Maybe flatscreen TV is ok, after all ...

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Agreed. And that was another thing that had put me off plasmas in the past, but when I had this one under consideration, I asked several dealer friends that I do hifi repair work for, what the score was now on that front. All said that without question, plas was now more reliable than LCD. Pan claim the lifetime of the panel fitted to the TV that I've bought, to be in excess of 100,000 hours.

Up until seeing this TV, price would most definitely have been an issue. We were trying to work out how long we had had the Tosh - like yours, still as good as the day it came out of the box - and arrived at about 15 years. In all that time, it has had just two faults. A bad tuner a few months after we had it, and a bad sub woofer (cone surround disintegrated) a few months back. So that is great and sterling service, but that TV cost us £1500 all that time back, which is what ? About £4k today's equivalent perhaps ?

If I get the five years warranty out of this one, I won't have done bad. It will have stood me in just £140 per year. Three quid a week ! Even *I'm* not going to complain at that ! :-)

Arfa

I have one LCD HDTV set (until my 51" PT51DX80 bites the dust big time) an Olevia 232-S13. Besides having some minor quirks easily correctable by a now non-existent firmwear upgrade I like the set for its fast response time and ultra high contrast ratio. I thought my LG L222WT monitor had a bright high contrast screen until I used the Olevia for a computer monitor. The LG was lack-luster at best when compared. The Olevia is going on 4 years old and is on 5 hours a day unless I use it as a #2 monitor for Pro Tools or Adobe Audition.

I have a Pioneer plasma, but would hardly call LCDs "dreadful" (though I've seen some pretty poor sets -- a friend of mine bought one). Sony has really fine sets, of a quality that competes with (though doesn't equal) Pioneer.

To break in the set properly, do what I didn't do... Run 16:9 material -- without station logos -- for 40 to 50 hours continuously. "Just to be safe", allow overscan, and make sure the orbiter is on.

I have a Motorola set-top converter feeding the Pioneer, and it delivers a beautiful picture, whether it's SD DTV, or 1080p. The latter is not distinguishable from 1080p Blu-ray.

If you want something to show off the set, find the Blu-ray of "The Searchers". This is a pretty bad movie (despite its reputation), but the transfer from (what are apparently) the VistaVision camera negatives will have you gasping. (Though "North by Northwest" has problems with male skin tones, it too is a VistaVision film, and frankly a revelation.) Few recent films are that good.

Evidently, plasmas are incredibly expensive in the UK. If my currency conversion is correct, (1$ = 1.6266pound), then your TV was $1136.00. 50 inch plasmas were around $500 here in the US during Christmas time. And an additional 3 year warranty was around $70. Why so expensive? It seems plasmas are being phased out here in the states.

Klaatu

You would struggle to buy a half-way decent LCD TV for 500 bucks equivalent here in the UK. I don't know where the idea comes from that plasmas are being phased out. As far as I know (according to my friend the Pan dealer) Pan are just about to launch a whole new series of plasma TVs in the next month or so, which I assumed was the reason behind the price of the one I've just bought having dropped so far, being a 'shelf clearing' exercise.

I can't see any good reason for dropping or phasing out plasma technology. It is currently the best display technology for direct-viewing very large screen sizes, and the reproduction is superior to LCD in the important areas of contrast ratio, pixel response time (1uS) and viewing angle. Just the response time alone improves motion blur to the point where it is comparable with CRT technology, a claim that LCD panels are never going to be able to match.

'Extended warranties' are a similar price here. The reason that they are so cheap is because they are not warranties as such, at all. They are an insurance policy taken out with a general insurance company that has repair outfits in tow all around the country, whom they pay peanuts to, to carry out any repair work that might need doing. It is my experience, having done trade repair work for these outfits, that they do the absolute minimum necessary to get the customer 'off their backs', whilst shifting any blame for shortcomings in the repair service, to the manufacturers of the equipment ... :-(

As to your question about prices between your side of the pond and mine, first, you have to be careful that you're comparing like for like. I just took a look at Circuit City, and the 50" plasmas that they are knocking out for $699, are not full res 1080p panels. They are actually 720p. When you get up to 1080, the prices start getting up to $1000 and beyond. It's not so much that electronics are expensive here, as that they are very cheap over there. I have bought a lot of my electronic equipment on visits to the U.S. simply because it tends to be dollars for pounds i.e. $60 there, same item £60 here.

Arfa

Welcome to the future!!! IMHO, the limited life expectancy of flat panel TVs has been somewhat exaggerated. When you consider that 50 years ago it was unlikely you would get two years of use from a black and white TV without some sort of servicing, the record doesn't look too bad for the newer sets.

One thing I remind everyone who brags about their CRT set. It will never be as bright and sharp as when you brought it home. In particular, the focus will degrade with time. I have a 12 year old Sony that has been relegated to the bedroom. I've tweaked the focus several times and the adjustment is now at the end of it's range.

I recently obtained a 5 year old plasma set that required $5.00 in repairs. That gives an awesome picture.

Some of the horror stories are real. A number of brands are nearly unserviceable. Neither parts nor schematics are available. If a custom part fails, the only solution is to obtain parts from a dead set.

