@ this thread

Your room so bright it ruins the quality of the projection? How does that happen? Is there a glare? Oh and I am afraid to ask about your rat.....

Not so much as a glare, but the screen has to be VERY bright. I would have gone with a plasma, but they are too problematic to loseing pixels etc. (dont even get me started on burn-in... wich for the most part has been fixed) So I went with the next best thing. LCD. Projection screens are cheaper and such, but as a rule of thumb, their not normally as bright. (and if you get one as bright your paying almost the same) I also dont like the way the projection screens are done. They dont look as good as the LCD/plasma. I think Plasma looks the best IMO. Then DLP for a dark room, and then LCD. For a bright room, it's Plasma, LCD, then DLP. However Plasma has more problems than I am willing to risk buying a 2000$ MSRP TV. LCDs usually... dont loose many pixels. I've read that alot of Plasma screens loose dozens of pixels. Almost every demo screen at the stores I go to with Plasma, have a few missing pixels. (their hard to spot becuase their so small) But over 5-10 years. There will be ALOT more. And that means bad image. I have learned LCDs, usually... as long as they work fine at first. Work forever. (I have only witnessed 1 LCD screen fail, and that was on a notebook and that was the connecting wire harness failing, not the screen itself) My old LCD TV had problems in this room. from 8AM to 2PM. The sun is ON the window half the size of the large wall. Nothing I can do besides buy a new house. And the rat, I had a pet rat once. I loved it. I just bought the rat for 1.50$ from a place that was selling it as a feeder rat. It sits on my shoulder while I troll here sometimes. :P Rats are VERY tame. (best rodent pet there is)

During my 3-week Asia trip, I took some time out to investigate and have a *real* good look at TV displays (LCD, Plasma, projectors). The most noticeable (and disappointing thing) I found in 99% of the stores I visited - was they had no idea what they were doing. Most of them were trying to sell a really expensive display unit - by hooking it up to some crap input signal, on some crappy show, through a crappy cable playing on a crappy DVD player. Even the ones that did get it (half) right were playing some horrible DVD on expensive equipment - and it looked like crap (I suspect they may get these display things right in the US :>). ... I have no desire to go for a full 1080p display - many of the ones I saw looked worse than the 720p displays (which are plentiful). My personal preference is something like a Phillips or Samsung 1024x720p Plasma display - with all the bells and whistles. The Sony ones in particular I looked at were bordering on terrible - especially for the price (I'm very harsh on bluriness, and fussy-ness). I currently have a 4+ yr old Phillips "TrueMotion" TV (does 480p / 1080i + PAL modes), and I think it looks amazing - still better than most of the sets on the market (its just getting a little small, at 82cm). The reason it looks so good, is that it up-samples the frame rate to 100hz (and does it properly) - which when you think about it, is quite a feat. Cost me about $1600AU (factory 2nd - has a scratch somewhere), and it is worth every cent. After speaking to many people, I believe the issues with Plasma (burn-out, losing pixels) are greatly exaggerated - and have improved a lot over the last few years. They also have better colour reproduction, less issues with refresh time, require less power (the new ones anyway), and have perfect viewing from every angle. Kwaad - Im impressed that you have a rat :) One of my friends had one as well, and I really liked the creature (I doubt my cats would be as forgiving though ;).

Depends on your definition of "rodent." A lot of people include bunnies into the rodent category, even though they're technically not really rodents. If we use that definition, you're trumped. Bunnies kick ass. Also, I dunno if you've ever had one for a pet, but Capybaras (which are legitimately rodents) are awesome too. It's like having a 50-lb guinea pig walking around your house.

I agree with most of what you said regarding DLP/LCD/Plasma advantages/disadvantages. But did you ever consider, maybe, getting some curtains for your window? Would be a lot cheaper than a new house.

