42in PLASMA - UNDER £800

sandra_3086

Thanks very much to you all for yor comments, I have decided not to buy one now and wait a few more months to see how the prices go.

At least you have all saved me £800.00+ and am more clued up about plasmas and LCD's !!!!!!!


xx

securityman

Good reading on AV forums( i get lost in there for hrs)

http://www.avforums.com/

Sm

CheekyLittleMonkey

LOL @ izzy_flint...
Blue Peter badge made me chuckle.. :-)

audiowiz

rdwarr wrote:

How come you can't buy big CRT sets anymore than?
Seriously, I'm in the market for a 42" HD-compatible (at least 1024 vertical res) TV. I can do LCD for about £1500 or Plasma for £1300. Which is best?

RDWARR says he wants 1024 vertical resolution - unfortunately this is impossible at the price he mentions.

Look for the "Native Resolution" of a screen and this will tell you what resolution it can run at without having to lose data to make it fit on the screen. All the screens have scalers that let higher resolution images be shown, but it there are not the pixels/phosphors to actually display it, then the image shown will have some information missing. For pictures this is generally less objectionable than for text. To get 1024 vertical resolution, you need either the:
Sharp LC45G1DE (native res: 1920x1080) @ £4.5k
or the
Sharp LC65G1DE (native res: 1920x1080) @ £13k

Even the huge Plasmas (Pioneer 50", Panasonic 50", Panasonic 65", Samsung 63") all only have a vertical res of 768 (native resolution of around 1366x768). The next generation of Plasma panels allegedly (according to one source @ Pioneer) may get 1024 native res.

rdwarr

audiowiz wrote:

RDWARR says he wants 1024 vertical resolution - unfortunately this is impossible at the price he mentions.

Ah, I think you're losing even me now, but thanks for the technical stuff. It was useful. I was looking at the Atec AV420W (£1449) as an LCD which says it does 1366x768, or the Samsung PS42S5HX (£1320) as a Plasma which claims 1024x768.
Is there a "better buy" out of these two?

audiowiz

RDWARR - sorry for going for it a bit on the techie bits - you can guess that is what I do for a living.....

Apart from price, if you really want a good set for TV, watching DVD's, etc, my advice would always be to:
1 - look in some of the home cinema / plasma / lcd magazines (around £5 each), Look for a magazine that has many reviews of what you are after, and use that as a guide - without quoting the magazine name, there is one pretty obvious choice that seems to be fairly consistant in my opinion.
2 - check out Home Cinema Choice online for reviews (free but a few months behind the magazines) http://www.homecinemachoice.com/reviews/
3 - pricerunner it for the prices, but be a little wary of those which seem too good to be true - look at the feedback....
4 - if you are homing in on a few, look @ any of the main shops to demo them
5- just as a safety net, check the preferred model numbers out out on AVforums for any other comments such as reliability (there have been a few power supply issues with a couple). http://www.avforums.com/
6 - if you can get John Lewis to pricematch it, then that is even better.

Just going on specs does not necessarily give you a screen that you will be satisfied with in the longer term - there are vast differences in the quality of the electronics that get the picture onto the screen from whatever input on the rear of the set. Your eyes are the best judge of what you think. If you are in the London area, Tottenham Court Road is great for seeing screens side by side.

I held off buying one for many years, and in fact have only just bought one - until that point, IMHO few measured up to the price/performance point at which I was willing to part with cash!

Bear in mind also that they will always get better for the same money over time - the longer you leave it, the better the screen you get. I was seriously tempted at Christmas to go and buy a £300 widescreen TV to tie me over for a few more years..... instead of buying the Plasma.

I don't know the two models you mention, hence can't really recommend one. If you were to hunt as I suggested, you may come up with an alternative that also looks good and has a reasonable price too.

Hope that helps.

Audiowiz

dervish

seanparkin wrote:

I'm sorry but there really is a LOT of misinformed/uninformed rubbish being posted in this thread about plasmas/tfts.


Fifth, there is NO evidence that plasmas are a passing fad, and I find that comment the most laughable here. Many PDP producers are building new factories purely to manufacture PDPs. Output and sales are estimated to go through the roof in the next few years.

Last, CRT's are good quality wise, but you can't get big CRTs for good money. And you cant wallmount them, they are ugly, take up huge amounts of space. Don't even look at rear projection, their viewing angle is absolutely terrible, colours are even washed out when looking straight at them.

Plasmas aren't perfect though. Retention and Burn in are always an issue for people who want to plug their consoles into them. But still.

Well I find those comments crass and ill-informed.

75% of people put their TVs in a corner because houses in this country are not desgned with flat walls to put TVs along them. No-one really has anywhere to put flat-screens.

CRTs will out-live both FLAT screens and PLASMAs.

RowaN

I live in a fairly odd house.. lots of flat walls.. anyone having trouble finding a place to hang their plasma, feel free to donate it to me. These houses without flat walls.. must be hard finding a good place for your sofa.. its gonna be wider than a plasma tv afterall!

Personally I'm not turned on by the idea of a fixed resolution panel.. almost all of your content will have to be scaled (up or down) preventing it from looking identical to the source. Perhaps new generation "slim CRT" will the the answer for people like me (e.g. https://www.gizmodo.com/archives/samsung-develops-thin-crt-television-024892.php and newer news item https://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/thin-hdtvs-not-quite-flat-but-getting-there-147943.php)... samsungs variety of slim CRT happen to go on sale this month (in USA at least).

Roger_Rampant

CRTs will out-live both FLAT screens and PLASMAs.

If that was true, I don't think that virtually everyone would have stopped selling CRT monitors. As soon as flat screens are available at affordable prices, people stop buying CRT products, that's the reality

zorber

izzy_flint wrote:

oh really


heres one for you

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

that killed me