Scargill

Ok, so I picked a plasma TV. Why? Well, I went off to Tescos – mainly out of laziness. I could probably have managed a much better deal on the web but then there’s the postage on such a large item – and you have to be in the house to get the delivery etc etc… no, on this occasion I decided to “trade locally” (there’s an LG factory in the region – don’t know if they actually produce TVs there but hey – I’m a consumer – I just want the best for much cheapness…)

I bought an LG 42″ plasma. At first sight, if you stare at all the TVs in the store they all look pretty much the same – but try that from 45 degrees – most, but not all of the LCDs now look ABYSMAL.

So that was that decision – next decision – which plasma…. I’m into contrast – and by far the best contrast was from the TVs with shiny screens (as against the usual matt finish). So then it was down to resolution – and as even SKY doesn’t really transmit at that great a resolution I plumped for 1024 * 768. My only use for the TV other than as a TV is as a media system and that res is fine. The offer was £750 or thereabouts for just that WITH a hard disk to record your TV.

Of course I should have known there’d be a con – there always is. The system features the rather magnificently useless FREEVIEW, a hard drive to record TV – and a ton of inputs – the problem being – yes, you guessed it you can ONLY record from FREEVIEW – one of the reasons that some time ago I spent a tremendous amount of time picking the right PVR so I would not be trapped in this way – and despite all of that – they got me. The reasons of course are simple – recording hi-def SKY takes a lot better hardware than recording crappy old FREEVIEW.

Anyway to cut a long story short, the picture quality of the TV (LG) was that good I conveniently ignored the hard drive issue – and weeks later I’m still impressed.