PlainBill

I just got a new Sony 46" LCD. The picture is great - the only thing I don't like is that the sound doesn't quite sync up with the video (the audio comes through a fraction of a second BEFORE the video). This is apparently the "elephant in the living room" with HDTV sets. Manufacturers & dealers are certainly aware of the problem, but tend to sweep it under the rug.

"Arfa Daily" wrote in news:zeJ3n.541$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe25.ams:

because of California legislation concerning "excessive power consumption" on large screen flat-panel TVs. The "progressives" have set a limit on a TV's power consumption,for California.[screw them...]

It's not going to affect other countries,except for some of their imports to the US.

I haven't noticed this. This appears to be either a sample defect, or something wrong with that particular design.

I have noticed that the sound through the HDMI (which in my system runs to the display), and the analog 7.1 outputs (which run to my controller) are slightly out of sync -- you can hear a slight echo when both are playing. But neither shows a /visible/ image/voice discrepancy.

Your receiver or controller (if you have one) might have a delay adjustment.

Another example of deliberate conservative misinformation. This is a proposed law, not an enacted law. It's unlikely it will pass.

The decline of plasma is due to the improvement in image quality and reduction in price of LCD sets.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in news:hio754$vd9$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

I had thought it was enacted and went into effect the beginning of this year. 2011 is the effective date.

from a NON-"conservative" news source,CNN;

California approves new energy efficiency standards for televisions

appears they don't need to "pass a law" in the People's Republik of California(PRC),just a commission to say so.(Big Brother)

"conservative" misinformation?? seems the misinformation is yours.

The last time I heard about it -- which was not that long ago -- it was merely a proposal.

"The real winners of these new TV energy efficiencies are California consumers, who will be saving billions of dollars and conserving energy while preserving their choice to buy any size or type of TV," Energy Commission Chairman Karen Douglas said in a statement.

Well, of course, that isn't true. Unless the regulation is interpreted very loosely (what, exactly, does "new models" refer to, and against which "old models" is the improvement to be calculated), sets not meeting these requirements will not be sold. Not in California brick-and-mortar stores, anyhow. California will have a lot of trouble regulating Web sales, or blocking the shipment of such sets from other states to California.

Note that my 59.58" Pioneer plasma would not be covered by these regulation.

As I've said many times, I'm very much in favor of Big Government and highly intrusive legislation -- where it's appropriate. Here it is not. Manufacturers have a strong motivation to reduce power consumption, simply because it reduces (however slightly) the set's price, and is likely to improve reliability and longevity.

Than what? Previoius LCDs? I object to local dimming on general principles.

There is always a need to compare.

You've obviously never seen a good plasma set.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in news:hio92i$b67$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

Heh,maybe if they say that often enough,people might begin believing it.

Yep,really "wise" of them...

Except that the "progressives" go way beyond "where appropriate". More accurately,they are REgressives. (it seems like every city and state they run are broke,in debt,and crime- ridden.Just as in other nations.)

US Gov't was meant to be "limited",not "Big". (like in "Big Brother",rather appropriate...)

Guys like you are screwing that up,along with America.

Try this and see if it helps.

When you go to turn on close captioning (if it is like my Vizio and it is a separate operation beside muting) then don't stop at C1 but keep on through the CC choices until you come to one called Service. This is what I have read is the right setting for HD programming.

Charlie

I see many LCD TVs for repair, including right up to date ones, and I am yet to see one that compared to my previous CRT set. Just about all that I have seen suffer from motion artifacts when running at any resolution other than panel-native, and all that I've seen still suffer from motion blur on high speed action. I'm not sure that I can see any way that can ever be totally overcome. For sure, it's not as bad with the latest generation LCD panels as it was with previous ones, but it is still very much there, and as long as LCD cells are as slow as they are, it will continue to be a shortcoming of the technology.

Plasma cells, on the other hand, are as fast as the short persistence phosphors used on CRTs, particularly since various 'pre-fire' technologies have been applied to them. Contrast ratio is inherently higher than LCD as well, and also, the viewing angle is infinite, another aspect that LCD can never compete on.

I have spent the last few days looking very closely at my new TV, and I can honestly say that I have not seen a single motion or scaling artifact at any resolution. Having spent many years in the repair business, and being very critical of TV performance, I feel that there is every reason to compare the two technologies and, whilst LCD has undoubtedly improved over the last few years, in my opinion, if the Pan that I've just bought is anything to go by, LCD technology cannot hold a candle to correctly operating plasma technology.

Arfa

Thanks ...I understand that there IS a "Service" menu for this set (Sony KDL-46V5100), but I don't think there is an option there for adjusting audio delay (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). I know that some sets (like LG) do have an adjustment for that.

I don't think that's true. European societies are different from American -- they have many more years of "tradition" which tends to level things.

The real problems occur when you have institutionalized differences in social classes.

America without government interference would be even worse -- except "guys like you" would consider it natural/normal, and therefore "good".

The current fracas over regulating money institutions is a good example. They screw up, by doing stupid and immoral things they shouldn't have been doing even if they hadn't been regulated -- and then they want to be left alone, to continue effing-up the economy.