Saturday was my 42nd birthday. Since it didn’t end in a “5” or a “0” it was pretty much another day, but I did get to see my family and eat a nice meal.

I also got to order my new, widescreen TV.

Andrea and I watch a lot of movies, but I don’t really like going to the theatre. It’s expensive and often noisy, but watching films on our 27-inch Sony, especially in widescreen format, left something to be desired.

Since I plan to hook up a Mac Mini computer to the TV, I wanted an LCD versus a plasma. After doing some research, I settled on Samsung as my vendor of choice.

LCDs do not suffer from power and burn-in issues that plague plasma screens, but one of the trade-offs is that due to the fluorescent backlight the blacks aren’t as black as they could be (the backlight on an LCD is always on). Samsung, in their 81 series, addresses this by using LEDs for the backlight. Since they can be turned off independently, the idea is that you get a higher contrast ratio and true blacks.

The downside is that it costs a whole lot more.

Well, within my budget I had my heart set on the LN-T4681F, a 46-inch 81 series TV. However, my friend Bob, who is way more into TVs than I am, did some research and found that overall, the picture quality improvements of the 81 series over the 71 series (the next model down) aren’t worth the cost. So I ended up buying the LN-T5271F, a 52-inch television for about $1000 less that the smaller 81 series set.

I’m quite happy with it. Bob had also told me that you should always get the biggest set you can afford. While I thought that 46 inches would be plenty, I am glad I went for the 52 inch. In the case of TVs, size does matter.

I bought it from Amazon.com. I would not recommend that anyone buy something this large and expensive from an unknown supplier. There is a big “bait and switch” tactic where a website will advertise as “in stock” a television for hundreds less than most major outlets. When you order, they will try to upsell you on a several hundred dollar “extended warranty”. If you don’t by it, suddenly your TV won’t be in stock anymore.

Outside of Amazon, I was looking at B&H Photo and Newegg. I happened to luck out and hit Amazon when the price was being listed for about $300 less than normal, and with free shipping it beat every other deal I’d seen. Plus, it’s Amazon – known for their customer service. I don’t know why the price fluctuates that much, but the last time I checked the price was back up.

I ordered it on the 10th and it shipped on the 11th by truck freight. It wasn’t due to get to my house until the 22nd, but I noticed yesterday that it had arrived in Raleigh so I just called the trucking company and picked it up myself.

So, how does it look?

Well, at the moment I don’t have any HD content. My DVI-HDMI cable to hook up the Mac won’t arrive until today, and Andrea is making me wait until Valentine’s Day to get a PS/3 (which is also a great Blu-ray player). That didn’t prevent her from buying “The Fifth Element” (my favorite movie) on Blu-ray for my birthday just to taunt me a little.

So Bob came over and brought his PS/3 and we set up both the Blu-ray disk and my DVD copy, running over component video.

This is what it looked like on the DVD:

and this is the same shot in HD:

Quite a difference, and this was a casual shot with my digital camera from the couch. In person, the difference is staggering.

Can’t wait for Valentine’s Day …