In the market.... for a 50" plasma

[jhale2004]

Must be 50 and must be plasma....anyone know of some good deals. I got around 1500 to spend. I have seen a few Phillips for that kind of money and then the cheaper brands for less. Any ideas?

[ipods_are_gay]

Imo it is much more important to pay for quality rather than sheer screen size, because even if a 50" plasma does look pretty swish you don't want to be disappointed with the picture quality.

I have heard good stuff about the Panasonic's and the Pioneer plasma, imo the pioneer's were the best panels out of all the ones i looked at- but i think they only go to 40"
EDit: no they don't they go right the way up to 60"

http://www.trustedreviews.com/tvs/re...n-Plasma-TV/p1

The 50" Pioneer should be within your budget aswell (i assume you're american...look at how much we have to pay! take pity )

[texasphile]

I am a media librarian for a small university here in Texas and help select plasmas for the various university departments. For the money I would recommend either the Samsung HP-T5054 or HP-T5064 (same but with picture in picture, NTSC only). Online some websites have the 5054 at $1600 including delivery charges to you and others have the 5064 at $1650. The Samsung plasmas have an anti burn-in feature which runs the pixels at full white and then slowly dims. It brightens all browned out pixels that way. Also, it has the 18 bit pixel processing feature and a very good NTSC tuner built in. It also has a 15 pin VGA input.

Pioneer units are the best looking for identical resolution plasmas, but they are much more expensive. The Pioneer 50 inch 1366 X 768 plasma is about the same or higher cost as a Panasonic 1920 X 1080 plasma.

I personally purchased the new Panasonic TH-50PZ700 for a little less than $3000 USD with 36 month financing. You can find it currently online for $2700. It has a rather decent analog NTSC tuner which will be extremely important for the next several years.