A lot of what you guys say - the way chain stores rig their demos, the
ridiculous price of extras, etc - is fair comment, but in the end there
is no substitute for the customer being well informed.
From the customer's point of view, however, it's very difficult to get hold
of the relevant information. As I have recently shown in another thread ...
http://tinyurl.com/27ajfd
... standing in for ...
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.tech.digital-tv/browse_thread/thread...685270e
.... even making a rational choice of a new kettle is more complex than might
at first appear, and in that thread the group seemed to agree with me that
information posted on a manufacturer's website is just plain wrong, in that
it runs contrary to the laws of physics!
Within the last year or so, I've also looked at a replacement midi stereo
for my bedroom/office, and a replacement soundcard for my PC, and not a
single one of the units I looked at had technical specifications such as
Frequency Response, Signal-To-Noise Ratio, or Total Harmonic Distortion,
anywhere in the accompanying literature, though a few were available on
websites, and I obtained one or two more by emailing manufacturers. AFAICR,
such a situation would have been unthinkable in my youth, and at very least
I simply wouldn't have bought anything where such specifications were not
given.
When you consider the above, and also consider some of the pseudo-science
that has been put forward to bolster entrenched thinking, even in
uk.tech.digital-tv, a technical ng where one has a right to expect
independent rationality, then I regret I wouldn't trust even an
'independent' 'expert'.
Hence my advice aimed at giving the OP some independent means of directly
comparing sets, though I accept that it's true that:
1) Between stores, different DVD players, and the way they are connected
to the TVs - RGB/CV/RF - are also implicitly being compared.
2) It's becoming obsolete to use DVDs for such a comparison because they
are SD. However, I'm not sure how many suitable HD format disks the average
punter could obtain for such a comparison, and how many stores could mount a
demo with the particular one of competing formats a customer might bring in,
while DVDs are at any rate commonly available and still a better source than
most SD broadcast feeds (though the shots of the Namib desert in the last
Natural World "Desert Lions" were breathtaking, even on five year old SD
equipment - Panasonic 22" LCD fed via RGB from a Dreambox satellite
decoder).
I dread anything going wrong these days. Design, looks, and hype triumph
over fact and functionality at every turn, and finding an adequate
replacement for the simplest thing has become an obstacle course. I can't
even get jeans that fit me because of my height. I had to wait to go into
town for other reasons to get a refill for a decent biro. I had to buy a
replacement battery for my mobile on-line, because all the local stores want
to do is sell you a new one with a call package.
(-: Wanders of into the sunset muttering something in a pseudo-Yorkshire
brogue to the effect: "Eee! When I were a young 'un ..." :-)
<prattle.TakeThisOut@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:1180827441.515786.199880@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
>
> > "Roger R" <d-e-c-o-d-e-r.TakeThisOut@clara.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1180778906.1422.0@proxy02.news.clara.net...
> > >> Stay informed about: LCD's - Panasonic vs Samsung