Thanks to all who gave their inputs Baazigar, Leader, Cool, thycaaddufu(), Giggs.... Baazigar's posts were a real handful.
Bought Panasonic Plasma 3d Full HD after a lot of thought and balancing act between priorities & price..
Started with the idea of LCD and then LED.. But the picture quality on sis's Samsung series-6 LCD from a dishtv connection never had the perfection received on my CRT TV.. Since I was always going to use my TV primarily for watching TV channels (sports, news, malayalm/english movies) , priority was always the performance for SD channels. Although I wanted a HD TV, the input I was going to use @ present was AV (
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)..
Meanwhile, I got an excellent offer for Sony EX720 (3D LED).. The price was almost equal to warehouse price. Luckily I had the opportunity to test the TV for reception of Free-to-Air channels from Nilesat. Not surprisingly, the quality was extremely poor.
Then, I stumbled upon another offer for Samsung Plasma (43 d490). 1999 AED + 300 AED voucher. HD ready. this model had encouraging reviews on the sites as well. But the store staff did not offer good support and so decided against buying from there.
In the end bought the Panasonic Plasma which is good value for the money spent, I hope.. (AED 1999 + AED 200 voucher) + 2 3D glasses + 2 3D movies (Avatar +
).
Tested it for AV input from STB with factory default setting:
- Better picture quality than Samsung Series 6 LCD with the source remaining the same. Didn't feel much difference from the CRT TV although I expected stretched pixels. Not sure if the upscale engine in Panasonic is better than that in Samsung.
- brightness is not that good, but was expected.
- sound quality is acceptable, nothing great.
- easy to use menu.
- plays movies from the USB (which was very important). tested .avi, .mkv, .mp4 successfully. Also have a SD card input.
Got to do some tweaks on the settings and it might give a better picture, not sure though.
the only worry that remains is the electricity bill...
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