New TV Advice Required
Posted by: J.N. on 24 October 2007
It looks like my ageing 32" Panasonic CRT TV is dying, and I'll have to bite the bullet and buy one of these new fangled flat-screen jobs.
In the words of Manuel - "I know nothing" - so advice required please?
I'm very happy with my 'Freeview' service, and have no interest in paying for 'Sky' or a Hi-Def service. Therefore, screen size needs to be suitable for normal Freeview transmission quality. I'm thinking 37", and like the look of
this Panasonic model. I'd like to buy from John Lewis, as I have a good local store, and they offer free delivery and a free five year guarantee on TVs.
Plasma or LCD?
Pioneer, Sony or Panasonic?
All advice gratefully recieved.
John.
Posted on: 26 October 2007 by JonR
Yes that's what I thought, Steve. Sure I'd love the highest-res product available but it seems pointless buying such a TV if, for the time being at least, I will mostly be watching Freeview or plain old 480p DVD.
Posted on: 27 October 2007 by andy c
I always viewed this as a size thing. 32" or less = LCD. above 32" = plasma.
However since refresh rates on lcd's have been getting better, I've had a look at the phillips 37" (I have a philips 32" with ambilight and the missus and me like the effect it has etc). So, when my currect set gives up, I'll replace with the same but 37".
Have you had a look on avforums.com?
Posted on: 30 October 2007 by davereay
I have had the Panny 37" plasma for about two months now and it is a stunning TV, the pic on upscaled DVD is superb and freeview on just about all the channels has most people asking where they can get one and how much it is. You won't regret it - way better than any LCD I saw, and I looked for six months before taking the plunge!!
Dave
Posted on: 04 November 2007 by Jono 13
Posted on: 05 November 2007 by Frank Abela
Don,
Actually your ISF engineer friend would not have been able to do this. Not all plasmas have the ISF software in them that allows you to calibrate them to the ISF standard. The Panasonics, for example, do not have this.
However, you touch on a good point. We were playing with the new 37" Panasonic plasma PX70B thingie and comparing it side by side to the Pioneer 428. We had variable results. Why? Because the Panasonic really doesn't cope that well in well-lit areas. i.e. it loses contrast in well lit (especially flourescent-lit) areas because it doesn't have the nice filter that the Pioneer enjoys. That said, the Pioneer could make things appear too dark sometimes, so we ended up having to recalibrate the Pioneer a bit due to too much magenta - which we'd never noticed before because we didn't have a good enough screen next to it before!
Eventually we hooked up both with an n-Vi and then we started to see the real differences in the panels themselves, the Pioneer showing off its performance quite obviously, even though the smaller size of the Panasonic should have meant that it should have shown up the larger screen in some ways.
So what do we have here? The Pioneer remains the picture to beat at a premium cost, especially considering the ISF engineer will cost you around £300 if you really want it to be absolutely right. The Panasonic, is under a grand and this month comes with a 5-year guarantee wherever you buy it. It's not as good as the Pioneer, but I'd be surprised if anything else comes close.
As for the Panasonic LCD, well, we haven't seen that yet in an environment we know, but what we've heard so far is that it's meant to be pretty darn good.
Posted on: 05 November 2007 by Chris Kelly
Jon
If you get the matching Panasonic DVD player/hard disc recorder it will up-res suitable DVDs for you. I may not be the most critical viewer but I am very happy with the freeview and DVD image quality of my 42" plasma and the dvd/recorder, and I'm sure the newer 37" would be excellent too.
