Can't make up my mind. Not even CRT is 'right'

[Jules]

I'm right on the verge of buying a Panny W6, and keep popping in various stores to view it and make sure its what I want.
The trouble is, in some stores it looks quite poor and you can clearly see the pixel structure at 6ft away. In other stores it looks absolutely the best TV screen I've seen for ages.

My old Philips 32WS TV delivers a very good picture, but isn't a flat screen and doesn't accept and NTSC signal so I really do want to change it.
But, even when I look at more recent 32 or 36" CRT TV's I can't help thinking the basic picture quality isn't as good as my existing 'steam powered' set!

So, have manufacturers given up on screen quality altogether?

At the moment it seems:

- all new CRT's are genuinely not as good as they used to be, and its a bit of lottery getting one without problems.

-LCD technology isn't there yet and is very, very expensive anyway.

-Plasma has really come on but is still in it's infancy, and you may end up buying a £3K dead duck. You also have to make sure everyone inyour home looks after it to avoid screen burn.


I'm not sure there's any screen on the market currently that I'd be 100% happy with. Given the maturity of CRT technology I think this is laziness on behalf of the manufacturers. They could and should all build much better CRT's.

As I said at the start, I'm on the verge of purchasing a Panny 6 plasma but probably just need a little push!
Should I do it or would it be sensible to hold back for a while?

 

[Andrew_B]

Hi Jules, where are you viewing these screens which all look so bad to you? It's generally reckoned that the major electrical chains provide the worst possible signal/viewing conditions to all display models and so the picture always looks rubbish. It would be like testing a sports car only on cobbled streets and rejecting it for having a bumpy ride.

Get along to an AV specialist retailer and 'test drive' your short list of displays with a decent signal and a DVD you are familiar with (not animation). There are good retailers who sponsor this site, say what part of the country you're in and they'll offer to help. It's worth buying from them for the service they will give, instead of screwing the last penny out of an internet price match - honest.

Don't be put-off, you can tell from reading the threads here that 98% (made up statistic warning!) of us are over the moon with our Plasmas/LCDs. I don't think any Panny6 owner considers their purchase to be a dead duck! I paid around 4.3K for my display two years ago and I still don't regret it, 3K is a snip.

 

[Dean]

Agree 100%, go for it mate - never looked back since my panny. The only problem left for me is wall mounting it and hiding all the wires behind the wall