Spent ALL my money on an LED today!

[Alero]

Oh geez! What have I done?!!!

I just spent more than a week's pay on an LED gadget!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000N53TDM/?tag=cpf0b6-20


Well, actually it's got 3 LED lights built-in, and none of them are white!

I'm very broke AND very excited!!!

I didn't even know these things existed until today. I was minutes away from buying one with a standard incan bulb that would have cost me 200-300 bucks to replace every 2 years and would have consumed a lot more energy.

Can't wait to pop the old rabbit ears on this baby!!!

 

[josean]

...I just spent more than a week's pay on an LED gadget!...

Not bad... 2399.99 USD is "more than a week's pay" for you...

Lucky you! For me this amount is "more than a month's pay"...

 

[steve6690]

very nice...

 

[Alero]

Yeah but I have a wife who loves to buy shoes and 2 very spoiled kids so my money is usually gone before I ever see it.
12 years ago, when I was a single college grad, I was making $500 a week and had waaayyyy more money to burn than I do these days. I bought so many toys back then! My house was even 100% paid for, although it was only a $55k house in a scary neighborhood.

Oh, and I don't make more than $2400 a week. I bought the refurbished model from Amazon and it was less than $1400 including shipping and everything.

I was gonna buy a used HK P7 pistol with the money, but I can't ever find a decent one for sale in the Dallas area. So the TV was the next best thing.

I don't watch a lot of sports, but I might have to start now!


I wonder what brand of LED Samsung uses. I know the whole set draws only 0.8w of power instandby mode which is ridiculously low. I haven't found the power usage while on yet.

 

[precisionworks]

I was gonna buy a used HK P7 pistol

With electronics like that, an H&K, Glock or Sig would be a useful companion

 

[Fallingwater]

I've found that anything I'd be interested to watch on a TV I can watch just as well on my 21" CRT screen. Not as large, of course, but I'm *much* closer to it...

 

[Crenshaw]

you know how many lights you could have bought with that money? and EMS shipping to boot...:nana:

Crenshaw

 

[broadwayblue]

Not bad... 2399.99 USD is "more than a week's pay" for you...

Lucky you! For me this amount is "more than a month's pay"...

Price comes up as $1698 for me.

 

[Alero]

$1398 including shippng if you get the refurb which is fine with me.

And yeah, my 12 year old 35" CRT was just fine with me, but the bedroom 27" one is dying so the 35 is going up there. Plus, a CRT doesn't have LEDs in it!

The really funny thing is that I'm not really the one who wanted the big TV. It was my wife. She's a major gadget collector.

Oh, and yes I know how many flashlights I could have bought. Exactly one third of a SF Beast. haha

 

[kromeke]

I didn't even know these things existed until today. I was minutes away from buying one with a standard incan bulb that would have cost me 200-300 bucks to replace every 2 years and would have consumed a lot more energy.

Ok, this is a flashlight nerd forum (please take no offense at that, I'm a member here too), so I got to call you on this.

Where can one get an incandescent TV? Or were you looking at projectors? Maybe with an HID bulb? Or was it a Jumbotron?

 

[warlord]

Ok, this is a flashlight nerd forum (please take no offense at that, I'm a member here too), so I got to call you on this.

Where can one get an incandescent TV? Or were you looking at projectors? Maybe with an HID bulb? Or was it a Jumbotron?

If you make your own LCD projector the best light to use IMHO is a good quality HID. incans and halogens are just not enough.

That's a different forum though...

 

[nanotech17]

Yeah but I have a wife who loves to buy shoes and 2 very spoiled kids so my money is usually gone before I ever see it.
12 years ago, when I was a single college grad, I was making $500 a week and had waaayyyy more money to burn than I do these days. I bought so many toys back then! My house was even 100% paid for, although it was only a $55k house in a scary neighborhood.

Oh, and I don't make more than $2400 a week. I bought the refurbished model from Amazon and it was less than $1400 including shipping and everything.

I was gonna buy a used HK P7 pistol with the money, but I can't ever find a decent one for sale in the Dallas area. So the TV was the next best thing.

I don't watch a lot of sports, but I might have to start now!


I wonder what brand of LED Samsung uses. I know the whole set draws only 0.8w of power instandby mode which is ridiculously low. I haven't found the power usage while on yet.

 

[Alero]

99.9% of DLP and LCoS TVs and projectors use an incandescent bulb. That's why you have to spend a ton of cash every 2 or 3 years to get a replacement. It's also why they need a colorwheel (which can generate noise, cause motion blur, and limits the total number of colors) and why they use much more electricity.

