I really want my parents to end up with the right product, so I'd appreciate some help from you folks around here.

Here's the deal. My dad currently has a 60" Mitsubishi that he got in 1992. It's served us well. But we naturally want to keep up with the times. The 60" RPTV is, of course, quite large in bulk and takes up much of the room.

This brings up some dilemmas. We want to go with a 60" widescreen. We'd go bigger but this has to fit in between two doors. The problem we first run into in this regard is that we can't find TV's with small enough bezels. And what the hell is with companies putting these lame speakers on the sides of their TVs? Who's going to buy multi-thousand dollar monitors and not going to spend on the proper audio system? I wouldn't think enough to make it worthwhile. It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, my dad recently said he was looking at this one. Could I get some impressions? I'd appreciate it. I wonder how much burn-in will affect this monitor.

I have one more question. Until recently I had never heard of these LCD projection screens. What's the deal with these? What's the technology? What are the advantages/disadvantages vs regular flat panel monitors.

Thanks for your help.

Who's going to buy multi-thousand dollar monitors and not going to spend on the proper audio system?

Dorks like my father.

Oops hehe, no offense

By "LCD projection screens", do you mean LCD rear projectors or LCD flat panels?

If you're considering rear-projectors of any sort, then definitely go have a look at the DLP rear projectors. They seem to have much better black levels than any LCD or plasma technologies. The trade-off, as with any rear projector, is that you don't get the same view when you're off-axis. Performance also degrades when the ambient light increases, but this issue applies to just about everything. Recent RPTVs seem to be adopting anti-glare screens, which can help noticably. All plasmas, as far as I've ever seen, suffer awful glare problems.

Large LCD flat panels are the new kids on the block. As we discussed recently, you pay more than a plasma of the same size and you don't get quite the same black levels. However, you get much better performance in a room with lots of ambient light.

Burn-in on plasmas is a big issue. Burn-in is a non-issue on DLP or LCD technologies, as far as I know. Since I insist on watching 4:3 TV in a non-stretched mode, that means I'm often looking at vertical grey bars on my (CRT-based rear projection) TV. For now, I haven't seen any signs of burn-in. When you see plasmas in the airport with flight information on them, you always see signs of burn-in.

If after all of that you still want a plasma but you don't want the cheesy speakers, you might investigate the "professional" lines offered by several manufacturers. They often have the same exact glass, but minimal bezels, as they're intended for industrial applications like the aforementioned airport monitors.

(Oh, and my dad also has an inexplicable desire to buy a big, expensive flat panel TV and use the cheesy built-in speakers. The mind boggles.)

They seem to have much better black levels than any LCD or plasma technologies.

But, unless it's a newer DLP2 based TV, it will have problems with anything shown on screen that should have a bright reflection. It's a weird issue of DLP, and I would have not known had a sales person at a local shop told me about this.

LCD projection looks really good, comparable to DLP from what I saw in the store. Make sure you actually see the TV you want first before buying, or at least one close to it in specifications.

Yeah, he's gone to our local high-end audio store to look at it. We don't want to go plasma so that's not an issue.

Thanks for the input guys. I think my dad may be considering that TV for purchase pretty soon.

You're right that burn-in isn't an issue with the LCD and DLP projection sets. But off axis viewing isn't nearly as bad as with CRT sets. The bulb projectors are so much brighter then CRT that they don't need to use the high gain (and, thus, highly directional) screens. It does degrade off axis but doesn't become a problem, IMO, until you are at extreme angles. It's not like a CRT where you stand up and the image loses half it's brightness.

I own the 42" Sony LCD GWIII. It's the same generation of LCD as that XBR linked in the first post. I'm real happy with the TV for my situation but DWallach is right that the black level isn't so great. I bought the set to be a general purpose TV for our family room with lots of ambient light. As long as sunlight isn't hitting the screen directly it puts out enough light to be watchable. It has a very good anti-reflective screen. It does a good job with HD and SD signals. It has a very good widescreen stretch mode. (I never liked them either until I got this TV. But now it's how I usually watch.) And it looks very good on the matching Tech Craft stand.

When I'm not so thrilled with the TV is when I watch a movie or a dark TV show (CSI) with the lights out. This is when the high black level becomes noticable. With any ambient light, the effective floor for black level is defined by the room. But turn the lights out at night and absolute black on the TV is quite a bit higher then the surrounding blackness. This is not the best TV for lights out movei watching.

For the kind of money as the 60" XBR costs you should definitely consider the DLP sets. Which is better will depend on your viewing environment and price sensitivity. Some people see "rainbows" or get eyestrain from DLP projectors. You should make sure you're not one of these people. A lot of people at AVS report that the Samsung sets aren't very good with SD material. I don't know how real this is or if it's one of those forum folklore items that becomes self confirming.

But besides those possible issues DLP is a superior technology to LCD. The Gateway 55" DLP is like $3k now. I wouldn't expect it's performance to differ too much from the Samsung and it's a lot cheaper.