I am looking for the best HDTV, I heard Panasonic aren't good. So, what is the best HDTV out there now? I am planning to use it to connect to my laptop and my PS3. Thanks!
I prefer DLP HDTVs since there is such a large price difference between DLP and other types of HDTVs. In the world of DLP sets, Mitsubishi and Samsung are the best. Only Samsung has LED DLP, though, which eliminates color wheel problems (rainbow effect) and makes the "bulb" last much longer.
If I connect my laptop (945GM Mobile Express) video card to my hdtv using VGA, will it output 1080p quality? And how do I activate my laptop to hdtv via vga connection? Thanks!
To make it work you just plug your laptop into your TV with the VGA cable (or you may have to use an adapter to DVI on some TVs), and your laptop detects the TV as a monitor. This makes it very easy to use HDTVs for home theater PCs (HTPCs), since you can just plug a dedicated computer with a bluray drive up to your TV and get 1080p bluray movies and 720p downloaded movies from torrents.
No, the TV won't be able to do surround sound. To do surround sound you have two options.
Your first option to is go the traditional route and get an audio receiver that accepts HDMI input and has another HDMI output back out to the TV. This is the best way to do it, but it can cost something like $500 for a decent receiver. That's not even counting what speakers and a subwoofer will cost you. However, if you have the money, it's the best quality option.
The second option is to get a surround system built for a computer. This will have analog (white/red connectors) inputs on it. When you run your bluray movies on your HTPC, it will output surround sound through 3 different jacks on the sound card. These jacks then use an adapter to go from headphone jack to RCA red/white and into the computer surround system. This option is much cheaper, since you can get the whole system, including speakers for maybe $150. This is the option I use. The downside of this is that you can't use the surround sound for your Xbox 360 very easily (at all?).
