School me on LED TV deals going on during Cyber Week

[K-wood Kid]

I've been in search of a new TV and was hoping to get a good deal during cyber week. I want an LED at least 240Hz and between 55" and 65". Are refurbished items worth the risk? Amazon has a refurb 60" for $999. Any help would be awesome.

[chavez]

If you buy refurb I'd definitely get an extended warranty (I believe you can buy Squaretrade through Amazon). That said, you typically can't get an ext warranty on refurbs unless you purchase it with the item at time of purchase.

240hz is definitely limiting. You can grab 120hz sets all day long for your price range. IMO, you won't notice the difference between them - most "240hz" sets are not really giving you "240hz" they are giving you 60 or 120 with a multiplier effect on the frames, which isn't really "240hz" at all.

[finkle]

you can walk into a walmart any day of the week and pick up a 60" Vizio LED with 120hz.

[K-wood Kid]

chavez, Well it sounds like refurb may not be the way to go then. It's interesting you say that about the 240hz, one of my friends(who may not know what he's talking about) was jumping up and down about how if I was going to play video games I had to get atleast 240hz or it would pixelate. What do you think about that, because the 120hz are cheaper, but I do play COD. I am not set on $999 as the price, is there any big savings to be had on this cyber Monday or is it all hype?

[rowlex]

videoonly.com has brand new 64" Plasma (600hz) for 1000$

i know you said LED. but you also said you want to game.

[scott a]

Yeah, I'd ignore the 240Hz marketing garbage. Everything in the $1,000 range should be 120Hz panel, anyways.

With regards to pricing, I was looking in the $500-1000 range and it seemed like there were a few deals to be had. I did notice that the manufacturers seemed to be the ones setting the prices, and not the retailers. So some models would drop in price more than others, and that drop in price would be pretty consistent among most/all retailers. One thing that I found helpful was to find a model that I liked and then plug the model number into Google Shopping. That'll show you the prices at a bunch of different retailers. Then you can find out who has the best deal, who is offering free shipping, no tax, etc. Amazon and Best Buy were my first two starting points for this. But if you're looking for refurbs then this might not be super helpful.

I got the 55" Samsung black friday special. 55" LCD @ 120Hz (240Hz marketing blah blah), two HDMI inputs and that's about it. $700.
There's a 65" version for $1100 if you only need 2 HDMI inputs and don't care about having all the bells and whistles.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-65-class-64-1-2-diag--led-1080p-120hz-hdtv/2289002.p

Went into Video Only for the first time last week. Never again. They advertise having the lowest prices so I thought I'd give them a shot after shopping around to get an idea of what models I was looking at, but VO just ended up having annoying salesmen and no model numbers or hard data listed for any of the TVs. Oh well. Also: VO doesn't sell products online (only in stores) and Kwood Kid doesn't live anywhere near CA/WA/OR.

I ended up buying online because I couldn't stand the 10 minutes I spent in any of Wallyworld, Best Buy, Target, Frys, etc. Many of their TVs also looked like absolute garbage...I'm guessing because they were poorly installed. You would think a floor manager would want to fix this but I guess it isn't a priority.

Oh! And my next TV will be 4K. I was at Fry's last Sunday and my jaw hit the floor when I saw some huge Sony 4K TV with 8 NFL games on at once. WHAT! I could clearly and easily watch every game from 15 feet away. I'm a photo nerd so I know how much of a big deal this 4K thing is, but dang this was amazing.

That's all I got. Glad I'm done with my TV shopping.

[chavez]

K-wood Kid, again, "240hz" is not really "240hz". It's an upscaled 60 or 120. If you are gaming, this translates into no benefit. Now, on a monitor this would not be an issue, because a monitor should display exactly what is put in to it up to it's listed specs.

So, a HDTV with "240hz" likely has a signal processor that takes a 60hz signal and uses frame doubling to get to "240hz". You will see trade names like "aquomotion" and "truemotion" on these sets - that's just what they call their signal processing software.

