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Is buying a 50 inch Pioneer Elite a good buy that will

17 years ago

carry me well into the future considering that SED is on the way, and can my OK dvd player serve until the new dvd format is here?

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Comments (2)

oskiebabu
17 years ago
HDTV's are like computers. There are always going to be bigger, better, and cheaper ones (regardless how long you wait). As long as a 50" size is what you want and you are seated the proper distance away, you should get excellent performance from the Pioneer Elite. Pioneer and Panasonic will also be releasing 1080p plasma sets. The 1080p Pioneer 50" plasma set will be expensive and will only be a monitor. It will probably be available by the end of June between $7,500-$8,500 (depending on where you get it).

As far as SED HDTV's, who knows about the delays in getting them to market. They will also be evn more expensive than similar-sized plasmas (afterall, Canon/Toshiba have to recoup their R&D costs and make a profit). A good guess would be at least 10K for a 50" set.

Panasonic and Pioneer have the benefits of having a tried and true technology that has been used and refined for more than a decade and also the economy of scale that comes with their position in the marketplace. It will take a long time for SED to catch up. Now if you are willing to wait and go without the pleasure of watching this year (and also pay the SED premium price), that is up to you.

Much depends on whether you want to buy 1080i plasma (which are currently available), or wait until late summer for the 1080p sets from Pioneer, Panasonic, Hitachi, and maybe even NEC.

As long as you have a progressive scan dvd player with HDMI or DVI, you should be fine for now. The first Toshiba HD dvd players show a great picture, but have numerous performance glitches and are missing some features, due to their rush to market. Later in the year when Sony and their Blu-Ray followers release dvd players and the hopefully improved HD dvd players with more realized features come to market, would be a potentially good time to think about a purchase.

Since Sony will be releasing the new Playstation gaming system later this year and equipping it with Blu Ray, that could give it a big advantage over Toshiba and the HD group. Plus more studios are backing and will be releasing Blu Ray titles than HD--although I am sure many will release in both formats. Personally, I'd wait until the format war shakes out a bit and we see who is left standing. Even though Toshiba with the HD format is first out of the gate, there are few releases for them. Sony has the advantage of owning a huge studio with its own releases, plus including Blu Ray in the PlayStation gaming system. If only one system ends up making it, I would bet on Bluy Ray.
tobr24u
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks for the comprehensive info. I am 70 so can't wait too long for the constantly changing technology...
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