[csentil]

Bought Panasonic C10 for 40K at the Panasonic showroom in Koramangala. He wasn't ready to budge under 42K but then we wanted to buy two and were ready to pay in cash. Probably that swung the deal!!

[jassi]

^^ congrats!! now you can start your own panny showroom :-) for future tbhpian panny customers

[Sn1p3r]

@dieselfan: As ponmayilal said, Benq is good and the price-point is mentioned.

All the monitors are assembled at one place and bigger the brand name bigger it their bulk quantity bigger it the margin while they retail. LG/Samsung give 1 year warranty. AOQ/BenQ gives 3 years.

16:9 is good for watching movies but I like 4:3 as my major work is done scrambling excel-sheets and vertical scrolling rather than lateral scrolling. So you decide. There is no difference in price.

One point that I alway stress is that check the tilt angles as many stands do not have flexibility to get to the right viewing angle.

You should be able to buy 19inch at 5.5k without speakers and 22inch should be for 8-9k range. Now even 24inch is in market.

Cheers!

[trance_nut]

The infamous red line/green line problem in Panasonic plasma's has decided to hit my PV80D. There is a red line (about a pixel wide) running top->bottom about 3 inches from the left of the screen, and green line about 3 inches from the right of the screen.
I switched off the TV when i saw these lines, and switched it on the next day, and the lines were gone. Although solved, i was apprehensive that this was not the end of the problem, and was expecting it to return.
And it returned with a "bang" (literally) . There was a very slight noise around 4-5 days after the line disappeared, and all of the sudden, about 1/8th of the screen from the right goes black.
Took it to the service centre and has been diagnosed as PDP failure. Waiting for more details from their side.

There are many such threads online, google for "red line problem in panasonic plasmas"

[Ponmayilal]

When the LG man came to install the 42" Jazz Theater LCD TV ( cost - Rs.64,400), I got the extended warranty rate list from him.

1 yr - after 10% discount --Rs.4963.50
2 yrs- after 15% discount --Rs.8438.00
3 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.11913.00
4 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.15883.00

These rates are applicable for all LCD/PDP 42" irrespective of the cost price of the TV.

Considering that any service after the warranty period is going to be expensive, is it worth taking the extended warranty? If yes, which one should I go for? 1,2,3 or 4 years?

Please put in your thoughts on it. Thanks.

[mav2000]

Hi Guys,

Need to pick up two new TV's. One will be a 46-50 inch and the other a 32-36 inch.

Can u guys let me know which would be better for each of the sizes, LCD or plasma and model numbers and prices.

Thanks. AM based in Bangalore.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by Ponmayilal

When the LG man came to install the 42" Jazz Theater LCD TV ( cost - Rs.64,400), I got the extended warranty rate list from him.

1 yr - after 10% discount --Rs.4963.50
2 yrs- after 15% discount --Rs.8438.00
3 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.11913.00
4 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.15883.00

Service for a TV???. Have not experienced or needed that on my Pioneer Plasma or older Sony TVs. This seems like a total rip-off or alternately LG is not confident of long-term durability and wants you to pay for it.

If I had this offer, I would not consider LG at all.

[Sn1p3r]

^^ the service option has always been offered by all the manufactures. Sony/Samsung/LG/Videocon dont not about others.

Earlier it was only Sony Wega that was above 90k rest all the TVs were below 50k mark, with new tech comes new issues, refer to many people in coastal regions complaining about the sets and as Ponmayilal mentioned the pixel issue the extd warrant makes sense. Its only optional apart from 1 year std. warranty.

However, with tech slowly maturing we will see defect rates drastically coming down.

Cheers!

[omishra]

Originally Posted by Ponmayilal

When the LG man ....

1 yr - after 10% discount --Rs.4963.50
2 yrs- after 15% discount --Rs.8438.00
3 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.11913.00
4 yrs- after 20% discount --Rs.15883.00

...

should I go for? 1,2,3 or 4 years?

Please put in your thoughts on it. Thanks.

Panasonic offered 3 Yrs warranty on 42" plasma which are purchased from Dec'09 onwards.

Other thought - if TV clears first year of trouble free life then it will last till EOL because it had proven by then that "all components are fine, good to go and experienced through working condition of all seasons". (means voltage fluctuations, moister, dust and heat)

Above prices are meant to rob you for your money without your fault.

OT:

Just take care of not fiddle with wires and connections when TV or connected devices are working. Just turn off for all fixup or connection change and then turn on again. Clean the dust from outside & if possible then inside. (it will prevent certain failures by heat dissipation and signal jumping of the track of multi layred PCB.) Post warranty, I am OK to pay Rs 350/year for getting this job done from company technician. Still there is something called bad luck.