Whereas a monitor will take a 120hz signal and just display it at 120hz, no processing.

If the set is truly 120hz capable, it will take the 120hz signal and just display it.

FWIW: the difference in redraw times is in milliseconds - a 60hz panel takes roughly 16ms to redraw, a (true) 120hz panel would take appx 8ms. Theoretically, 240hz would be appx 4ms.

If you are truly that concerned with refresh rates on HDTVs, you should be looking at plasma (400-600hz) anyway.

Here's a nice true 120hz panel, 60" for under 1000: http://www.amazon.com/Sharp-LC-60LE550-60-inch-Aquos-1080p/dp/B00CW7VS96/ref=sr_1_7?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1386084975&sr=1-7&keywords=120hz+hdtv#productDetails

If you want to get to the next step, look in to direct backlit (not edge-lit). Here is a nice LG example 60" @ $1200: http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-60LN6150-60-Inch-LED-LCD/dp/B00BB9OOHO/ref=sr_1_11?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1386084975&sr=1-11&keywords=120hz+hdtv

[K-wood Kid]

scott a, chavez, I appreciate the information. I am still unsure on what I what (because I don't know crap about televisions and have been too busy at work to study up). I walked around a BestBuy today to try to form an opinion. I asked a couple of the salesmen if any of the 240hz were true 240hz and they did not have a clue what I was talking about(probably because I did a crap job explaining what you guys are trying to explain to me) I noticed the 120hz tvs were like half the cost of the 240hz, why are they so pricey if there isn't a noticeable difference in picture quality?

I'm still not sure what to get so maybe this will help you guys help me. I mainly watch football and play some call of duty so I was concerned with the refresh rate, but if I got a plasma I don't like the fact that if I play for a long time or forget to turn it off I could burn the screen out. I don't really know how that works, but I've heard that plasma gets too hot and has the shortest life span. Is that true? I also heard that LCD is liquid crystals and eventually settle to the bottom of the screen making the top a lot lighter than the bottom. Is that true?

SO my question to you smart fellows is what do you suggest knowing what I will use it for. I think I'm willing to fork out some extra cash for a quality tv that will last. I don't want to be in this predicament again anytime soon! I hate shopping for things I don't know anything about.

Edit: Chavez you are going down in the FF superbowl next week!

[chavez]

K-wood Kid, if it were me, id get a full-backlit 120hz led/lcd set, as big as your budget and space will allow.

FWIW:

Plasmas don't have burn in problems like they used to (they use pixel orbitors and other things to mitigate the issue), and IDK who told you that happens with LCD because it is not a problem.

Plasma screen half life is in the 75000 to 100000. IOW, a decade or more of 4-8 hours a day every day until the set only could display 50% of it's original brightness. That is a long ass time and most people don't keep the set on 8 hours a day every single day...

Hope that helps.

PS: yea right sukka.

[K-wood Kid]

chavez, You don't think I'll have any pixilation issues with the 120hz on call of duty? If not, I am going to follow your advice and go with a 60" 120hz backlit LED.

Your team is stacked, but so is mine. Either way it is going to be a great showdown!

Thanks again for all the help.

[chavez]

K-wood Kid, lets put it this way: short of spending insane cash on a absolute top-of-the-line set, I don't think you are going to get any better than a main brand 120hz set that is full-array. Problem is, finding a full-array set may prove difficult in a reasonable price range. So, that said, you should likely stick with a main brand, and read the reviews (discounting the useless ones like "the speakers suck"). Maybe pop over to AVSFORUMS and see if there are some popular sets that meet your criteria.

FWIW: you are going to see pixels no matter what. A 60" 1080P unit is roughly 36ppi. Consider that the iPhone is 326ppi - but remember that you (should) sit quite a distance away from a 60" TV. Also a factor - not sure what CoD's native resolution is, but I'm guessing its not 1080p.