Flat panel goodness

Last week I posted about my HDTV going on the fritz. It was one of the big, square CRT TV's, which is to say, it was just a souped-up version of the TV's that have been around for 50 years. The manufacturer said I had to return it rather than getting it fixed (which I would have been fine with). So, I ended up with $750 to put toward a new TV and a decision to make.

These days, you can get a pretty nice widescreen 32-inch LCD HDTV for just a little more than that $750. I would have been OK with that, but my wife (bless her heart) didn't want a smaller TV than the 32-inch CRT we took back -- if that's confusing, remember that a 32-inch widescreen becomes roughly a 25-inch TV once you box off the sides for regular 4:3 TV.

If we were going to get roughly the same size TV and get a widescreen and not totally blow the budget, we were left with two choices: A 42-inch plasma EDTV (ED means "not as good as HD"), or a 37-inch LCD flat screen. We could also have gotten a big CRT rear projection set, but I vetoed that because rear CRT projections are huge, ugly, unreliable and have poor picture quality.

I found an LCD that I liked and was in our price range, a Syntax Olevio. Not a name brand, but it's earned good reviews over on AVS Forum. But every store in the Front Range was out of stock, including all the ones who claimed they had it in stock.

Then I stumbled across the Emprex 3701P, which is even less of a brand name than Syntax. Plus the model was brand new, so there's no reliability history. However, it had better features than the Syntax and it was in our price range, so I took the plunge and ordered one (they seem to have raised the price by $600 since I did - score!).

Which brings us to last night, when I drove through some horrendous traffic to the DHL terminal in Englewood and picked up one extremely large box. I had about half an hour of panic after I got it set up because I could not for the life of me get the TV to power on. The set has a manual control panel on the top, in addition to the remote control, but neither one did squat. Only after reading the manual for the 10th time did I notice a reference to a "master power switch" down on one corner of the panel. I felt stupid, but at least I got it working in time to catch some of the NCAA Tournament in high-def.

So far, I'm very happy with it. The non-HD satellite channels look a little better than they did on the old TV (although still not as good as they do on a regular, low-def TV), and the high def comes through bright and clear.

Not to mention, it's 4 inches thick and looks like it came off the bridge of the Death Star.