Need TV Buying Advice

Agreed, but I was referring to Sam's electronics department. They have the lowest TV prices in this area with the possible exception of Costco, but Costco is too far away from me to justify a membership.

On the other hand, some folks I know of won't buy electronics from Sam's for fear of inferior parts. Not sure if I agree with them or not, although just about every TV I have purchased from them (2 Vizios for a friend, and my first Samsung) had to be returned for issues. Even so, I will take my chances due to their generous return policy.

If the second Samsung gives me trouble, I'll try a Visio, and if that doesn't work, I will be sure to buy a TV from long-standing brands such as Panasonic, Sony, and maybe Toshiba. Toshiba made great CRTs, but due to the competitive nature of the flat-screen TV market, Toshiba (Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and maybe Sharp too) started farming out parts from third-party suppliers including panels.

Even Samsung is now farming out panels for less expensive models. The version number located on the box and the back of the TV can be used to trace the panel origins. I think both of my Samsung TV panels were made by Innolux. I have never owned a genuine Samsung panel, so I can't do a comparison, but many experts on audio & video forums say the genuine Samsung panels are superior.

 

We bought a 55" JVC from Costco a couple of months back. We've been very happy with it, though it's taken quite a while to work through the myriad ways of adjusting color and picture, etc. I'm not sure we've got it completely sorted even yet.

It's a bit big for our living room - maybe a 50" would have blended in better. It replaced an older JVC tube set (4:3, 27 ") which is now in the bedroom.

Because OTA signals are so screwy in our area (we're 100 miles from the "local" major channels in Seattle and Vancouver, BC) we're on Comcast cable. We have a Comcast-provided (at a ridiculous price) Motorola DVR.

I've tried using HDMI between the DVR and the TV set, but get all kinds of odd problems, so I've reverted to the three-wire RCA cables for now. On HDMI, channels that weren't digital came up with about 4" of black borders around them. I've given up, for now, trying to figure out WTHIH. A shame really, because we'd like to have our DVD player hooked to this set. The set only has one group of RCAs and our DVD player only has RCA output.

Apart from the DVD player problem, we're very happy with the JVC set.