Plasma display options/connections

E

Eero

Guest
Hi,

just landed on this forum yesterday, and from reading couple of posts & responses decided to join asap as you probably have the experience and answers to my immediate questions :eek:).

The question I have has probably been dealt with before here and if so, please point me to the thread. Otherwise, maybe someone has practical experience to help me out.


I have (finally) started to set up my home theatre, and the bits and pieces are slowly coming together, with the main element - plasma display - missing. The one I have given serious consideration is the Panasonic TH-42PW6EX.

The dilemma I have is the following:

Apparently there are two possibilities with plasmas:
a) Plasma TV with built-in tuner
b) Plasma display with no tuner, just a monitor screen

For me, the option (b) sounds ideal, since all my video sources are digital (DVD, settop box i.e. digi TV tuner, PC and digital camera). Analog TV I haven't been watching for couple of years. The tuner in the plasma would probably not be used at all.
(BTW, the tuners in typical plasmas, are they plain analog or ready for digital terrestrial transmissions also?).

From what I have gathered so far, it seems that the plasma displays don't neccessarily have the SCART/RGB/S-video/component or so inputs, but merely a small D-connector for PC monitor use.

In some units, all the video signal connection varieties are on the Plasma-TV tuner unit, which sounds redundant to my setup.

So, I wonder if some of you knows whether it is possible to hook up a plasma monitor to my setup, and if there is something that forces me to buy a plasma-TV instead of monitor only?

I envision connecting the display using component video out of Yamaha RX-V1300, but I'll have to study what the settop box is capable of sending. It only has the SCART out as the physical video interface, although that seems to be wired to carry RGB out. The DVD has S-video out and the Yamaha can either pass it on as is or convert to component video.

I realize that I would miss some of the features, such as the teletext, picture-in-picture etc - i.e. the features provided by the (dual)tuner unit, but since the settop box already has the teletext, I would probably sacrifice only the picture-in-picture feature.

So, what should it be, option (a) or (b)? Opinions/advice?

thanks a lot,
Eero.
 
Have a look further through the threads ... but as a quick starter the series 6 panny you are looking to buy has three slots in the bottom to accept interface cards ... you can buy interface cards with either vga, rgb scart, component, or s-video/composite connections ... so you could equip your plasma with the best connector your source requires ...

The tuner box will do the connections for you but the additional cost of this should be offset against the additional costs of separate interface cards ...

personally I use my sky+ as the source/tuner and have my amp doing all the switching ...

rgds

Jon
 

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