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I'm assuming this means the LaserVue line is dropped as well? This sucks as I wanted one of those TVs someday... I've seen the picture on these and they are awesome! I thought this would be an alternative to Plasma...

If it is similar to Mitshibishi's LaserVue http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/product/L65A90 a 65" display would be around 10" deep.

-Rick

How is this better than Mitsubishi's LaserVue technology? It's basically a laser DLP to phosphor opposed to whatever material is used by Mitsubishi for a standard DLP screen. It even looks like the LaserVue uses less power than this.

The Mits WS-55511 (which my parents have) is about 250 pounds. It's a 55" rear-projection CRT (3 tubes; red, blue, green) HDTV. It's on wheels, easy to move. CRT can be front or rear projection, in addition to direct view. Most projection CRT's have three tubes in the 7" to 9" range. All of these Mits projection sets are rear projection CRT:

http://mitsubishi-tv.com/img/219952/WS-55513%20Pro duct%20Specifications.pdf

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060920-7790 .html states:

"However, the Xbox 360 does not have an HDMI output, meaning that it will not be possible to view HD DVDs in 1080p. The highest resolution of both Blu-ray and HD DVD requires HDMI by design."

"Microsoft did not announce availability or pricing in the United States, but we expect a similar launch date in the US and a price of $199. This would make Microsoft's premium Xbox 360 package a $598 affair if you roll the HD DVD drive in, coming in at the same price as the top-of-the-line PS3 ($599)."

I'd say the HDMI output is easily worth $1 so I'm waiting for the PS3 to enjoy on my new Tru 1080p Mitsubishi 52" DLP HDTV :: http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/j/i/18326/TelevisionD etails.html?cid=380

Peace!

Last thing, about 1080p tv's not existing... while most tv's "support" and will display the 1080p content it's inputed with it's not showing the full resolution. I've yet to see any consumer tvs whether they are lcds, plasmas, or otherwise with greater then 1366x768 resolution which is a good deal less then 1920x1080.

Uh...well apparently you have not looked very hard.

Sony SXRD - 1920x1080 native in three different sizes. http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/ProductDe tailDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=1000 1&productId=1001969&navigationPath=n32050n100187

Samsung HL-R5678W - 1920x1080 (avaiable in 4 sizes). http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/DLPTV/HLR5678WX XAA.asp

Mitsubishi WD-62927 - 1920x1080 again in 3 or more sizes. http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/televisions/details.a sp?id=195.

Samsung is a great company and the past 3 cellphones I've owned have been Samsungs.

I've never owned one of their TVs, but for TVs I have to reccomend Mitsubishi. My Dad's first bigscreen was a Mitsubishi Diamond Series in the early/mid-90s. When they moved in 2000 it was still going strong, but he wanted a wide-screen, so he sold it as part of the house. The new one is a 52" wide-screen and is great, but it's a monster (it's from 2000, what do you expect).

I just bought a http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/televisions/details.a sp?id=53 62" WD-62825 and it's super nice. Dad is a little envious, but his is still going strong. Everyone I've talked to in the home theater business recommends Mitsubishis.

"If you have a decent scaler in your TV, you don't need it."

I guess if you aren't serious about the picture quality, then yeah, I could agree. The problem is that on a 65" screen, I can tell a huge difference. Take a 480p player and have the resolution blown up to a TVs native resolution by the set itself versus running an HTPC at the screen's native resolution with an application like TheaterTek upconverting for you. Night and day. I have not seen a set yet that handles this as well (I have taken a look at the Diamond series from Mitsubishi and the Bravia line from Sony).

Mitsubishi is a consumer products maker with lines of computer monitors, high-end TVs, and cell phones among other things, as well as a well-known car maker.

Yes, all of these companies are related.

It is high time HDTV's started coming with Eithernet and Airport Extreme!

There is no shortage of desire to do this.. The problem is all the political BS from groups like the MPAA.

Companies have been trying to integrate firewire for a long time, but there are always hurdles thrown in their way. Mitsubishi has been a leader in this area. They have an excellent system based on Havi to interconnect home entertainment systems http://www.mitsubishi-tv.com/networking.html. It puts audio, video, and data over one simple connection.
But, look at how many DVD players you can buy with firewire ports (zero) or how many satellite receivers you can buy with firewire (zero). Firewire already has the copy protection/encryption standards developed. So, if the MPAA stands in the way of firewire, there is no way they will allow an ethernet connection.

Actually, I am correct on #4...

at the bottom of this page

IMPORTANT NOTE : The enclosed HDTV receiver will not receive ANY channels without a USDTV service agreement. Credit card required for monthly service fees.

Also, people are free to buy TVs with integrated tuners, like this Mitsubishi TV. They just happen to be a lot more expensive than the same TV without the tuner. I saw the benefit of the integrated tuner (and the firewire ports) and I got one.

If the article you reference is correct, plasma TV's have a horribly short lifespan. Well under 3 years of run-time before they lose HALF of their brightness?

Perhaps this is by design? Planned obsolecense (sp?) is nothing new. Even if they didn't "design" it in, it will help fuel their market if people have to buy new TVs every few years.

Everyone's telling me the projection sets will likely be discontinued by this time next year, so buying one of them is investing in a dying technology.

I hope not ... I just bought a 73" Mitsubishi rear-projection TV. I ended up buying the 2003 model, because it was $1200 cheaper than the 2004 model, and I don't really need the HDTV tuner right now anyway. It comes with the hookups, so I'll add one when they are affordable, and there's something in the HDTV format worth watching. :-)

I also just checked their website, and the 2004 line now includes an 82" rear-projection model. If I had known about it before I made my purchase, I might have considered it ... though I shudder to wonder what the sticker price would have been. It's probably at least double what I paid ($3299).

