can sony hs50 be found in ireland?

[rcladin]

hi,

i'm living in co. meath and looking to purchase a sony hs50 in Ireland, can anyone advise if any Irish highstreet retailer or Irish online retailer etc has them, Meath/Dublin would be best for me, i would prefer to buy locally than online from the UK.

I can see nexnix in UK selling the unit for around £1650 inc VAT Sterling, which should be roughly 2500 euros, but i get the feeling i'm unlikely to get a hs50 for this price, in Ireland

for example:

Peats in the city centre selling a sony hs20 for €3,499 including vat, this is surely taking the mick.

another strange thing i've noticed,

komplett.ie selling Pana AE500 for a few quid more than they are selling the AE700, its madness

Any advice from forum readers in ROI ?

TIA

rcladin

 

[theritz]

Hi,

The HS50 is listed on the Sony Ireland website, so you should be able to get a price from a Sony Centre. However, a word of warning........ be sure to take some anti-maniac-laughing pills before making the call........ in my experience their prices (for projectors at least) is way out of touch with reality. I can recall them having the HS20 at €3600 retail, and I know of one outlet which had an ex-demo VW11HT for......... wait for it........... €7500..... . The last time I dropped in, it was still there, surprise, surprise.

If the RRP of the HS50 is £2000 in the UK, you could expect it to be at least €3000 here, taking account of VAT rate adjustment. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the price was a bit higher, going on past experience.

If I were serious about getting a HS50, I'd buy from discounttv Here, (forum sponsors, Benjim, a forum member well known on the projectors forum here and have a very good reputation) or Nexnix, also forum sponsors who have a very good reputation. In fact any of the forum sponsors should be able to supply you. If a HS50 can be obtained for about €2300 couriered to your door, then that's a worthwhile and substantial saving. with a differential of, say, €700 or more, you have lots of wiggle room if the necessity arose to return the projector in the event of some difficulty. The HS50 has been in the hands of enthusiasts for long enough no to have any operational niggles come to light (I sincerely hope this is not a heroic statement....). While the overscan issue with 720p over DVI is know (and it appears in the process of being remedied by Sony), there haven't been reports of any of the issues which arose with the HS10 (start-up failures) or poor uniformity (HS20). The convergence issue is not one which would trouble me unduly - I have a one pixel convergence error on a far lower resolution projector and while it is obvious close up to the screen with an all black field with a single pixel white crosshair, it is not visible from a few feet away, and certainly not from 1x screen width. When dislaying an image it is not visible to me under any conditions, and, believe me. I've looked!

In normal circumstances the standard advice is to tell someone to see a projector for themselves before buying - in this case I empathise with the lack of facilities compared to those based in the UK. Harvey Norman on the Swords Road usually have a number of projectors on demo in reasonably good conditions, I have seen Hitachi, Epson and Infocus models there, but not the Sony. Because of the reported performanc eof the HS50, I wouldn't be concerned about getting one which has been pixel checked, it makes good economic sense.

Sean G.

 

[ivnikviii]

I was talking to one of the sales people in the Sony sentre in the liffey valley shopping centre (Dublin) and he told me they were getting a H50 for demo use in about two weeks, to be honest he didn't seem to have much idea of the price though, but he "guessed" it would be around 2500 Eur , I would take that with a pinch of salt though, you know that projector prices here are ridiculous compared to the uk. I would be surprised if the cost wasn't a lot more than that.
I dont know if it's of interest but i did find an irish website selling the
Benq pe7800 for under 2k though

 

[Comer]

Very good advice Sean. Apart from the the very very minor chance of being able to demo your projector in good conditions, I don't know why anybody would buy a projector in Ireland. I was quoted £7500 for a HT10 a number of years ago when it was (at most) £3500 in England. When I asked the guy in the Sony Centre in Liffey Valley why on Earth would I buy form him at that price difference, he said "but if something goes wrong with the imported model what do you do?" I told him I would send it back for about £30 for repair.

 

[vicbarry]

rcladin, Im sure most will agree here that youd be better off to buy off the net either from a reputable store in the UK or somewhere like Price Japan. I bought my HS20 off them and no hassles (granted import tax was a killer). I can understand the worry about warranty and send back issues, but is paying an large extra wad of cash really that important for piece of mind, when alot of the companies online offer a great service

 

[Comer]

I have bought two projectors from the UK (Toshiba and Sanyo) and one from pricejapan (Sony). Both the UK projectors went back for what-ever-reason and were collected and returned free of charge. The Tosh was gone for a couple of weeks and the Sanyo was collected and replaced at the same time. I did save quite a bit by buying from pricejapan but I think that the savings buying from theer have been diminished (IIRC with only a couple of hunded Euro in the difference last time I checked). It was a CONSTANT WORRY that something would go wrong with the Sony, cost me €200 to send back, be without a projector fot at least a month and perhaps still not have the projector right when it was returned. Also, it is great to be able to pick up the phone and discuss problems with someone "face to face" rather than be restricted to communicating by Email.

IMHO the UK is the way to go, one of the forum sponsers would be a good place to start. I bought the Z3 from Nexnix and the service I recieved during the sale and when I had a problem was excellent

BTW Panasonic AE700: €2700 in the panasonic shop in Limerick with absolutely no way to get a meaningful demo. Guy told me he'd "sold one last" week, why is it that they always seem to have just "sold one last week?"

 

[rcladin]

hi lads,

thanks for the advice,

appears there is a gap in the irish market for a fair and decent av retailer that does'nt fleece you,

i think i will probably pursue the nexnix option soon and buy online / over the phone from the UK, i bought a tft monitor from them a year ago and had no troubles

i will however, contact sony in liffeyvalley and see if i can get a demo and check the price, i'm sure once i stop laughing, i'll be able to tell them to forget it.


sean, not sure if the overscan issue will be a problem for me as i'll be feeding the unit with component from DVD player, but will check out hooking up a pc and creating a hcpc, need to do alot more reading and research first

looking forward to viewing movies on my first projector and trying not to worry about niggles and problems that may/maynot be visible

cheers

rcladin

 

[Comer]

i will however, contact sony in liffeyvalley and see if i can get a demo and check the price

I didn't know that Liffey Valley had any demo facilities, Better check that out before taking on a journey from Belfast

 

[rcladin]

sorry comer, need to update my details,

we live in ashbourne meath now, not belfast

i'll check it out with liffeyvalley, i know they have some equipment upstairs? maybe they have a demo area up there.

cheers

 

[Comer]

sorry comer, need to update my details,

we live in ashbourne meath now, not belfast

i'll check it out with liffeyvalley, i know they have some equipment upstairs? maybe they have a demo area up there.

cheers

Jeeze, that was a quick move. Ten minutes ago you lived in Belfast