Does anyone here know if you can hook up an HDMI Blu-ray player to a non HDMI HDTV?

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Originally Posted by CaptainRaiden

You could take a look at these HDMI to AV converters - HDMI A/V Cables | Overstock.com: Buy A/V Accessories Online

Although never having used one, I doubt it works because you'd still need some sort of a converter.

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Exactly: you'd still need an active converter which wouldn't be cost effective, a $7 cable won't magically change the signal from digital to analogue. :)

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Originally Posted by Starter

If you buy a new one, be sure you get a LCD with a minimum of 120hz or better yet 240hz. Watching sports and racing on a 60hz unit won't be nearly as good. If you go with a plasma unit it won't matter, as that doesn't apply to them..

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That's poor advice. Any TV with a frame refresh rate greater than the source material is simply interpolating the frames to produce the intermediate ones (not on plasma, as you correctly say), therefore it's not the speed of that refresh rate but the quality of the algorithm used which would make the difference. Ideally you can turn that feature off in the settings as most TVs make an absolute dog's dinner of it. You can get TVs with a humongous refresh rate yet utterly hopeless pictures, there are many many other factors at play.

The only good advice is to go out and compare them, to see which you prefer. Ideally find a showroom that simulates your home viewing conditions (ie not under a million lumens of store lighting!), and make sure they're properly set up rather than on store "demo" settings where the contrast and colour is maxed out.

Personally I'd go for plasma over LCD anytime, you get far more bang for your buck. The only real downside is power consumption, but that's a small (ish) price to pay.

Whatever you end up buying, get hold of a decent calibration DVD (or software and connect a computer) and invest half an hour setting up the screen. It really is worth it.

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Originally Posted by Mark

They are reasonably cheap these days too. You know you want to ;)

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Well, yeah... I do want to. I mean, the living room TV I have has a picture of a dinosaur on the front. But I've been trying to squirrel money away to buy a vehicle next year and this will take a small chunk out of that fund. Plus, my dishwasher went down on Saturday and flooded my kitchen while I was out. Seems like when it rains, it pours. So I'm headed out this afternoon to buy a dishwasher.

But screw it! I was going to buy a TV in the next year or so anyway. So I went ahead and priced a Panasonic TC-P55GT50 55" plasma. It's top rated by Consumer Reports and it should play well with the Panasonic SC-BTT490 Blu-ray/surround sound. The prices are pretty good right now, so I guess I'll bite the bullet. But this sure would be a nice time for Microsoft stock to go up about $5/share.

Atta boy Jag! :up: :p :

I have a Panasonic 50" plasma and am quite happy with it.
Dave has some good advice. I finally got around to properly calibrating my t.v. a few months ago and it made quite a difference in picture quality, primarily getting the contrast (black and white settings) optimized for the lighting conditions in the room.

This model has something called THX Mode that's supposed to "promise picture quality similar to a professional calibration." That's what they claim, but I don't know for sure.

Now I just hope that the dog doesn't get sick or that my car doesn't blow up on Christmas morning. Happy, happy, happy! :mad: