dali - took about 1hr 15mins to get down there from Henley area - left 11.30am. M4, M25, A24 and about 1hr 30mins to get back left 2.30pm. Let them know if you want a demo.
They had the PW6, VR5, XR3 and a Hitachi (can't remember the model 5200, I think)
I am not looking for a plasma myself, I was giving moral support to my father, but I do have two working eyes!
Andy and another lad were very helpful, there was no hardsell or pushyness. Good, solid, honest comments from all who we spoke to.
Unfortunately the show room was not really set up as per the photos on their website. There were lots of boxes about with tables and chairs in the demo room.
. However, they did change the setup of the plasmas to give a better picture when we discussed what was good and bad and there was no BS.
My "report" (lol) is as follows. It's a long one.
A: On initial impression the PW6 was the best screen there by a mile.
Oh god another panny lover I here you cry! but theres more....
B: XR3 was out of price range but left on anyway. Don't know why it costs more, was not overly impressed.
C: The Hitachi was awful with sky (probably because of the resolution?). With dvd, the blacks were grey and a bit washed out. One of the other chaps from Nexnix popped in and we commented on the poor 2k screen and he basically said, if you're gonna put a high definition signal into the plasma then the Hitachi is the one to go for. If not then one of the other two. We won't be doing HD so this panel just didn't get viewed anymore, even though it remained on. If it had blown our socks off, we (lol, the old codger, I commit
) would have considered spending the extra money over the NEC/Panny.
I have a friend who has converted the signals to HD using a sweetspot card and Dscaler for his PC with a Hitachi and he says the results are stunning (well he would!
). I haven't seen it yet.... but I
do believe him.
D: The VR5 had terrible colour problems INITIALLY. Reds were RED!!, greens were toxic, and blues, well blues were green
. The pw6 (and hitachi) were used as a reference to correct this.
So the task in hand was to get the VR5 looking like the PW6. We got very, very close with a bit of tweaking. Blacks were as good, imho. The panel was brighter without upping the brightness (if you see what I mean) although I personally am not looking for the brightest panel. The detail level in those blacks was good as was the sharpness of the picture. We got very good reds
without the colour looking orange which I have seen posted in some pics on AV forums.
When viewing sky sports news, the VR5 and the XR3 suffered from jitter when displaying the ticker tape bar at the bottom of the screen. PW6 and hitachi did not. My father did have an in-home demo of the NEC V
M5 for 4 days and I don't remember seeing this, although I thought the picture was a bit jittery with sky footie.
So all was going well. Having seen many pw6 n 7's I think that this IS the standard. However there are drawbacks and merits regarding the Pannys. All documented on AV forums.
To sum up I would say the PW6/7s are very good. The VR5 gets as close as I've personally seen to these with a bit of tweaking and is brighter so therefore...
It basically came down to......
1. Pw6/7 has excellent PQ but is "not future proofed" regarding HD Sky (blah blah) and extra input boards (component, DVI i.e. cost goes ^) are required.
2. VR5 has all inputs and gets very good PQ (when compared to panny, is better than others I have seen for the same money), seems to be "future proofed" but does suffer that bit of jitter. To much
? (I will post in the VR5 thread regarding this)
My advice to anyone in the market looking to buy a plasma echoes Hornydragon's advice (thx HD) : Go and demo them, side by side if you can - your eyes are different to everyone elses on the planet.
Well that's it really. I have my own thoughts as to what I would do/buy.
My dad bought the...........