Consumer Reports took a look at 98 HDTV’s in their March issue. Are they HDTV experts? Do they know their interlacing and their colour temperatures? I don’t know that. But I do know that they made some top picks, according to TVPredictions.

Some of the top TV’s they rated as “Excellent” were:

LCD
JVC 40-inch LT-40FN97 ($2,700)
Sony 46-inch Bravia KDL-46XBR2 ($3,800)
Sony 40-inch Bravia KDL-40XBR2 ($3,000)
Toshiba 42-inch 42LX196 ($2,300)
Toshiba 37-inch 37LX96 ($1,900)
Samsung 32-inch LN-S3296D ($1,500)
Toshiba 32-inch 32HL66 ($1,000)
Toshiba 26-inch 26HL66 ($800)

Plasma
Panasonic’s 58-inch TH-58PX600U ($4,800)

DLP Rear Projection TVs
Toshiba 62-inch 62HM196 ($2,500)
Toshiba 62-inch 62MX196 ($2,900)
Toshiba 56-inch 56HMX96 ($2,300)
Toshiba 56-inch 56HM66 ($1,800)
Sony 60-inch KDS-60A2000 ($3,000)
Sony 55-inch KDS-55A2000 ($2,700)

Want a Super High-Definition TV?

Audioholics recently took a look at the excellent Sanyo PLV-Z5 projector, those lucky dogs.

Remember that the PLV-Z5 is a 3LCD projector with a resolution of 1280 x 720. It has a contrast ratio of up to 10,000:1. It has a brightness of 1100 ANSI lumens. This projector has an MSRP of $1,995. It includes two HDMI inputs.

We’ve talked about this projector before. How great it is, how sharp it is. Etc. So I thought I’d just poiunt out that this is one heck of a good projector, and you can’t do much, if any, better for the price. Especailly considering the the $2k is just the MSRP and you could probably get it for much less than that.

Sanyo PLV-Z5 Projector Review

So here’s the scoop: in order to avoid some legal wranglings, Toshiba’s sold its share of the SED joint venture with Canon to Canon. But that doesn’t mean they’re out of the picture.

Toshiba will actually be manufacturing the SED displays.

Toshiba was not available to comment on the production schedule, but Atsutoshi Nishida, president of Toshiba was quoted in a December Nikkei Business report as saying the company’s SED production facility in Himeji, Japan was on schedule. In addition, in October 2006, CNET reported that SED had made some manufacturing breakthroughs that would make SED TVs competitive in the market with LCD TVs.

But that’s not the most of it. For the most of it, see the article linked below. There’s a lot more…

After all is SED and done, Toshiba not out of the picture

One of the most important things to remember about getting good picture quality when using a front projector is to have the room as dark as you possibly can. And by that I mean that the room should really be pitch black. Because whatever light there is in the room reflects off the screen and becomes the minimum black level you’ll end up seeing.

But Planar wants to go about changing that with a screen that tries to reflect as little ambient light as possible and as much projector light as possible.

The screen does an admirable job of fulfilling up to its promises. But only if you’re sitting in its considerably small sweet spot. But if the ability to watch a movie with ambient on is what you want, that’s the trade-off you’ll have to live with. Oh - and the fact that the 60″ screen weighs 69 pounds (rigid frame) and costs $1,399. (And it only goes up from there.)

Planar Xscreen — Home Theater with the lights on

The VPL-VW50 projector’s been making waves. Remember that it’s a 1080p SXRD projector that includes a 1080p HDMI input, excellent contrast ratio, great blacks, and it costs only $5k. Remember also that some have complained about a less-than-sharp pictures, while others have pointed out that you need to turn off a certain factory setting to do with overscan to get a sharp image.

S&V Magazine recently took a look at this projector, let’s see what they thought.

All in all they liked it very much. Though they did have problems with less-than-stellar deinterlacing of 1080i imagery and colour uniformity. The latter, though, was fixed by an adjustment in the service menu. That’s nice to see, but I don’t want to enter the service menu.

Sony VPL-VW50 1080p SXRD Front Projector

Panasonic sells one-third of all plasmas sold in the United States. I didn’t know that. But it was a cool little tidbit of information that I read in Ultimate AV’s review of the Panasonic TH-50PX600U plasma HDTV.

This 50″ plasma HDTV retails for $3,299, and has a resolution of 1366 x 768. (There’s that resolution again, Mole!) It has two HDMI inputs and a VGA input too if you want to hook it up to your PC.

So Ultimate AV put this plasma through its paces and found that it has its share of problems that can’t really be glossed over. (See the review for full details.) But for a street price of less than $3000, it does a lot for that money.

Panasonic TH-50PX600U High-definition Plasma TV

Bill Livolsi at Projector Central recently got a look at the BenQ W10000 DLP projector. This is a full 1080p DLP projector that uses TI’s DarkChip3 technology. The zoom lens isn’t great a 1.35:1, but its lens shift features are good. It boasts 1200 ANSI lumens of brightness, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and one HDMI input.

However, this projector is more expensive than competing LCD 1080p displays (at an MSRP of $7k), requires an ISF calibration to get a decent picture, and doesn’t scale standard-definition sources up to 1080p very well.

Actually, this projector is $2k more than the exemplary VPL-VW50 1080p SXRD projector from Sony, and it also costs more than Panasonic’s LCD 1080p display. Personally, I think that this projector would have to work some real magic on you in order to convince you to buy it.

For some real details, read the review below.

Review: BenQ W10000 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector

So was perusing the local Sam’s club the other day and just happened around the HDTV’s.

To my chagrin almost all the sets there were 1366×768 resolution. WHY????

Now being a computer geek forever and remembering that there is a resolution like this in computers (1024×768) I did some digging. Come to find out that to save a buck or two on the premium asked for real HD chips (1280×720 and 1920×1080) companies just added a few more columns to the 1024×768 chips and viola, we have the 1366×768.

Now here is the kicker. No source material is presented at this resolution so everything must be scaled up or down. Do you think you are getting a $1000 scaler in that $800 set? Not gonna happen so you get a potentially crap scaler in a TV that has a resolution no PC, DVD, Satellite or cable company supports natively.

So the next time you are looking for a set, stick with at least one of the 16:9 HD resolutions (1280×720 and 1920×1080) or a resolution that is divisible by this.

I don’t think that I reported on this when the news broke, so you might not know that Westinghouse actually announced a 2160p television. That’s right. Twice the vertical, and also twice the horizontal, resolution of the highest HD standard - 3840 x 2160 pixels. It’s a 52″ LCD display and Westinghouse calls it their Quad HD display.

Never mind that there are currently no mass-market sources that are 3840 x 2160. Nor will there be for the forseeable future. But if that doesn’t bother you, Westinghouse announced a price for their Quad HD - $50k. At least according to Cybertheater.

That’s a lotta dollars for a lotta pixels.

Westinghouse Quad HDTV with 2160p