Panasonic TH-42PE40 PLASMA £798.00 Table Top Stand Or £898.00 Cabinet Stand

carl_east

You're right in many ways. I think our main difference in opinion is how long it will take to filter through HD content. But I think the HD bandwagon is much bigger and more significant than widescreen ever was. Therefore I expect Sky to look at it as a challenge. Their competition is fiercer now than it was back then. Not only do they have telewest/NTL but they have the potential of the internet bearing down on them. Telewest already has a head start on this front. So Sky have to impress.

Anyway the whole reason for this discussion was whether it is worth spending £800 on a non HD ready plasma. Even your argument seems to suggest no because they are not as good a CRT tvs. The only advantage of buying a non HD ready plasma is to save space. That's why I'm saying that an extra £200 will also future proof you. Although I believe the "future" is upon us.

tjsmangina

i love the pic on my plasma and on 90% of viewing it is much better than my CRT ever was (top of the range sony wega) but the thing that lets plasma and lcd is fast moving objects and panning,the sky sports news banner is fine but if the scrolling gets really quick then there is blur but i would rather have blur on credits than dodgy geometry and a huge bulky tube taking up 2 foot at the back would i buy this plasma at that price ? YES i would.cant believe how cheap plasmas and lcds are now though it was only 5 years ago that this was stuff you seen on the gadget show at £9000 for a panel only.

carl_east

You must have an outstanding plasma screen because even the best ones that I've seen suffer from the screen blur during football matches. It really annoys me. My CRT doesn't suffer from the same problem making it much easier on my eyes. HD TV goes a long way to solving this problem.

derekwilliams

Just to give you a 'heads up' on PLASMA.

I bought a 42" Philips Plasma TV almost 6 years ago with a FREE 5 Year Parts & Labour Warranty from Debenhams. Even with the 10% discount for taking out a Debenhams card that day, it still cost £7000. But it has been superb, and 'early adopters' always pay a premium price.

Luckily for me, at 4 years and 10 months, the telly failed. It was collected by a specialist company (2 man job) who removed it from the wall, packaged it securely in airline type flight cases (large metal boxes with preformed padding to match the set shape).

It took 2 weeks for the repair and return to be completed. During this time i managed to find out that the repair would have cost me £2500 had i not had the extended warranty. £400 if this was just for collection/return by the specialist carrier.

To be honest, i cannot undertsand why they bothered to repair it - it needed a new Plasma panel - as you can easily buy a new top quality Plasma set for this money now. Still, i am not complaining - if it lasts another 5 years i will be well happy, and probably ready to buy an HD set.

I have always found the Plasma (Std.Def) picture to be very impressive, and much better than many (but not all) large sized LCD sets, which tend to be too soft and blurred in fast motion for my liking.

Del

coolio_2

I hate the way these threads turn into a screen burn, gases leaking, HD is the future, you will die if you don't embrace it stuff. This is a good bargain ....end of !!

You can go on indefinately paying more, like, for £6k you can get a 60 inch TV, lets all argue that that is way better. Good price for this plasma.

Now instead of discussing, find me somewhere that has one in stock in London people

Roger_Rampant

I hate the way these threads turn into a screen burn, gases leaking, HD is the future, you will die if you don't embrace it stuff. This is a good bargain ....end of !!

In a way I do, but in another way I don't. If you end up with two people that are totally closed-minded at opposite ends of the spectrum that fill up the whole thread with their argument, yes I wish they would shut up and go away because it's quite boring, neither will ever agree with the other so it's just a waste of time

However, if someone is telling you that this is a great bargain, and someone else is saying it isn't, that's a good thing. If you then have various people jumping in on both sides of the argument it can be quite informative, even educational

As I stated way back in this thread, I would be willing to buy it and then if in a few years I buy a better one, palm this one off on my daughter. You can often find great bargains by waiting until something is discontinued and a new model released, then buy the discontinued model at a much lower price, for example

You will always have the "Tom Tom Go" people around who try to convince you that you need the latest most expensive gizmo, that's life I guess, but the true bargains are found by people who are open-minded enough to consider Garmin's etc. (less fashionable but better value-for-money)

tjsmangina

hold on i said my screen suffers from blur aswell lol and at this moment in time i cant think of many plasmas that give a better SD pic than panasonics.be interesting to here from people who bought the plasma from this thread what they think from there jump from CRT to plasma.playing an xbox or watching a dvd on a plasma is much sweeter than CRT though imho.

p.s sky will be charging £300 for a HD box plus £10 a month more subscription for its HD so if your on the top package then its £52.50 a month plus an initial outlay of £300 for 6 channels.

sainthalo

my local store has one brand new boxed and cabinet stand available too. what about warranty as 12 months is ridiculously low for a plasma purchase of several hundred.

coolio_2

If you have a nationwide credit card I believe they give you an extra years warranty

Roger_Rampant

Went and had a look in the branch at Riverside, Northampton. They didn't have any left, but their system showed the one in town having one on display (but no boxed stock). Went there and it was described as a "system error", they don't actually have any left

He thinks they have a cabinet stand for it upstairs in the stock room, though

(most people would be quite happy with the table-top stand that is included in the price, as far as I can tell)