Should have done it ages ago.

As the owner of an early LG 42" 480p plasma I can safely say that what you buy is what you get...

Heh - since moving house (over a year ago) I've still not got around to installing all my AV gear, we've been stuck with TV sound for a year...

That appears to be the official version.

Ah well, I don't use AV gear, just the normal stereo - 2 speakers, that's it. I need that for the radio anyway, so plugging the TV (or rather the PVR) in is a trivial addition.

It was a Sub £400 TFT hardly aspirational purchasing, just not buying the cheapest s**te on the market for a change.

That's one of the big downsides of flat screens.

Whereas my old Quintrix has a decent (by TV standards) pair of 2-way speakers either side of the screen and an integrated sub.

You know we don't even own a half decent modern stereo and the old bit fairly well specced pioneer we have is in the Dining room.

We usually listen to the DAB in the kitchen or bedroom or stick MP3s the portable player through the pioneer or on cd through the dvd player in the lounge.

We did plan to buy a decent off the shelf surround sound a few years ago when we bought a dvd player that supported it, but then decided to either do something else to the house, or some appliance broke or something and never bothered.

It looks shit loads better than the old serup, or any of my mates and BluRays look noticably better than DVDs so... I'd definately never buy anything but a Panasonic again, it really is that good compared to others I've owned an seen :-)

As the ex-owner of a 42" LG LCD I can safely agree with you.

Indeed. There's a reason the Sony 32v3000's were £300 in Xmas sales.

Dunno what they are, but £300 is too much for anything with a Sony badge...

The other, and rather major, downside is that the picture quality sucks. A good, well set-up CRT still looks vastly nicer than anything short of an OLED display. Just not as big, or wall-hangable. It's a fashion thing, and I reckon it's going to bite us in the arse in a few years when we've lost the tube-building technology it's taken us a century to develop.

Ahhh, a fellow luddite :)

Well, it's a bit of a personal preference thing, personally I've never seen a CRT, regardless of coins, that looks as good as my current TV. Some people say LCD TVs are too 'sharp' which I agree with, the picture on my plasma looks almost softer and more natural. I always think though CRTs are too 'soft' almost, as if the very, very edges are just a little too 'blurry', I accept blurry is a crap word and way too harsh but you know what I mean :-)

Mine made it to the wall last weekend - it's taken like 4 months heh. I gambled for speed and bought a £5 5m Scart cable for my PVR. On plugging it in, the picture of course BLEW, so the wires had to remain hanging across the wall as I put my old 2m Scart back in, before ordering a nice one from CPC. Plugged that in t'other night, and I'm sure the new 5m is even better than the old, really not crap 2m - but I might just be imagining it. Moral - cheap cables are always shit and good cables do matter (up to an extent, I'm not sure I could justify one of the uber:pricey ones, as I don't beleive it'd make much difference now).

In TV studios, the outputs of the cameras are adjusted 'on the fly' for exposure, black level and colour balance by eye. The cameras are initially set up to the same standard using technology, but when actually in operation fine adjustments are done by eye. Using, I'm afraid, a crt monitor. LCDs or plasmas simply ain't good enough.

However, those Grade 1 monitors are rather a different animal from domestic Tvs.

I definately prefer mine compared to any I've seen, and as you say, the monitors they use are probably pretty awesome. I think CRTs suffer more at big sizes as well, but that may well be bollocks heh, it's been a while since I saw a CRT over 32" or so.

Ahhh yes "rich soundstage" = distortion, "warmth" = lack of treble, "Character" = anything else that's crap and I need to feel nostalgic about.

Ahhhh the good old PQ debate. Problem is that sources are increasingly digital, in an analogue world with the high dynamic range that comes from BBC analogue transmitters CRTs are the only way to get the dynamic range, at the expense of convergence, sharpness and geometric accurracy. Of course you should get the native resolution of the source but on a colour set that's offset by the physical resolution of the shadowmask and phosphor so you're not really better off.

Then of course apart from the newer LCDs with modulated backlights (which have their own issues) you'll never get the contrast (as the LCD doesn't block all the backlight) that you'd get with plasma or CRT.

Plasma is the best way to watch TV at home. All the contrast of CRT, all the accuracy of LCD.

You want a 5m flat HDMI cable from PC world at 93 quid.

But not worth it unless you have Chav+ or similar and / or are a film anorak.

Especially as, I recall, Plasma screens are rather inefficient in terms of energy consumption.