfectly separated, part of the right eye image will be seen by the left and vice versa making for a blurry ghosting effect around the edges in the picture and sometimes headaches.  While that's a minor concern at the moment, Plasma has a small advantage in terms of crosstalk but at the expense of a reduction in light output and sharpness. 

That settled the debate for me. I want my pictures bright and with limited exposure to burn-in. So now I know that when I actually make it to the electronics store, I'm going to be purchasing a sixty-inch 1080p 3D LCD or LED television.  Next to check off my list is lifespan.

I know, I know, the newer the technology, the quicker the burn out over normal wear and tear. That's why I believe in large electronic replacement plans.  The point is, I don't like shlepping across town to purchase the best deal for me only to have to re-shlep a few months to a year to the same place for my replacement.  Honestly, I expect more from my products.  As a computer tech, I can replace parts and stretch the lifespan of the unit farther than five years if I had to, not like I want to, but certain situations and all that. As a consumer, I expect and demand more bang for my buck. Especially if I'm plopping anything over two hundred of my hard earned dollars on it. Period.  So now I need to know the better life span.

From what I can uncover on my research, it seems that LCD TVs have an average lifespan of 100,000 hours or about eleven years. That's great! Of course, during that time, the pictures will show wear because the lamps used to create the pictures dim over time and use, thus changing the white balance on your television.  So, yup. It won't stay new forever, but if I take care of it, it should last about as long as George.  Now, between LCD televisions and LED televisions, it seems that an LED would be the better option because the white balance of the TV won't be affected by changing bulb color over time which means the brightness will last a bit longer.  

Whew. Not even on my second cup of coffee and I already know that when I go into the store, I will be purchasing a 60 inch, 1080p 3D LED television with a good warranty, an excellent amount of ports and the ability to wirelessly attach to my home network.   Oh and a cute stand that will be sturdy enough to survive the growth of the littlest Geeklings and animals. 

Thanks for taking this journey with me. When I decide to put these various brands to the test, you'll be the first to see on my Television comparison.  The question now is, which television is the right one for you?

Written by: MaryAnn Paris
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