Hey guys

Looking to draw on some of your experiences in the area of Home Entertainment Systems. I am seeking to set up my lounge room, ballpark budget of $1500.

I am looking at getting:
- 42" Plasma
- XBox 360

Already got all the surround sound stuff sorted.

Gone into Myers for post Xmas sales, saw a very nice Samsung Series 4 Plasma 42" for $1189, seems very reasonable to me. With the XBox I am looking for the best bundle. Wondering what peoples experiences have been with going to certain stores and buying TV's + Xbox's bundled and asking for best price, etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

get an lcd.

here we go again...

Wow, how many of these threads have been made lately?

Are you looking at getting the 360 for games or as a media player? Because as awesome as the games are it has, it's pretty limited in terms of multimedia playback when compared to the PS3.

But if it's games you're after, I'd definitely go with the 360.

Yes for gaming.

get an lcd.

hell with them both buy a huge CRT

hell with them both buy a huge CRT

I reckon crts look heaps better than alot of lcd's.

If you are doing a lot of gaming on it, get an LCD.

I reckon crts look heaps better than alot of lcd's

crt > * (except when it comes to weight and space of course). If your place gets broken into often, I recommend the biggest HD crt you can find - it'll need 12 guys just to lift it.

Reliq, be sure to check out the other retailers (jb, clive peeters, retravision, etc) there are some brilliant deals to be had and I'd be surprised if myer's price can't be beaten - but do it quickly, because come the new year prices are going up. Even though some of them don't sell the xbox, their plasma prices might make it worth it to buy the plasma and xbox at separate stores.

lcd v plasma depends on your room conditions
as a general rule of thumb
lots of light = lcd
dark = plasma
personally i prefer plasma for games
keep shoping and see if you can get a 50"....some good deals around atm

bought my second 360 today as a media centre (got the $275 + 2 games arcade version at HN) for streaming music....works a treat but definitely go 360 for games....tonnes of variety
enjoy!!

Get a Panasonic plasma for 1100 and spend the other 400 on an xbox. I got a Panasonic plasma over a year ago and the pictures great (even though its not full HD). Incidentally, I was at a mates place watching the cricket on his Sony LCD and the picture sucked ass. The score in the top left corner was all blocked up and (digital ) noisy. No such problems on my pana plasma. The only problem with plasma is image retention, which can be a pain,

One of my mates has both, even with a new gen plasma it suffered burn in from HUDs in games.

Has since switched to an LCD instead for playing games.

bought my second 360 today as a media centre

360 lacks bluray. Am I correct?

seconded for lcd

360 lacks bluray. Am I correct?

Correct, and its also a third of the price of a PS3 :P

Nothing too special about blu-ray anyway imo. I've bought a few movies like Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Transformers on Blu-ray and sure they look and sound fantastic, but they're not THAT much better than I'd go out and buy a blu-ray player or a PS3 just to watch them, if I didn't already have one.

Most blu-ray movies are still too expensive to bother with anyway. I only bought Dark Knight cos I got it cheap in the sales, a lot of other blu-ray discs I've looked at just aren't worth the dollars. For example, I noticed the other day you can now get the entire season of Firefly on blu-ray, which I thought was awesome, cos I loved Firefly, and even though I already own it on dvd I'd probably buy it again on blu-ray..... if it didn't cost $90, which it did. I bought the whole season on dvd for $30.

i run 2x trinitron monitors for my desktop.

i'll get rid of them when you can take them from my cold dead hands.