t.m said:
thinking of buying a 42" plasma t.v and wow its so confusing. does anyone know of the technical requirements it must have to truly reproduce hd tv. i have read that many tvs claim to be hd ready but they only reduce the quality to its own limitations. any help in this technical jungle would be greatly appreciated.
It will depend on the depth of your pocket t.m
I just bought a Panasonic TH-42PV500B or something like that.
I saw HD on a display model and there is but one word . . . wow.
Ive got freeview, sky, dvd, dreambox, vcr and sd going on it and all of these do not use the screens full resolution so are shown at best; and the best of HD is yet to come.
Plasmas have come on in leaps and bounds compared to that £13,000 Philips I recall about 8 yrs ago. They have good resolution, decent colour scale, altho there is a tendency to bleach out at the white end.
I have Sky and DVD on RGB, Dreambox on YPbPr, VCR on SVHS and on all except the last, the screen resolution is better than the mpeg pixelation that you can see around text. It knocks my previous 32 in Philips CTR into a cocked hat.
Mine does not run hot.
I dont think there is enough users info to support yr claim that LCDs last twice as long as plasmas. LCDs would need to have been around 10 yrs to prove that.
John Lewis would not "give" 5 yr guarantee on plasmas if you are correct.
To answer your main question, to be HD ready, the tv should have an HDMI socket and carry the special "HD ready" logo. Do not believe a word anyone inside a Comet shop tells you. John Lewis will match any price. And not only that, just shock yourself by costing the 5 yr guarantee elsewhere.
Does it have any downers?
Yes, the remote menu to access the various inputs is unfriendly. Multi pressing of coloured buttons.
Yes, it is not easy for the missus to know if she's on analogue, digi terr or socket I/P so she doesnt know what to press to get to sky.
Yes, if you select a 4:3 in correct aspect, it blanks the side with mid grey whereas it ought to be black to match the surround. It looks almost unwatchable.
Yes, the auto format switching os slow or doesnt happen, e.g. to put letterbox movies movies on MV into correct shape.
You can only record (mpeg4) to sd card from AV1 and tuner.
There are other useless features like zoom 3 for which I see no purpose.
Teletext on digital (terr or sat) is better (faster) than early Sky boxes and my Nokia ondig boxes. ITV teletext crashes on all my Sky boxes but not on this.
Curiously, the cat never watched tv till I got this. Now she sits and watches Sky Mews all the time.
