Experts Please

[Showerstud]

Okay, so I will be sat about 1.8-2m away. How about I put it this way, if I gave you 850-900 pounds to buy a tv, what would you go and buy?

 

[Paul.]

Do you have to buy now? If you can walk in to a John Lewis on 27th December you will get a steal with a five year warranty.

for a sub 2 meter viewing distance, I would be looking at a 46" ish. 50" may be a push, I sit 2.5m away from a 51" and if I lean forward I can see all the swirly plasma noise from the cells cycling.

you could look at Panasonic 42GT60, Sony 46" HX8, Samsung 46F6740

 

[rocketrazor]

Do you have to buy now? If you can walk in to a John Lewis on 27th December you will get a steal with a five year warranty.

+1 from me. This close to Christmas and the sales I'd wait, and then do a price match also. If you can wait that long of course

 

[Showerstud]

I will wait until the 27th, cheers guys.

 

[Oldboy]

Thought I'd drop my two pence worth in here.

for me as a gamer my first plasma is fine g20, my second plasma gt50 has been a nightmare. Image retention is a real problem, based on this I would seriously consider a LCD/led set over a plasma if you are a gamer. If you don't game that much then plasma probably is the way to go. You do have to be careful with input lag on the LCD/led sets though, some are seriously high. Each one has its problems, you need to find one you can live with an image retention is a real pain for me.

it depends how much you game

That's exactly what I was going to say!

I too have had nothing but a nightmare when gaming on a Panasonic plasma, I went through 3 G20 and 4 GT30 plasmas before I just gave up. For movies and TV I would recommend one in a heartbeat as I remain a fan but the last two times I have changed my telly I have auditioned and then discounted both the GT50 and VT65 Panasonic plasmas simply because of all the hurrendous image retention issues. On both my plasmas and across all the replacements the issue remained and in one instance burnt an image on the screen of my G20 and even when the Pixel Orbiter feature was introduced on the GT30 range and left on all the time I still got lots of image retention.

I'm convinced to this day that gaming caused the eventual demise of my GT30 which suffered a strange clouding effect across 3 patches of the screen and if gaming is a concern I would seriously think about getting an LED/LCD. Look out for input lag levels as stated and weigh up your usage, if you will only use the TV for gaming occasionally then consider a plasma but if you are going to game quite a bit I would think again.

And for further balance LED/LCD TVs have got a lot better over the last few years and I have been delighted with my last two (Sony 46HX853 and now my Samsung 55F8000) and both have left me very happy in both performance terms and lack of faults which plagued every plasma I owned, balance out all the comments and decide what's best for you.

As much as I love plasma I just wouldn't go back now. Audition before you buy too so get out there and get a list together of potential purchases.

 

[RobinKidderminster]

For what its worth, comparison in PC world is a lottery. They simply plug em in. I think it is one device which is better selected by recommendation & review. Good luck anyway

 

[Son_of_SJ]

For what its worth, comparison in PC world is a lottery. They simply plug em in.

I'm sure you didn't mean to be unfair to PC World, Robin, but that is misleading. Lord knows I'm not a huge fan of Currys/PC World, but I think you'll find that Richer Sounds and John Lewis also just plug in their TVs. I have specifically asked Richer Sounds, John Lewis and Currys staff - all TVs are left on the default settings. I guess those shops are just too busy to adjust each individual TV, you'd have to connect each TV to a Blu-Ray player and use something like a Spears and Munsil calibration disc, which would take about 10-15 minutes PER INDIVIDUAL television ..... the shops just don't have time to do that! So any comparison in a big chain shop is problematic, but in a way, it is just, if all TVs are left unaltered. In a specialist AV or Hi-Fi shop, they may have time to tweak their TVs' settings a bit.

 

[theflyingwasp]

Hi there oldboy

just out of sheer curiosity did you get the 4 same gt30's from the same place,I had the gt30 a while ago and it worked out fine for me.

my point is after you returned it the third time did you start to get a bit attitude from the manager or staff for constantly returning the tvs "here he comes again " or "that guy is on the phone complaining his tv is still faulty " etc you were quite within your rights wether it was returned 4 or 50times as the set was faulty in some way .plus my 50inch gt30 was £1499 at the time from currys so it was quite a lot of money to get mucked around like that with 3 or 4 returns.touch wood I never have a problem like that.

 

[Oldboy]

For what its worth, comparison in PC world is a lottery. They simply plug em in.

