Pioneer SD-532HD5 53 in. TV

I recently came into some money and sat down for a long time trying to decide what to do with it. I am not the kind of person who makes investments in stock, I blow my money. So I tried to think of the most creative and valuable way to blow my money. What would be worth buying?

I finally decided that it was time to upgrade my home theater. My wife and I have been watching a 27-inch Trinitron for over 2 years now and I have to say it was getting old. We are avid movie fans and go to the movies at least once or twice a week. Sometimes more.

Naturally I was thinking large screen TV. So I was now on my mission to find the absolute best TV for the money.

I started my adventure in Circuit City, Best Buy and other shops like that. I looked at every TV brand you can think of. RCA, SONY, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, SHARP etc. There are allot of people making TV sets! I was almost overwhelmed by all the information there is out there. Everyone has all these features that are supposed to make them better than the next guy. I think of myself as a very tech savvy fellow. Even I was drowning in all the terms and sales pitches!

It was so hard to audition a TV at these places. The lighting is horrible. Nothing like I have in my home. I mean who has 50-foot ceilings and 300-watt halogen lights beaming down from above? I had to ask several sales men to wipe off the screens of the TV's so I could glance through a clean spot! None of the color settings were correct, and you have to rip someone's arm off to get them to hook up a DVD player to the sets...

So to combat this I went with some good advice from an old friend. He told me to find a small home theater shop that is out of the way and go there to talk to a sales man.

My adventure finally brought me to a place that perfectly fit this description. Not far from my apartment I found a little home theater shop that was away from all the shopping malls, and mini marts. It was nice and had couches to sit on to audition the different lines of TV's that were sold. This was a whole different world.

I was really leaning towards the Sony line of large screens when I went to this shop. I thought they had some of the best color and picture quality out there. (Keep in mind this was from looking at the big stores) The sales man had some and he auditioned all of the features for me. I was impressed!

The only bad thing was that just to the left of this set was a big ole pioneer HDTV! I kept looking at the picture of this thing compared to all of the other sets. It was simply amazing! I was prepared to spend about $2500 on the Sony so I asked how much the Pioneer HDTV was. I could get it for $3500 he said.

The pioneer was so much clearer and brighter than all the other TV?s I had previously looked at. The Build of the pioneer is wood as well. It is not plastic like the other sets. So it just plain looks nice. The pioneer also has what is called 72-point convergence. What is that?

Well all-large screen televisions use what are called color guns or CRT's to shoot the 3 colors to the screen to produce an image. They have to be aligned correctly or the picture can be dull, or have colored edges around objects. In every TV except the pioneer you have only one way to adjust these. With a cross hair in the middle of the TV.

You move the guns using your remote so that a white cross in the screen looks white. With no colored edges. You do the red and the blue. You can only move the green if you are in service mode which requires special tools. This is to keep some point of reference.

Many TV?s now are also doing this automatically. I was told this is bad because if the chip that handles this is bad or broken it will not work correctly and the picture quality will degrade. The only way to fix this would be to send it to the shop!

The pioneer has 72 points on screen where you can adjust the convergence. This means that if you are seeing a slight degradation in the upper left hand of the screen you and go in and tweak it to perfection! What is even better is that you can set the convergence for each input and display setting on the TV. So that means that none of the differences in electronics will cause the picture to be out of whack with say your dvd player looking perfect and then cable box looking like crud.

The reason the HDTV looks so much better than regular sets is because it has the ability to display more lines of resolution on the screen at any one time. Normal TV is supposed to be in the neighborhood of 480 lines of resolution at a 4:3 ratio. This is an almost square picture. Keep in mind that your computer can go as high as 1600x1200 lines of resolution.

The pixels, or dots that make up a picture, can be displayed more tightly packed on the screen to give you a sharper picture with HDTV. HDTV has the ability to display 1080 lines of resolution. It also uses a 16:9 ratio for the screen. This is why they call it wide screen!

Some of the other things you need to keep in mind when looking for an HDTV are what formats it supports. The pioneer was the only one, which could support them all. Does the TV have internal line doublers? The pioneer does and it is said to be the best in the industry right now.

I could go on and on about other things that are supposed to make a difference to you but really these are the only things that will make any kind of impact for me. The other features and specs are almost useless.

So after learning about HDTV and looking at the pioneer I auditioned it next to a Mitsubishi and Toshiba, also top of the line for today. The pioneer just blows them away!

The pioneer is a tweakers TV. It will allow you to change the picture with ease, and with the 72-point convergence you can really dial in the picture to be absolutely perfect! I know I spent a few hours with a good home theater setup disk tweaking out the color controls and the convergence to get it as close to perfect as I could. This would be almost impossible with other sets.

It is easy to move around as well. You would think that the wooden case it is in would make it quite heavy to move. The rollers it is on make it a breeze! I have thick carpet and both my wife and me find it easy to move.

The inputs are well labeled and there are plenty of them. The controls are well laid out on the remote and it is also easy to use. I found myself only needing to look in the manual for the most obscure functions. Because I purchased it from a nice home theater shop they delivered it and set it up for free. Naturally they don't spend the hours tweaking it that you will, but it was nice not to have to get it in the house. It however did not look like they had any trouble with it at all, and it was the sales man and his wife who delivered it.

Bottom line watching DVD's will simply blow you away. You will see details you never thought were there. The picture when matched with a progressive scan DVD player is cinematic. I think the picture is even better than the movie theater, and I can go for popcorn and not miss any of the movie! I wont ever go to a theater again!

There are some important things I have left out about buying an HDTV. Things like how to match it up with actual HDTV broadcasts, and satellite systems. I have found the following website to be of much help in this.

http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/

I live away from most HDTV broadcasting. I did get to see the quality of the picture on an actual HDTV broadcast and it is 3 times better than DVD. Im not going to get into allot about HDTV broadcasts because I think the link above can do it much better than I.

The thing that you have to consider is: How much do you watch movies? If you watch allot of DVD's this TV is for you. I have never seen such quality. Sure the TV has the ability to display the HDTV signal but I don?t have access to it now. I have the ability to in the future though. By 2006 every station must be HD in the US. By 2002 all stations in my area will, and probably most satellite channels will be as well. SO I have room to grow with this set. Was it worth it? Every penny! Like I said I wont ever go back to the movie theater again :o)

I hope you have enjoyed my adventure in purchasing and that it will help you make a decision for yourself. Please feel free to leave me any comments for how I could make this better...