New TV

"Greg H"

Some fat prick in a fairy costume with a wand ????

Post his reply in detail.

Ought to be good for a BIG laugh !!

......... Phil

Having repaired a lot of different TVs, I must admit that pretty much all of them are crap. Some are crappier than other. I am not talking picture quality, but reliability and quality of build/design.

IIn my opinion, CRT are still have better reliability than other types. For large screen ones -- CRT rear-pro may be an option. If you want "slim" on, i would suggest LCD, but then again depends on size. At the moment it very difficult to make plasmas less than 42" nd pretty expensive make large LCD screens. Plasma is pretty bad technology. LCD are more robust. I would also suggest staying away from big brands like SONY, Philips and Samsung (Panasonic seem to be OK, although pricy). Samsung can produce really good and really bad stuff at same time and generally does not last long, although not sure about their LCDs. I would suggest LG. At least repairs are cheaper than other brands. From the number of companies I do warranty work for, Palsonic seem to be good value for money. And picture quality is pretty good too.

Yes, laser and SED (I hope I spelled that right) TVs are coming. Not sure when. I would expect them to be overpriced in the beginning and we will not kno how good/bad technology is. So, I would recommend not to wait.

Certainly do not buy LCD projection TVs. DLP projection TVs are better, but lamps cost quite a bit and you get about

And the last word of advise --- especially for plasmas and LCDs, buy extended warranty for as long as possible!

What do I have at home? 51" Panasonic CRT rear-pro.

Hope it helps, Rudolf

Nope but prices on LCD and Plasma are dropping faster than you can walk into the next shop. Production yields and display quality is improving all the time. Although the recent inclusion of integral STB's seems to have upped the prices a bit of late. Plasma still gives the best bang-per-buck for large screens (42" or greater).

Not a chance. They have been saying this for many years, but there is no technology that is even close to being production ready to beat LCD and plasma.

It certainly won't be laser TV that is (or was) being spruiked by this mob:

Dave.

Good advice Rudolf, but are any retailers still marketing CRT rear projections, they seem to be all but extinct in stores. Last TV I bought, ~15months ago, was a 43" CRT RPTV, and I dont give a s*it that everyone thinks its old crap technology, the fact of the matter is that it was a damnside cheaper (then) than LCD or Plasma, and the picture is better (Iguess thats subjective), plus I can repair it if / when it breaks down without just board swapping. My parents bought a 51" Panasonic Plasma a few weeks ago, and to be honest I don't like it, I think it the picture looks bloody terrible.

James

About the only thing I could think of is OLED technology. Looks like it has its problems, (short life of the LEDs being one) but Sony are going to trial marketing OLED sets this year (2007?). At manufacture quantity of 1000 a month, I wouldnt hold my breath waiting for them to be super-cheap, and the sizes (up to 27 inch) mentioned dont sound a lot like "big screen" (by modern standards) to me.

I think Rudolf's advice is good advice for your purchase, especially the part about extended warranty ;).

the aus $ is pretty high at the moment, another good reason to consider a purchase, in case it drops again

I got a 42" Panasonic Plasma last month and I think the picture is fantastic. I'm seeing detail in my favorite movies I've never seen before. It has lots of image enhancement technology too, stuff like contrast enhancement and edge smoothing.

Interestingly, the Panasonic was one of the few that had fan forced cooling on the top vents, and consequently seems to run very cool. The other brands and models without the fan forced cooling ran fairly hot to the touch on the top vents, that can't be good for long term reliability. The fans on the Panasonic are wisper quiet, can't hear them at all.

I didn't get the extended warranty, so fingers crossed.

Dave.

It wasn't a standard definition panel was it? I'm amazed why anyone would buy an SD (720x480) plasma, it can't even show a PAL DVD or DTV signal in full resolution.

Dave.

No, 1366 x 768, so not really high definition either, in my view high definition means a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 but that costs megabucks in a 51" panel :) There seems to be a lot of artifacts visible even using the inbuilt HD tuner, noticable at a resonable viewing distance of ~4 metres. Maybe I'm just looking too hard, but my brother also noticed it when he was watching it & he has a 42" Panasonic plasma & a smaller loungeroom (closer viewing) & believes his looks better.

James

Sorry for replying to myself, but in contrast, a friend of the family has a Pioneer 51" plasma and it does indeed look fantastic, I do not recall the model but I did look up the specs at the time and i think it was also a 1366 x 768 panel.

James

Wonder how they solved the burn in problems ? Or is that only certain types of oled ?

Alex

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@c35g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

If you are basing your test on DTV signal artifacts then that's not the best way to do it. Compression ratio and quality varies greatly channel-to-channel and program-to-program (Channel 7 are notoriously bad). You aren't actually testing the screen itself this way, you are instead testing the quality of the tuner and the TV station encoding being used at that time.

Dave.

"David L. Jones" "James"

To compare screens ( also goes for speakers, CD players etc) you must have source material that is beyond blame.

Outside of digitally generated audio /video test signals on a CD or DVD, such quality likely does not exist in the commercial world.

Maybe go instead for a recently released DVD of a big budget movie.

Ought to look pretty damn good if played on a good DVD player.

But be aware - true " HD " video is not to be found on ordinary DVDs or broadcast DTV signals.

....... Phil

True, but I have found that many plasma (and LCD) TV's seem to accentuate compression artefacting significantly more than CRT TV's. While it may be due to the superior sharpness of plasmas, I suspect it may also be due to the coparitively smaller colour gamut of many panels.

The most recent Star Wars is ideal, fully digitally filmed and produced, so no film grain or any other film tranfer issues.

Gotta make sure you use your best available interface too. Every player has component video, and HMDI is now widely available.

Most definitely. Some of the early BlueRay/HD-DVD reviews leave a lot to be desired too. Some even have worse transfers (or no better than) than the standard DVD version. No point having a HD version of a film if it was produced in a hurry to get to market.

Dave.

Which plasma did you end up getting?

This is:

One of the few models left on the market without a built-in digital tuner, and priced accordingly.

Dave.

Use to be SED, but since that's dead it's now OLED. Cheers.

Sony do a 70" rpro for 3>4 k