Deals for December 7: 47'' VIZIO 120Hz for $897

[Marcus Yam]

Lovely prices for new LCD HDTVs.

Deals for December 7: 47'' VIZIO 120Hz for $897 : Read more

 

[jblack]

A 47" Vizio 120HZ isn't that great of a deal for $897. Ultimate Electronics is selling a 46" Sony 60HZ 1080P for $550 (I think it is B&M deal only). I think I'd keep the $350 and live with 60HZ.

 

[dEAne]

This is more like it - 46" Samsung LN46C600 1080p, 120Hz LCD HDTV for $797.99 - I wonder what is this 120Hz?

 

[Mark Heath]

120Hz (or 100 Hz back here in Aus) takes the standard 60Hz (50Hz for me) and interpolates the video with an extra image between each frame. For example, a 60Hz video of high speed racing will look quite choppy. So the TV examines the image of frame 1 and frame 2, then creates and image that is in between the 2, giving smoother motion. I've personally got a 100Hz TV and it helps quite a lot for sport and movies. However, the quality of the "fake" image varies and cheapo TVs don't do a very good job of it.

 

[pandemonium_ctp]

Wow, that's a lot of "deals".

Oh, the headliner deal is already expired.

When it comes to HDTVs, Vizio (Best Buy's brand) is garbage. Samsung or Pioneer ftw.

To expand further on what Mark said, when a TV artificially fills the frames to match to 120hz it then "slows it back down" to 60hz in order to keep the display from playing everything at twice the speed. A lot of people don't notice this, but I notice it and get a huge headache from seeing it. All content played with a natural 30 (or 29.97 f[rames]p[er]s[econd]) will look like what I can only say as "fast slow motion". It's extremely unnatural and makes me nauseous. Again, some people don't even notice it.

Keep this in mind when you're buying your TV. Artificial frame filling isn't always a good thing (personally, I think it's a junk marketing scheme).

I did research for about 6 months before buying my current TV in May of '09: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ULBPAM/ref=oss_product. I based my purchase on the fact that NO providers had 1080p content being streamed, and even now very FEW do. Even so, I play 1080p content from my computer directly attached to my TV and still see the difference from 720p, so I'm plenty happy.

At this point in time, I'd highly recommend waiting for LVD (laser video display) to become mainstream and saving your money for that or one of the currently cheaper technology options available (LCD, Plasma, LED, OLED, AMOLED, DLP).