I'm sure you didn't mean to be unfair to PC World, Robin, but that is misleading. Lord knows I'm not a huge fan of Currys/PC World, but I think you'll find that Richer Sounds and John Lewis also just plug in their TVs. I have specifically asked Richer Sounds, John Lewis and Currys staff - all TVs are left on the default settings. I guess those shops are just too busy to adjust each individual TV, you'd have to connect each TV to a Blu-Ray player and use something like a Spears and Munsil calibration disc, which would take about 10-15 minutes PER INDIVIDUAL television ..... the shops just don't have time to do that! So any comparison in a big chain shop is problematic, but in a way, it is just, if all TVs are left unaltered. In a specialist AV or Hi-Fi shop, they may have time to tweak their TVs' settings a bit.

Agreed Son_of_SJ but imo Currys/PC World should be avoided at all costs when buying a TV anyway, fair enough go in and have a look at the TVs but certainly don't buy there.

It's certainly true that the bigger chains don't calibrate their TVs due to time constraints but some retailers do so it's always best to ask how they have been set up but the best advice I can give is to ask for the remote control whenever you are seriously auditioning a TV, then you can check for yourself just how it's been set up and what features are turned on in order for the TV to look eye catching in the showroom. I don't know why more people don't do this one simple thing...I've lost count of the amount of people I've seen buy a TV without even looking through the menus or having the remote in their hand, it's like buying a car without driving it which is madness!

Always get the remote and if they won't give it to you walk out as they aren't a good retailer as any decent retailer will let you have a good look through the menus before you buy.

 

[Oldboy]

Hi there oldboy

just out of sheer curiosity did you get the 4 same gt30's from the same place,I had the gt30 a while ago and it worked out fine for me.

my point is after you returned it the third time did you start to get a bit attitude from the manager or staff for constantly returning the tvs "here he comes again " or "that guy is on the phone complaining his tv is still faulty " etc you were quite within your rights wether it was returned 4 or 50times as the set was faulty in some way .plus my 50inch gt30 was £1499 at the time from currys so it was quite a lot of money to get mucked around like that with 3 or 4 returns.touch wood I never have a problem like that.

Hi theflyingwasp,

To satisfy your curiosity yes I did get all 4 from the same place (Richer Sounds). The first 3 all came from the same batch but the fourth one I had to wait about 3 weeks for and that was from a fresh batch with a later date of manufacture and sebsequently a much better set until 9 months later when it developed the strange clouding effect on the panel that a screen replacement didn't solve.

Richer Sounds never gave me any attitude at all, quite the opposite in fact. They were great every time I phoned them or took one back and just apologised for all the hassle and the store really couldn't have been more helpful, I only got problems when the TV developed the screen fault 9 months later when dealing with Richer Sounds customer service team on the phone. At that point things got more complicated and harder to deal with them, they came out and took the TV away after an engineer visit and I got it back 3-4 weeks later with a new screen fitted.

That didn't solve the issue and in low light conditions the fault was still there so another engineer visit was scheduled, I blacked out the room as he came during the day so I could replicate the issue and when he turned up he had no idea what was wrong with it. He said he had to write a report for Richers which would be with them in a few days but after 4 weeks and many calls to Richers later there was no sign of it and they were not giving me any concrete info over the phone and would promise to call back but wouldn't, they never had all the facts as they obviously weren't aware of all my previous calls and the handling of the issue was terrible as the months passed.

After some valuable advice on these forums I got the email address of one of the heads of the company and only when he got involved did things move along and a lot more swiftly than before, in fact a resolution was in place after just a few days. They refunded me and I paid the extra to take a Sony 46HX853 and to say sorry they threw in two pairs of 3D glasses, I wrote to Julian Richer and was sent a very nice personal letter and a further £50 compensation so the motto of the story is...in store Richer Sounds are excellent but their customer service department aren't good to deal with and left me frustrated and disappointed. My next TV came from John Lewis as a result and is the one I own now and in comparison the experience has been brilliant.

 

[axel1970]

i bought a 43" samsung plasma 3 months ago paid £289 love it much much better pic than my old sony lcd ,theres a 50" panasonic plasma at my local tesco for £399

 

[theflyingwasp]

Thanks for your reply oldboy

hope I never have to go through anything like.the upheaval of getting a tv delivered and uplifted 4 times .my tv weighs 44 kilos and is up 2 flights of stairs I don't think I could go through that 4 times.no wonder you have a samsung now.