Rear Projection TVs

By Philip P Daniel

You know those televisions that take up half the room? The ones that sit against the wall, trying to fit in to the aesthetics of the floor plan, but just manage to stick out (literally and figuratively) like a brown stain on a white carpet. Well if your like me and you like your stereos loud, your trucks big, your cars fast and your women smoking, then you probably want one of these behemoths that are known better as projection televisions sitting in the living room of your house. These puppies can help to bring that theater feel that you have always searched for, and even display movies and television in quality that used to be unheard of for the lumbering beasts. Yes these televisions are the real deal, the biggest, baddest and heaviest pieces of equipment that you could ever hope to purchase, and can make you the envy of all of the poor saps without one in your trailer park.

Before you purchase a projection television, you should probably come up with a budget. Although these sets tend to be the cheapest of the larger ten life monsters available, they can still consume large amounts of money that can eat away at your nest egg. By determining how much you want to spend, you can narrow down your choices, which we will start talking about in the next paragraph.

CRT vs DLP

Ok, now before you break out your dictionary and start looking stuff up, frantically trying to determine what the heck I am talking about, just know that there is more then one type of rear projection television (much like there is more then one type of alien race on Star Trek). CRT televisions are the proverbial dinosaurs of the projection television world. They project the picture using a combination of the three primary colors (red, green and blue). The main disadvantage with these babies is the fact that they have maintained their large stature, making them cumbersome to lift and to fit in most rooms. They can also suffer from what is known as “burn in” which is an effect that can happen that will make certain images permanently burned into the screen if they are left in place for too long, appearing like ghosts over the constant images. Because of this, it is not recommended that you leave these TVs on overnight, or use them for uses which produce static pictures such as video games. The main advantage to this is that they tend to be the cheaper of the models, and offer great picture quality that can even display the high definition standard of 1080i.

The newest member of the projection world is the DLP television. Using technology that was developed by Texas Instruments, these displays use bright, high intensity bulbs and mirrors that tend to give outstanding amounts of brightness. Because of the new technology, they are not subject to problems such as burn in and are much less cumbersome, lighter and much clearer then their competition. Their bulbs also have a long life span, and unlike Plasma TVs, can be replaced to give the unit life beyond just the bulb that was provided. The major downside to all of these pluses is that fact that these units tend to demand a higher price then CRTs. They are still relatively new technology wise and as always, new technology means higher prices.

So what else is there?

Although the major factors like resolution and screen size are still very important, the major features that you should be concerned about when purchasing a new projection television are as followed.

1. Inputs: As in the number of inputs that your television has sitting behind it. If you plan on running multiple devices, you will be surprised how quickly you will run out of component inputs, causing you to either have to axe certain items or downgrade their video to quality.

2. Viewing Angles: Check out to make sure that you new television can be viewed clearly from around the room. There is nothing worse then buying a new TV and not being able to see it from the couch that sits in the corner. If there is too much glare or the picture degrades from multiple angles then you should look to other units.

3. Aspect Ratio: As in widescreen or standard. Most movies, video games and even high definition tv shows support widescreen, so unless you are in a space crunch, always buy widescreen.

4. Built in Tuner: Some newer sets include built in HD decoders that can let you watch HD without having to buy a separate box decoder. Although minor, this can be nice if you want to watch HD with only an antenna.

Although there are more things that somewhat important, these are the major things that you should consider, and by reading this, you are already ahead of the game and rest assured that you can count on Newbie.net for the best prices and reviews on all projection TVs.

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