50" Kuro or 60" other?

[sjc]

I thought we'd cracked the spec for our cinema room,part of which was a 50" Pioneer Kuro.The one thing bugging me is whether it will feel small in no time ,as we get used to it and as the market moves on.What's the best 60" for similar money, or would the advice be to stay with the Kuro?We were going to add a Pioneer 919SVX amp and Pioneer BDB Blue Ray to go with our existing M+K sub, Cresta front and Mission rear speakers. FWIW we will be about 3 metres from the screen which will be at eye level.
Your thoughts please...

[OldSkoolRS]

It's a sad fact of life that whatever you get will feel small after you get used to it. I went from 32" to 40", then a projector screen of 120" and now 128" I'm thinking of moving the sofa closer (or getting new glasses ) Seriously though, you'll probably need quite a big room for a 60" as they take a fair bit of space, it might be worth going for quality over quantity and sticking to the 50" Kuro.

[hairyben]

Like said, I replaced my 28" CRT with a 50" viera a year or so ago and it *sometimes* seems fairly small TBH, it's not something you stress over though. If it were my money I'd go for the biggest viera budget allows, 55-58" I suspect, cos I think panasonic are the "right" price-to-quality ratio. If you really like the pioneer and think the pictures worth the $$$ get it, or you'll probably regret it.

[derestrictor]

The Pioneer 50" is approaching total extinction and will become increasingly difficult to obtain here on in (in fact, it has been for some time now, anyway.) The 60s are completely gone.

There are one, maybe two additional drops to the UK and then that will be it; end of an era.

The only viable options are as follows:

TX-P50/58/65V10 or TX-P46/54Z1 where the numeric = screen size diagonal.

[sjc]

I've got someone who's got a stock of 50" Kuros at 2K(don't know about 60" Kuro yet or if I can stomach the money for one!)and as the kit will be on show we was thinking about staying with Pioneer for the amp and Blueray.Now, would we sacrifice a lot(in relation to our non afficianado eyes) in picture quality if we kept to the 50" Kuro budget at 2K but went for a 60" at the same price-ish.
Also if we swapped the Blueray for a PS3 ( killing 2 birds with one stone as it'll be my boys' birthday pressie)would the playback be the same other than a bit more "noise"?

Edited by sjc on Sunday 20th September 23:07

[OldSkoolRS]

Well really only you can answer if the picture is good enough for you, regardless of what others say on here and elsewhere. TBH a 60" Panasonic is hardly a rubbish screen and way above what you might have expected for the price even 3 years ago. If it helps on the PS3 front; I went to a JVC projector launch last year where one of the models cost around £5k and they were using a PS3 to demo BluRays, so I think that says alot. My son keeps reminding me that I could have bought a PS3 for little more than my BluRay player cost.

There have been a few discussions about whether BluRay players have 'better' picture quality with BluRay discs (rather than their DVD upscaling abilities which does vary) and I think the general option was that there may be slight calibration differences between players, but once adjusted out at the monitor end, the difference is small. I've tried different players thorough my projector and once calibrated I can't say there was any difference (and I'm quite picky when it comes to picture quality).

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Sunday 20th September 22:11

[sjc]

So moving on, what would be the advantage /pitfalls of going the circa £2.5-3K projector route?

Edited by sjc on Monday 21st September 06:15

[OldSkoolRS]

Advantages: That you could get a better image than your local fleapit. You can drink beer/wine while watching a film and you'll see details that even a 60" TV won't show, plus it's more of an 'occasion' watching a film. As you watch with the lights off you tend to consentrate more on the film and enjoy it more (well I do anyway ) rather than watching telly with the laptop and other distractions.

Disadvantages: You need to completely darken you room and ideally have dark coloured walls/ceiling to get the best out of a PJ....magnolia walls and white ceiling ruin a PJ's ANSI contrast due to reflections back to the screen. You won't want to watch much standard definition once you've seen HD on a big screen especially ordinary low bitrate Freeview/sattelite TV, so you'll still need a TV.

I have a 40" TV for day to day stuff and only use the PJ for films. As I find most of the films I watch seem to be 2.35:1 format (which is 'wider' than ordinary widescreen TV) I bought a 2.35:1 screen; this seems to really make the difference between 'watching telly' and 'watching a film'. I used to hate putting on a film on the TV only to see the black bars reduce the size of the image, whereas now it's the other way round and 16:9 content looks smaller and the films fill the screen completely.

Be warned though, it can become addictive and if you don't buy something you're really happy with then you'll end up doing costly upgrades like I did.

EDIT: For your budget you can pick up an end of line JVC HD350 (which I have) or slightly more for the previous 'top of the range' HD750 (around £3.5K if you shop around).

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Sunday 20th September 23:40

[spydersingh]

Ta-Da! 3 in stock at JL with price matching and a 5 year guarantee to boot!

http://www.johnlewis.com/230492476/Product.aspx