[shuvc]

Originally Posted by Ponmayilal

2 yrs- after 15% discount --Rs.8438.00

What services are covered? The amount is similar to 2 yr extended warranty on a 7-8L car !!!

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by Sn1p3r

^^ the service option has always been offered by all the manufactures. Sony/Samsung/LG/Videocon dont not about others.

Of course service has always been offered by many brands (including Sony). But I have never bought a warranty for a TV nor incurred such exorbitant costs on warranty. Maybe 300-500 for an engineer visit. No parts need to be replaced except perhaps remote once in a while. That hardly costs the amount demanded by LG.

For my Pioneer 42 Plasma, no need for any service in 20 mths of use. Only first installation and set up visit was required.

[Ponmayilal]

I started this discussion on Extended Warranty after seeing the post of dude trance nut (just above my post on this topic)

It is quite obvious his Panasonic panel is now a write-off and I presume and wish that this happened within the warranty period. This is perhaps the first reported panel failure here.

In all probability Panasonic will replace the TV either with a new one or a refurbished one since the cost of replacing the panel will be as much as the cost of a new TV and cannot be done by the local service centers. It has to be a factory return for panel replacement (to the best of my knowledge and that is always implied).

I am waiting to hear from him on the status and further progress on this matter.

Originally Posted by omishra

......Other thought - if TV clears first year of trouble free life then it will last till EOL because it had proven by then that "all components are fine, good to go and experienced through working condition of all seasons". (means voltage fluctuations, moister, dust and heat).....

This is indeed a good line of thought and may perhaps be valid for equipments where cost is more or less evenly distributed amongst the number of parts and components that go to make it.

However, catastrophic failure of electronic equipments can take place anytime and without warning.

Originally Posted by shuvc

What services are covered? The amount is similar to 2 yr extended warranty on a 7-8L car !!!

I presume an extended warranty as its very name implies will be an extension of the time period of the original warranty and subject to the same terms and conditions.

Originally Posted by vasudeva

......For my Pioneer 42 Plasma, no need for any service in 20 mths of use. Only first installation and set up visit was required.....

You may count yourself lucky unlike dude trance nut. But, God forbid, catastrophic failures, as I said, can hit anytime and without warning and if it be your panel ........... that will be the end of your lucky stroke. That may of course be one in hundred probable.

As a special note, here I quote what a Senior Head of a Pioneer Service Center ( U.S.based) has said on the subject. ( - extract from a website)

"the extended warranties are the best thing going for the purchaser of a plasma or LCD." "Secondly, if the screen goes out he's lost the whole thing." By this last comment, he was referring to the cost of replacing a plasma display element (a.k.a. the glass) which can be done - but not for less than just replacing the plasma itself. Replacing plasma glass is a time consuming, tedious process and the glass itself is 75% of the cost of the plasma. As well, problems with plasma glass cannot be repaired. Pixel outage, vertical or horizontal line banding, or variations in color across quadrants are problems that most frequently require the whole glass panel being replaced. "It's really a no-brainer, get the warranty."

The subject is open for further discussions and inputs. I hope that dude trance nut joins in with his story.

[slayer87]

i have been looking out for a good and VFM 32" lcd and i am getting the Panasonic l32x9 32" lcd for 25k. How are panny lcd's when compared to samsung or sony. i know panny plasmas are the best but i am a bit doubtful about their lcd's, are they good enough and how is this particular model.

[smnrock]

Originally Posted by vvrchandra

Well, in my set while watching TV via Hathway set top box, some times, i get a static kind of sound from the speakers even in mute mode (audible only when near to the speakers). Also, some times, it appears that some horizontal moving bands from top to bottom appear while watching darker scenes and also in between when changing channels. These bands some times are irritating and some times they will be very negligible. These are not visible when brighter scenes are coming. I'm thinking whether is this related to some cable problem and some times I think of going to some DTH so that these do not appear. Any thoughts on this.

Any solutions for this issue? i too have same horizontal bands with hathway and its really irritating. This problem is not there if i connect hathway composite to sony crt.

[NetfreakBombay]

I am looking for a plasma (50 inch). Don't think 1080p (Full HD) is in my price range (Under 80k).

usage is almost 100% movies + photographs. my PC has HDMI/Component/Composite out, it will go to TV. I think for 720p, Component should be good enough.

Has anyone compared two TVs side by side with same source?

Ideally I would test a 720p and a 1080p TV side by side. Source would be few 1080p trailers downloaded from net (xvid.com and apple.com).

Has anyone done similar test? I will try doing that next weekend.

An article about the same : 720p vs. 1080p HDTVs: 2009 update | Fully Equipped - CNET Reviews

Do you agree/disagree with the outcome ? Article claims that from 5 -6 feet, it would be tough to differentiate between 1080p and 720p TVs.