Actually Tony you have old/and or wrong info.

Fujitsu was the first to make plasma. They do buy Matsushita/Panasonic glass, but that is the only shared part. The electronics in a Fujitsu are not the same as a Panasonic and it shows. Look at non HD content on a set that uses cheap processing and there is a real, noticeable, must be blind if you can't see it difference. This also translates to HD performance, but it is easier to see where these TVs go wrong when you give them something difficult to work with.

Panasonic knows how to do things right. Look at reviews of some of there past DVD players on hometheaterhifi. They were top rated. Then someone decided that they could make more money selling worse performing players and they have not got a good rating in years.

The other thing that scares me about Panasonic is that they have bad business practices with a lot of people who carry there products. They don't seem to care about supporting there products properly. The attitude seems to be we are Panasonic we are sold everywhere, and we will win buy selling the most quantity.

I don't have a problem with people liking there sets. In fact if you want to buy and HDTV from Vizio, Poloroid, Initial, or anyone else that is for you to decide. I simply disagree with reviews that declare something I know to be mediocre the best. Most people never even see the top sets out there because everyone thinks buying a TV on the internet is the greatest thing in the world.

Other companies share panels too. Samsung/Sony share LCD panels and were at least joint on the plant, although Samsung looks to be going solo on the next plant. Sony's processing is generally better than Samsung's. But not a huge difference. People complained about over processing on Samsung's in the past but most of this you can turn off now thankfully. LG/PHilips also made LCDs together.

There are other plasma OEMs for the glass. In the past you had about 7. Including partnerships with Hitachi and Fujistsu. Samsung and LG both make there own. So that is at least 5 currents OEMs for plasma. A lot of times older panels are sold as new buy people like when Gateway was selling plasma TVs.

Pioneer bought NEC's plasma lines/division. Pioneer was making great panels before this and they continue to. They are the only ones that do a 72Hz plasma so that they can do a 3-3 cadence. I don't know where you get the idea that NEC came along and rescued Pioneer. Pioneer was the first to sell a consumer plasma, and the first out with a 50" 1080p plasma. They also won an award from popular science for there 60" before the new Kuro 60" 1080p set came out. That's right they won with a 720p 60".

The people who want to say that LCD's are as good picture quality as plasma, I'm still on the plasma side. LCD's picture quality has improved tons and will continue to with faster panels and LED backlighting. They things I still notice even on top LCDs, are that they look bad with non-HD which is understandable, but plasmas seem to be more watchable with non-HD. Plasmas don't emphasize that it is not HD content as much somehow, it is still easy to tell but the LCDs just have a night/day difference between non-HD/and HD content. Also, the colors and fleshtones are improving on LCD but plasmas still do a slightly better job. It's not just a matter of "how many colors you can see" but more a matter of where there color points are and how close they can be made to broadcast specs. Also, on larger sizes there really is no contest. I don't think LCD's that are 52+" hold a candle to the 50+" plasmas.

I still say buy what makes you happy when you watch it. If you do go out to do research take everyones comments, but draw your own conclusions. When I buy it'll most likely be from Pioneer Elite or Fujitsu, but who knows what will be the best in the future.

I wish I had come back to post sooner. Oh well, maybe someone will get something out of it.

best according to who? Cnet, consumer reports? Ask any REAL AV mag/enthusiast, professional and see what they say. Good, sure. Great value, yea ok. Best? I have to say NO.

Best to me is a measure of quality regardless of price. Fujitsu, Pioneer and other use much better scaling just for one. Panny cheaps out and uses either there own or an off the shelf "good enough" chipset.

Again, you get what you pay for. Don't be fooled by smoke and mirrors.

Keep in mind that lcd's backlight is always on, while Plasma's can use less power when the screen in showing something dark.

Bottom line both Plasmas and LCDs can be Energy Star rated.

I think that the point about LCDs using less power is exagerated because up until this point the majority of LCDs were smaller then the majority of Plasmas. Also, I would say that the larger the LCD then the large the backlight and therefore more power useage.

And consumer reports is useless for TV reviews, and I am very disappointed in the most recent article. Who does there research? It is just filled with bad or missing info. Also, like cars things in the TV world change every year. But every year CR rate's the Panasonics top. I mean they really have had too much of the Panny Koolaid. They are nice, but there is no doubt there are better Plasmas. If Panasonic is best and mid priced then Pioneer, Fujitsu, and Runco would be out of business fairly quickly and that is not happening. I think it is insane that the "best compromise or best value" get the top ratings. What about build quality, brand reputation, reliability? Panasonic has had a bumpy road when it comes to reliability.

Bottom line, buyer beware. Buy from a place you trust. If you buy online from some fly by night, best deal out there site, remember you get what you pay for. Good luck to all. And yes I do sell electronics for a living in a retail store if you think I am being biased.

since when is AT&T/Cingular the lowest rated carrier? They aren't first either but lowest? Ever used a nextel? Hardware is awful, reception is awful, people don't get voice mails for days, text messages for at least 4 hours that i have seen. And then to top that off customer service is atrocious. AT&T is probably somewhere between 2nd and 4th depending on who you ask and what area you live in as far as customer service and network quality goes.

