davegtt

Right then people. come january the house is being done up (again ) and we're after a 42" plasma for the fire place wall (there wont be a fire on it thou) only got about a 2k budget but seen a few things that fall into this bracket, seen stuff at £1500 from currys but Id say its prety much budget stuff since it comes with tuner and seperate speakers and the make is Techwood ???? I should asume the screen's themselves are made by only 3 or 4 manufacterers anyhow so shouldnt really go to far wrong but is there anything I should look for? anything anyone can recommend? playing the PS2 and XBOX on them shouldnt matter should it? I know stuff like the Urbz has a warning about burn in but I presume this is cause the screen doesnt change much, what about football games? since thats about all I play on.

Cheers.

andy97

iTrader: (1)

flat screens are crap at displaying fast moving objects. Objects that move across the screen appear jerky. I wouldnt bother getting one until the technology improves. Do a comparison with a good crt unit and you will see how poor they are.


Andy

corradoboy

The stuff below £2k is utter cr@p. The big downfall on plasmas is the processing of the image. The tuner box has to supply an individual signal to each pixel on the screen and can easily be overwhelmed, hence the blurring on fast moving images with large areas of similar colour (ie, football pitch's) and the processors and software on the older stuff is lacking. The older panels are also low resolution, and with HD DVD and BluRay as well as High def satelite on the horizon, you really ought to think of future proofing as best you can at this level of outlay. The latest Pioneer 43 & 50 inch panels are superb, closely followed by the new hi-res Hitachi and Fujitsu. I'd recommend a trip to a local specialist to see them properly set up so you can see how good they can be, and why a few extra quid is worth it. I've never seen plasmas look as good as in my local Sevenoaks, where they are all fed from a European 1080 hi-res satelite via component leads. Currys only ever feed them RF from their rooftop ariel that's feeding another 150 sets at the same time If they can't set them up to sell them, do you really want to give them several £000's to supply yours One of the best routes once you decide which you want is to find the best price available on the net, find out where the store advertising it is, then get the nearest John Lewis to price match over the phone. If they agree, order it, but request to collect from your local store, or have your local deliver it The big benefit of John Lewis is that they offer a free 5yr guarantee

djuk

The techwood screens I believe are samsung screens from a couple of years back and are absolute rubbish. I haven't seen one review that says one decent thing about them!

David

Iain Young

You can get very nice a Panasonic plasma screen for under 2 grand, and the picture is actually very good. No noticable blurring on fast moving images, and works great with the xbox

http://www.av-sales.co.uk/plasma/htm...d7_plasma.html

No tuner, or speakers, but it's the same screen that you get in the viera range of tvs which cost rather a lot more...

blot

Dave,

I shopped around for plasma's last year, all the usual places, all similar prices and didn't include warranty or speakers etc.

Then went to Richer Sounds (Leeds branch) & got LG 42" Flatron with JVC DVD Home cinema & hundreds of extra leads inc S-Video & stacks of top quality audio leads, scart leads etc & a 3 year warranty for £300 less than cheapest price I found purely for the screen anywhere else. Very happy with it thankyou kindly, top deal & very helpful staff.

davegtt

Thanks for the feedback, its seriously something to think about... I gathered the techwood wasnt up to much, my boss has just bought a 37" panasonic veira and hes really chuffed with it.

Iain, that defo looks like a quality plasma if its the same as the viera just without the tuner, and who needs a tuner if youve got NTL etc...... We have a downtown very close by and only really sells quality tellys. now they stock the Panasonic Viera for 3k IIRC and the local Chris Petits who are panasonic only dealers stock it for £2500. now with a written quotation Downtown will double the price difference so I should see it for 2k... sounds good to me, only downtown will only do that as and when they have the stock so I have to keep going in to try and catch it as they never stock more than 1

Schumacher

I wouldn't bother spening 2k on a crappy Plasma screen. If you want a decent Plasma, then the Pioneer PDP-434HDE 43", and PDP-504HDE 50" are at the top of the list. But you will have to pay double what your budget is. Like corradoboy said earlier, Pioneer are the best, closely followed by Hitachi. The Hitachi PD range is very good and much less cheaper than Pioneer.

I have the Pioneer Pioneer PDP-434HDE, and I have to say this Plasma is brilliant. It has no problems displaying fast moving objects, like someone said earlier. If you use scart leads (which are crap) then you get the picture appering in blocks. But if you use high quality connections such as component video, then the picture is superb.

Some Plasma's retain images, for example.... If you happen to watch a channel on Sky with the logo's in the corner, and you change channel, the logo from the previous channel can still be seen faintly. Although it will disappear after a few mins.

