New Tv Panasonic or Toshiba

[Carl West]

After 25 years the console Tv in my fathers house is dying.
It's a RCA 25" and my dad wants a 32" Normal ie: curved tube
with Automatic Audio Level Control. Looking around I find two Panasonic models and one Toshiba that fit's his desire's

My Question is what do you think of the brands overall.

Thanks in Advance
Carl West

[wkulecz]

Without mentioning specific model nembers hard to say, but my priorities are to look at Toshiba, Sony or Samsumg for the best display quality. I think Sharp is amoung the best of the lowest price sets.

Above 25" the quality of the comb filter and "line doubler" (if the model has one) makes a world of difference as to how good it looks. Trick is to find a showroom that has a good signal to all sets and has each setup properly, Best Buy had our Toshiba 65" projection HDTV setup so poorly in their showroom we'd have never got it had I not seen one setup correctly in another store. They were pushing Mitsubishi that week.

Once you been watching good 1080i HDTV even DVDs are lacking in quality. Since your Dad doesn't seem to upgrade much and a 25" console was very much top of the line 25 years ago, you might suggest he consider an HDTV ready set.

If he's buying a "throw-away" set waiting for HDTV to be the norm, I'd look at the sets from Sharp and try to spend as little as possible, even if it means sticking with 25" size.

--wally.

[Kris1]

... I can only say I'll NEVER buy a Samsung again.

Bought myself a 32' er two years ago, and it has been away for repairs roughly the same amount of time as it has been standing in my living room.

On this particular model (which you now can't buy anymore), the convergence correction has the tendency to go into fault every 4 months or so. After a (long) repair, the TV set would behave correctly for another 4 months, and then the whole thing starts over again.

And now comes the really bad part : Samsung KNOWS this problem. ADMITTED it to be a design problem (they couldn't deny it, as all 4 shops where I could buy this TV-set showed similar problems on this model after a couple of months), but refused to do anything about it except "repairing it again". I asked them if I could pay the price difference for a higher model, so I could cut my losses on this monstrocity of a TV, but "company policy prohibited that kind of action". Oh yes, the customers' very important to Samsung. Like NOT.

I have a 5 year warranty on this set, and I'll intend to use it as long as that, as the warranty is NOT transferable to a 2e owner, and I wouldn't dare to look myself in the mirror if I'd sell this PIECE OF UTTER JUNK to anyone else. The first day it breaks down after the 5 years have gone, I will personally bash this thing to smithereens myself so nobody else has to suffer from Samsungs "great engineering". I just hope that in another 3 years, better technology (new generation TFT's maybe, or Plasma's ?) have become cheap enough to consider one of those in formats like 32 or 42 Inch.

Of course, this being a PAL device, it may not reflect at all to the situation in the US. But in terms of picture quality here, Samsungs' not really the best of the bunch, not by a long way.

[Elie]

I strongly suggest you look at any TV with the DLP technology!!!!!!!!!

DLP is a new technology that was developed by Texas Instruments that uses mirrors on a chip to reflect the light to th screen.
The quality of DLP makes plasma look like a 30 yer old B&W TV, seriously , you have to look at one to believe it.
The detail, brightness/contrast and saturation leave the competition behind even LCD.

So far Samsung, Panasonic, Hitachi, RCA, Zenith and soon Sony all have made DLP TV's. The Maintanence is very easy and the TV itself weighs nothing.

Check it out!

Cheers,
Elie

[Jkun]

DLP is hardly "new" tech

When buying DLP, make sure you do a thorough viewing test first! DLP works with color wheels, projecting colors rapidly in sequence. Some people have very quick refresh rate of their eyes (no joke) and will actually see this in fast moving images as "rainbow artefacts"

J-kun

[Kris1]

... I will. In a couple of years.

If I'd see it right NOW, my vision might be blurred because of the tears in my eyes when I think of my splendid Samsung.



But you're talking about a retro-projector type of device, no ? Sadly, I do not have the luxury of the space needed for such a setup, so I can't seriously consider it as a solution. But I hope advancements in one technology may push other ones onto higher stages too by the time I'm in the market for a new device.

Thanks for the pointer !