 

[lukevsdarth]

Finished paying for a 42" HD 1080I plasma $2,499 I have my toys. Now I wanna look into a cheapy Cinego projector man that freaked me out on a wall 15x10 the bulbs is 250 bucks..geez

 

[Alero]

Is the Cinego the one from Radio Shack? You can get a service plan from them that will buy you a free bulb every year for 2 years. Just don't forget to ask for it even if you don't need it!
Also, Warlord, I've actually built several home-made projectors for school (I was a high school teacher up until this year).
Some were just LCD panels on top of overhead projectors, but some were made from the metal boxes from an old over head. We took the lenses out and made a straight projector lens. Then we used the LCD panels from old 15in monitors in front of the box.
The very best light source is a metal halide bulb in the 150 to 400w range. As a reference, a 150w metal halide is quite a bit brighter than a 750w halogen. We actually had a 1000w version that would make a 3 story high image in broad daylight.
You have to get the right color metal halide. I believe around 4200 is a good temp, but I can't remember exactly without looking it up. Just don't try to use a fish tank color because they are way over 6k.
Also, you have to protect the viewer just in case the bulb ever explodes. Some come with integrated polycarbonate housings, but our were in the metal overhead box for protection. And, most important(!!!), metal halides product a HUGE amount of UV light, so you have to get ones with a built-in UV filter or you'll get a sunburn while you're watching the movie.
Another good thing besides the great color spectrum, brightness, and relatively low power consumption, is that metal halide bulbs last a very long time. Some last as long as 15,000 hours or more. And most are well under 100 bucks for a good UV protected one, so they are a great value.
You can make a NICE home theater high def projector this way for well under $200 or under $250 is you buy nice pre-made lenses. It will compete with many projectors that are more than 10x the cost and will have next to zero maintenance/bulb replacement costs.
The only real disadvantage is they tend to be quite a bit larger than comparable mass market projectors.

 

[IMSabbel]

99.9% of DLP and LCoS TVs and projectors use an incandescent bulb. That's why you have to spend a ton of cash every 2 or 3 years to get a replacement. It's also why they need a colorwheel (which can generate noise, cause motion blur, and limits the total number of colors) and why they use much more electricity.

HID or Xenon is NOT incandescent.

I have NEVER seen a beamer use incandescent bulbs.
(well, if you exclude older overhead projectors).

 

[Alero]

DLP don't use either of those, although I'm 99% sure that Xenon is indeed an incandescent bulb. Most DLP use halogens, which I believe are also incandescent are they not?

 

[theamazingrando]

Yes. I believe most projection TV bulbs are Halogen.

I fail to see why filling the envelope with a specific gas would make a lamp (Halogen or Xenon) no longer incandescent. If it has a filament, it's an incan.

 

[kromeke]

Well, not keeping up with the latest in TVs (I'm still using a CRT TV*), I'll defer to you guys. :bow:

The price for a bulb seems suspicious. The runtime life of a bulb would help determine what the tech is (whether HID or Xenon or what have you).

Glad this isn't the TV forums.


*I don't watch enough TV to spend good money on one.


On edit: doing some looking (including Wikipedia :sick2: and dlplampsource.com) It appears that a Mercury HID lamp is used most often vs. LED. On dlplampsource, they mention in the FAQ (under disposal of old lamps) that they contain a small amount of mercury.

Any experts to chime in?

Edit #2:Being interested in lighting, it appears that Panasonic is using (or going to use) the LIFI high intensity light source. RF excited plasma. Longer life than HID. Discussed on CPF: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=192936

 

[AvroArrow]

I wonder what brand of LED Samsung uses. I know the whole set draws only 0.8w of power instandby mode which is ridiculously low. I haven't found the power usage while on yet.

It uses a Phlatlight LED from a company called Luminus. If you google "phlatlight" you'll get quite a few useful links about the technology. The PDF manual of the HL-Txx89S (basically a 87S with a couple more bells & whistles) states that power consumption is 230W, waaaay less than the 700W+ of similar sized plasmas.

I was actually looking to buy a HL-T5689S (56") back around xmas but they weren't exactly cheap (~$2,200 CAD) and other expenses came up so I didn't buy it. I just looked for it again to check the current prices and all the big box electronics stores here in Canada don't carry it anymore. Actually, they don't carry any DLP TVs anymore. There were really only 2, Sony and Samsung, but Sony announced that they were pulling out of the DLP market late last year. I think Samsung is the last major DLP TV maker. If I recall, I think I read that Hitachi was working on some laser based DLPs, but they're not as big a player as Samsung in the NA market. This is kind of sad because DLP TVs are still the best bang for buck in terms of large screen sized TVs. A 52" LCD TV goes for between $3,800-$4,800 and a 65" LCD goes for $6500. Plasmas aren't that cheap either, a 58" is $4,300 and 63" is $6,000. And that's ignoring the hideous power consumption of the Plasmas.

<sigh> I think I should have bought it back then. I didn't think stores here would stop carrying them so quickly. Oh well... my 15 year old 31" Panasonic GAOO will have to keep chugging along for a while longer. Man... these CRT TVs just don't really die.