Wow 50" is serious! Have fun with it Dave!

 

You know it, blang blang!!!

 

I can just imagine how BIG Mario Bros. will look. I have a 40" LCD TV and the picture is awesome. A 50" plasma will like sitting in your theatre.
It's true what DK said about fixing a plasma (it's easier to fix an LCD), however, those things are made pretty darn good these days and with a rating of at least 60,000 hours, you should enjoy years of great viewing. Just don't drop the thing when you're unpacking it.

 

Not only that, I hope the stupid studs in the wall will hold.

P.S. I just found the TV for $2750 shipped!!!

 

Make sure you confirm the weight rating of the mount you plan to use. If you are concerned about the viability of the wall studs, you can spread out the weight over several studs if you use some sort of decorative hardwood strip. Bolt the TV wall mount into the hardwood. I see that monitor is quite heavy.

 

Dave:
You also will want to be cautious of watching 4:3 formatted material on this set for extended periods of time. Plasmas are prone to burn in just like CRTs (check out the monitors used at airports - they typically have image burn in if they have been installed for a while). I think that this monitor is often the one used for these applications.

You will want to make sure that either the TV and/or the cable box you are using has the ability to stretch the picture to fill the screen. Don't worry, you'll get used to the distorted picture after a while. It looks somewhat better when you have the ability to do a progressive stretch (less in the middle) with a little zoom. That typically looks a little funky when an object moves across the screen though as it changes shape as it moves.

In addition, you will need a separate tuner if you want to pick up over the air digital broadcasts. Time Warner, from my experience, does not always carry all of the digital channels in your are (although they probably will eventually) and even when they do, they typically only carry one channel of a particular station. This is a bigger deal if you like to watch PBS as there are typically anywhere from 2 to 5 or 6 channels being broadcast simultaneously from each station. In my area, the main network stations typically broadcast a weather channel in addition to the main feed and the FOX station broadcasts a music channel.

 

Here's another quickie, is burn in warrantied, or is it like a clutch on an s2000, a wear item? (assuming it burns in during the manuf. warranty.)

 

Not to throw more stuff in, but have you looked at DLP tvs?

 

A friend of mine had burn in on his Panasonic rear projector (CRT). Panasonic told him no dice on the warranty.

 

If I'm not mistaken, you will be warned about "burn in" when you get the owner's manual and as such, I doubt that it will be a warranty item. Even my LCD TV has a burn in warning in the manual. Of course, we all know that of all the different types of image presentation, LCD is the least likely to have burn in. I've left stuff on pause on my LCD for up to an hour at times and no burn in occured. That's why LCD screens are best for computer monitors.

I don't know if you saw that news ariticle a couple of weeks ago, but the "DLP" technology has come up with a glitch. Can't remember the exact nature of it since I don't have one (so didn't pay that much attention to it), but it made the news.