Anyway, it sounds like Mitsubishi, at least, is still pushing forward on this technology. My TV is gorgeous, and I really couldn't be happier with the purchase. I did consider an LCD projector (room's not really dark enough) as well as the plasma displays. I found that the plasmas were twice as expensive, for half the screen size. I am not hurting for space, so being able to hang it on the wall wasn't really an issue. I sure hope the lifespan of my rear-projection unit is longer than three years, though...

This is pretty neat, but it appears to fall short of being able to just capture the ATSC stream and play it back unmodified to the TV.

Not everyone needs mad power hardware or cards to decode the MPEG2 stream and output it. Some HD tuners, like those included in the Mitsubishi HD sets, have FireWire jacks that are capable of feeding the transport stream to something (typically a D-VHS deck) and accepting a transport stream back from a device.

Apple has released a sample application with their FireWire SDK for MacOS X called VirtualDVHS that I've been playing with. My notes on it are here. The FireWire enabled tuner does all the work, including sending start/stop commands to the device, and on Mits sets, timer recordings.

It's a great little program, and since it's a SDK, you get all the source code for it and the FireWire drivers. The TV's remote control works (commands sent via the FireWire interface) and here's the best part: it works on a dead slow stock CPU G3 266. This computer can't even play simple QuickTime movies properly, yet it works like a charm because all it does is capture and stream back the MPEG2 transport stream. The tuner's decoder does all the hard work.

Okay, so it isn't a PVR with nifty features and whatnot, nor will it work if you don't have a tuner with FireWire jacks. But I don't care too much about the PVR features for the moment because there isn't enough OTA HD programming yet. All I need it to do is time shift a few programs each week when I'll have to be at work, or busy with school, or whatnot.

VirtualDVHS may be a ghetto program, but it gives you a glimpse of what you can do with MPEG2 streams. No special ATSC cards required. And hey, you get the source: make it do more of what you want and tell people about it, or write your own.

As other have mentioned, firewire can be copy restricted, using and encrypted in transport. Also, it's a high bandwidth, uncompressed data stream, which is not easy to copy.

The MPAA still does exert some control here, as you can tell from the lack of DVD players with FireWire interfaces. mitsubishi has been talking about them for years, to fit into their cool Havi system. But, because of the all the MPAA usage restriction hysteria, they can't bring one to market.

Also, they block any analog outputs over 480P (e.g. component video, YPrPb, outputs at 720P or 1080i). These are analog outputs, which are not easily copied (try recording your VGA out). But, they still won't allow them because of the CSS license restrictions and lack of Macrovision.

This is also closely related to why you cannoy buy an HDTV DirecTV receiver with a Firewire output, and thus cannot record HDTV programs off satellite. The technology has been viable for years, D-VHS recorders are available and cheap, but the content providers prevent DirecTV from adding this feature. This slows down the adoption of HDTV, and stifles innovation. Don't you just love the MPAA?

The manufacturer is mitsubishi, they call it Net Command and they have all their pro. equipment firewire enabled. When you connect any device, it appears in a device manager-like screen where you can choose to send video and/or sound to any connected device that can output video and/or sound. Very cool, and WAAAAY better than RCA, coax, S-Video, or Component.

I looked for a simple, factual link and couldn't find one

Of particular concern is that current displays which do not implement a copy protection standard (because one has not yet been fully settled on) will be unusable with future digital sources (tuners, cable boxes, satellite receivers, DVD players, etc.) which do implement HDCP or whatever.

Mitsubishi says:

We will engineer and manufacture the upgrades necessary so the television you purchase today can be made compatible with near-future advances in digital television and digital interconnectivity. Specifically, we promise that you will be able to have your television upgraded, at a reasonable cost, to include an off-air HDTV tuner, a cable TV tuner (for unscrambled programming), an IEEE 1394 (FireWire®) connection, HAVi system control, and 5C copy protection.

I seem to recall a while back there was an uproar about the original wording of the Mitsubishi promise, something to the effect of the upgrades not costing you more than $1000 (it now reads "at a reasonable cost"), and that the upgrades would be made only if feasible. That particular link, I cannot find. It probably was on the AVS Forum.

I'm about to get a Mitsubishi widescreen that has a VGA input (60hz 640x480). Going to hook up a PC this way. Already got the house wired with CAT-5. I'm going to get a infared keyboard/mouse, I've seen some that are pretty smooth. Of course, I'm going to get a seperate DVD/CD player, rather than use the PC DVD drive I have. But a PC is a nice supplement to a good home theatre.

A lot of the newer audio cards have SPDIF outputs and other good stuff that will bring the audio up to par for home theatre. So no worries about RCA jacks.

Also, Mitsubishi is putting IEEE 1394 support in some of their TVs, but this looks like its only for component integration. Sounds cool, though.

I'm about to get a Mitsubishi widescreen that has a VGA input (60hz 640x480). Going to hook up a PC this way. Already got the house wired with CAT-5. I'm going to get a infared keyboard/mouse, I've seen some that are pretty smooth. Of course, I'm going to get a seperate DVD/CD player, rather than use the PC DVD drive I have. But a PC is a nice supplement to a good home theatre.

A lot of the newer audio cards have SPDIF outputs and other good stuff that will bring the audio up to par for home theatre. So no worries about RCA jacks.

Also, Mitsubishi is putting IEEE 1394 support in some of their TVs, but this looks like its only for component integration. Sounds cool, though.

Not sure when it's due out, but a google search yeilds a list price of $1049. Not bad - that's what my SVHS deck ran me way back when(late 80s?).

It's going to hook up via firewire - which my set doesn't have. I've heard there will be a plug-in board for the set though which adds the firewire port(s).