Ok, first off calling people morons is no way to start a conversation.

The Sandisk is great and has many things the nano is lacking. However it only works with windows xp and windows media player 10+ according to sandisk.com which is a deal breaker for us osx people. At least ipods work with osx, xp, and vista.

Expansion slot is nice but limited to 2 gig cards. It works with mp3 or wma, but what about lossless codecs? Don't see them mentioned. Also looks as if all videos have to be converted to some uncommon codec which is time consuming, ie most people will ignore it bc it isn't convenient.

pcmag.com just had a tech post on this, just do a search. mainly the first thing to do is set the ipod so that it can also act as a removable storage device, and then tell windows to show hidden folders.

there was also an article on how to do it on a mac, i believe that was on applematters.com, but this was a while back so it could have been another mac blog

I do not know what is motivating Universals decisions lately. When it comes to purchasing movies and music they just seem to want to make life difficult for consumers.

I do not hate HD-DVD, but at this point in time doesn't it at least make financial sense to support both formats like Warner? I get the Fox is only doing bluray and of course the Sony owned studios are also exclusive with bluray, but I guess I missed what benefit their is to Universal for sticking with HD-DVD. They must have more going on then meats the eye. When you have 95% of the CE manufactures and all of the major studios except one backing a format it just seems like a waste.

Here is one of there VP's talking about why they went the way they went http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20070530_Jonathan_Takiff___Universals_gamble__Will_consumer_win_.html

I disagree with at lot of what he says. But he does make some valid points as well. This format war isn't really a war in my opinion. Bottom line is people will buy based on where the content is. If hardware is more expensive but you can get your favorite movies then people will buy. I personally think that Toshiba continues to lower prices because if they don't the format will die. The only other current choice is the 360 add on or the LG combo without full hddvd support. People like choice and if a consumer doesn't like Toshiba they don't have one. If they don't like Sony they can buy Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, and soon Sharp. The same price competion that happened with DVD is already happening with bluray. If there was only one format it would happen faster because more people would buy instead of waiting for a winner.

Now they cannot reach an agreement with Apple. They just seem to be making decisions that have to be at of greed. If their is some rational explanation, I would like to here it.

Downloadable HD content is a long way away IMO. It took years and years to get VOD. There is some HD that you can VOD or download, but a lot more at SD or lower quality. I see a couple of reasons that some form of physical media will survive. Broadcast, cable, and satellite always re-compress content which lowers picture quality. Also I don't see everyone having access to very high bandwith for sometime. Many just can not afford it. But as DVD showed physical media becomes accessible to almost anyone with a TV. You can buy a DVD player for $25-30 and software for less than $10 on some titles.

I do think apple or anyone else selling music needs better quality. CD's have been standard for more then 10 years and now we are going to worse quality music??? At least music giants sells music using a lossless codec. Too bad it is WMA lossless which no one seems to support.

Speaking of support, what is up with the Zune music store. What happened with PlaysForSure? Microsoft can't have enough courage to let people who choose a Zune buy music from other services? MS fans have been screeming for years about iTunes and iPod being locked together. A competitor should take advantage of a potential weakness anytime they can, major misstep by MS.

That's enough I guess, maybe more later.

2.35:1. Runco was the first with it, and still the only one to sell it as an integrated solution. Now they offer it on there whole line. Would I say they offer a great value, not exactly. Would I first look at Sony, Digital Projection, or even one of the new Pansonic or JVC projectors, yea I would. But if you want to build a top end theater with everything 2.35 to 1 native would be on my list.

For those that think this is a waste, it is the only way to not waste a ton of resolution from that 1080p spec chip you just had to have when watching cinemascope movies. IE anything action, big budget.

Ok warning 1:30 AM Rant.

This should have been included in the 2006 Home Entertainment Device of the Year awards. I can't believe engadget hasn't covered this player since it was delayed because of firmare issues. Since it wasn't I voted for the sony.

The reason I would have voted for this is because it is basically the Sony bluray plus the home media gallery (depending on what u read pioneer either build the Sony or gave them major help). This feature can stream music, photos, and video from any xp box running WMP 11 that is on your network. It has it's own ethernet port. Furthmore all this comes out the HDMI port. And it playse Bluray in native 1080p24.

This blows away any of the products on that list, and should be a write in. Don't get me wrong it's not perfect and the next gens will probably stomp on it, but for now I'd love to put one in my av rack. Pioneer also contiues to update there firmware with ver 2.1 coming just being released 4.3.07.

Can any one here actually get MHD? They say it is available to half the people with HDTV homes in the country but it doesn't seem to be on either Directv or Dishnetwork and it isn't on Cablevision which is what I have.