If you want to use it for games, then that's fine. Over time the brightness will decrease, but nothing to worry about.

Like I said, buy a top notch plasma, otherwise there's no point. The low priced plasma's are very poor.

-Schuey

corradoboy

I would recommend at least seeing some of the others I mentioned earlier. Pana's are indeed good sets, just not the best out there. Their 4000:1 contrast ratio is a big selling point, but to acheive this they mount the panel behind tinted glass (to get better blacks) and then crank up the brightness. Looks good at first, but shortens the lifespan of the panel. To be worth it for the next 5 years plus it will NEED to be 1080 res, and have HDMI/DIVX connectability.

The Pioneer 435 is now £3200 at Sevenoaks, but is £2845 HERE inc VAT/speakers/tuner/wall mount. They are a Birmingham company, so the Birmingham John Lewis should pricematch it and throw in the 5yr warranty.

Your choice

davegtt

OK I see what people are saying and I know all about the Burn in effect that the plasmas suffer from etc but Im not looking for some sort of cinema room set up, I aint a perfectionist.... Off course spending that much on a telly you'd be stupid not to get decent scart leads etc (thats not what Im asking)

without sounding nasty these opinions, are they coming from people who are perfectionists who love their TV/Films etc and wouldnt be happy with anything in the cheaper brackets? I mean currently we have a 28" thomson flat screen, its great although a plasma would suit the room much better, the picture quality seems fine on alot of the 2k tv's Ive seen so why the slating cause they aint top of the range????

Just interested thats all

Vinesh

Wrong.

Depends which screen u use.

I have a pioneer 433mxe-1 with a lumagen scaler.

Picture is spot on.

check out www.avforums.com for more info and advice.

Schumacher

To be honest I wouldn't spend 2k on a TV that's not upto scratch. All I'm saying is, if you want to splash some cash on a plasma, then why not get something which is decent?

-Schuey

davegtt

Because splashing some 2k is alot of money to some and I cant afford to up the budget and justify the cost..... I understand what your saying but its the same as Id ask about DVD players and people like yourself would be crying out buy thing Pioneer £150 jobbie where as the best DVD player Ive owned up to date is the £35 one from asda that I got for the bedroom. when youo say something isnt up to scratch you mean by your standards or just something in general thats sh!te and they wouldnt get away with selling if they are as poor as you say?

corradoboy

I didn't slate the Pana's, just suggested that for a few hundred more you could do much better. The Techwoods on the other hand

Also, speak to some professionals about cabling, as scarts aren't the be-all, component is the way to go, unless your DVD has HDMI or DIVX

blot

Like I said, got an LG 16months in, not a problem with it, looks great in the room and picture still looks as good as the day I bought it. Works well with the PS2, under 2K for the lot and a really good warranty......

davegtt

blot, thats good feedback thanks, its nice to hear good comments coming from someone whose using their telly for what it is and not bothered there are more expensive stuff out there thats "better" thanks

Schumacher

I wasn't trying to say that your poor and I'm rich. I tried to help you with some advice mate. If you don't find any of it useful, then I'm sorry.

I do understand it's your budget, so..................

I'm sure you'll be able to pick up an Hitachi C42PD5200 42" around the 2k mark.

-Schuey

davegtt

No I know you wasnt... My original question was this is my budget anything you can recommend and anything in particular to look for... not spend more cash for something better as with everything you can always spend more cash on anything better than what ever it is......

davegtt

blot, is this what you have?

http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/455_208108.html

Seems to fit the bill nicely

corradoboy

Less £100

davegtt

even better thanks, any comments or thoughts on whether its half decent or not?

Schumacher

Hitachi C42PD5200

-Schuey

corradoboy

Go HERE and type "hitachi" into the "search make/model" panel. Couldn't do live links as it D/L's PDF's of mag reviews.

davegtt

thanks

carl

Several of the big manufacturers (Sony -- though they deny it --, Sharp, IIRC) are getting out of plasmas and concentrating on LCDs. Might be worth bearing in mind.

Diesel

Not right mate - the blocks are a product of digital compression and nowt to do with SCART leads. I actually use a SCART to connect my SKY box to the TV via RGB - there is no better connection.

D

NorthDave

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Thanks,

Chris.

DavidBrown

I'm on my 2nd Pioneer 50" (previously had a 503HDE) and can't recommend them highly enough.. they're terrific

(I sold the first one, it didn't go wrong !)

davegtt

NorthDave, I'm interested, let me spend the day doing a little more research on the net

corradoboy

NorthDave, can you get Pioneer ?