1. If you think 1080p is imporant on a 27inch TV. Go do yourself a favor. Go find a 27inch 1080p TV. Oh wait. They dont exist. At all. Go find yourself a 26inch 1080p computer monitor for 700$ (no tuners at all) and hook your computer up to it. And sit 3 feet away, and then switch the resolution INGAME down to 720p. If you can notice the diffrence. Congratulations. You have better than 20/20 vision. If you cant. Your like 95% of people out there. 3feet from a 26inch screen is WAAY too close. I have a 40inch 1080p Screen. And the diffrence... visually is not that great. The contract/color/brightness is by FAR the most imporant thing. And they LIE on their numbers. Go to a place that has them hooked up right. (HHgregg is the only place I've found so far that does it right) And look at them. 720p is all you need unless your getting a big-screen. I actually wish I would have saved 500$ and got my 40inch screen in 720p. That is how highly I think of 1080p. COLOR, CONTRAST, BRIGHTNESS. That is what matters. And you have to see it, to know it. The numbers all lie. *ALL* If the TVs arent hooked up right. You cant tell. So obviously most people on this forum have never seen a HDTV in action. That answers my question. "How many of you have experienced HD." The answer is. "Not many." EDIT:

Alot more than 50lbs, and their not very friendly from what I have seen on TV/stuff. Bunnies make no-where near as good pets as rats. Got a small apartment? Dont have room for cats and dogs? get about 5 rats, and socilize with them. They dont chew. (unless they think there is something on the other side they want) Rats are cheaper to feed. (buy a bag of the cheapest cat-food you can find, and that will last about a year for 1 rat. I know people who have harnesses and leashes for their rats, and they seriously take them walks down the road. The rats never go in a cage, they never chew stuff, and they use a 'rat litter box' I guess you might say. I havent had that much success with rats... but it has been done. Bunnies, are no-where near as smart as rats.

I don't necessarily agree with that last bit, although I do believe that 1080p resolution in general is not important on a television. 720p is 1280x768, and 1080p is 1920x1080. I have a laptop with a 15.2" 1920x1200 display, slightly higher than a 1080p television can display vertically due to a television's interface bandwidth limitations. (Single link DVI has the same limitation FWIW.) You can definitely tell when it's running a game, or anything for that matter, at a lower resolution by which the physical resolution cannot be evenly divided. This is mostly due to interpolation, as said interpolation causes a blurring effect. The center of some pixels in a 720p image will map to a location in between two physical pixels of a 1080p device, which means you either have it serviced by two pixels (possibly at different levels for good interpolation,) pick one and have it offset, or resample the entire image in real time. Some displays do a reasonably good job of this, however it's definitely visible on any LCD I've ever seen when it is running at a lower resolution. An image with large areas of high contrast should show the effect of the first two operations, it's the down side to having well defined physical pixels while subsampling your data selectively to a lower resolution. If the display resamples the entire image and redisplays it, you lose some of the input data and its associated contrast. That may well be true for televisions. I'd wager that the majority simply aren't interested, especially those with poor vision. Look at how long it's taking digital broadcasting to take hold. It's taken a mandate from the government to shut down analogue television, no doubt because people largely aren't willing to get rid of their current televisions. I know I'm not. My computer monitor on the other hand is HD resolution almost all the time, barring a game that pushes the hardware too much. It's certainly not 27", but you can tell when it's running at a lower resolution. Still, I don't mind the resolution difference at all when I use one of my consoles.

Sorry... I'm thinking in metric, speaking in standard. I meant 50 kg, which matches the article :-p Wild capybaras are gonna be not-friendly. So are wild dogs or cats. If you get a domesticated capybara, however, it's just like a giant guinea pig. And bunnies are too better than rats. I've seen a bunny take down a goat. Have you ever seen a rat go toe-to-toe withthe animal chosen to represent Satan himself?

if it is a notebook. You are less than 2 feet from the screen. You are talking about you notice the interpolation. You dont notice that on a 1080p screen. And once agian, on the 720p Everything runs native to it. 1280/768=1.7777 1920/1080=1.7777 There is an aspect ratio problem with notebooks. As you just said 1920x1200. Let's find a aspect ratio that is equal. 1920/1200=1.6 1280/1024=1.25 1280/960=1.33 1280/800=1.6 1024/768=1.33 960/600=1.6 800/600=1.33 I have never seen a Normal Computer monitor run a 1.6. Unless it is a notebook. Notebooks have some weird widescreen aspect ratios. As long as you run your notebook at one of the listed 1.6 resolutions. It WILL look horrible. Welcome to screwing up aspect ratios. You dont have that from 720p to 1080p. I dont care if a rat can kill a goat. Not counting the screwed up aspect ratio of a widescreen monitor. What you are seeing is NOT the problem of up-scaleing, it is the problem of changeing aspect ratio. :)