i have a toshiba 32" thinking of letting my son have that while i upgrade to a plasma 42" anybody got a plasma what are they like i dont want to get rid of the toshiba (& finish up catching a cold )

thanks

I have a 42" plasma, its pretty good really - much slimmer than a standard set. They do tend to show up even the slightest bit of interference though - roll on HD TV

You can get the latest all singing, all dancing TV - But youre still stuck with the same old rubbishy programmes.

wait for LCD TVs to come down in price as they're much better (and High Definition compatible. There's no point paying a couple of grand for a telly if it won't work with new technology). This time next year you should be seeing 42" or bigger TVs for a decent price.

Not brilliant IMO. They have problems with colours so that sometimes the picture looks like Windows on your PC does when you're viewing it in a low colour resolution. This is especially true for light, pale colours such as people's faces, particularly when they move around a lot. LCD screens are much better.

We got an LCD tv and a couple of months after the 12 month warranty the bloomin thing broke. Can't get it repaired :rant:

It was a good spec tv as well :(

We're getting another one, but this time we'll have to look seriously at an extended warranty too.

Overrated. motion is not good, you get taht motion blur thing which you should not get...
make sure you see it running before you buy. :)

Plazma TV's are good, but you get alot of motion blurr because its all heat based, and areas of the screen have to cool down from one milisecond to the next and so-on..

the standard LCD ones arent much better, purely because of the way LCD works, and the on/off time is between 8 and 14ms..

the HD LCD Screens however are much better, like 4ms response time, a much higher pixel ratio, many many more pixels, and smaller... (number/size of pixels used, higher+smaller = better quality)

Theres a very nice LG - HDTV In Dixons on Fargate, Right infront of you when you walk through the (Right) door.. its listed at £999 -- i'd love to get that :)

There are a lot of myths about plasmas, many of them deriving from the faults of the earliest models and also from speculation about how long they are likely to last.

The variation in quality between expensive and cheap plasmas is still quite high, but on the whole plasma screen quality has improved markedly in the last two years or so.

If you want a 42" screen, you really have no choice but to go for a plasma. The maximum size of a CRT is 36" and these are very bulky and heavy. LCDs (inless you want to pay the earth) tend to come in smaller sizes and the picture quality on these is not as good as the smaller ones.

Motion blur won't be a problem on good plasmas (well, its not a problem on mine). Nor will you get much solarisation. The picture quality these days is very good, but in my opinion not yet quite as good as a good CRT.

One of the best plasmas on the market these days is the Panasonic 500. Its HD ready and has a good picture. Its not cheap though - expect to pay about £2,500. Others to look out for are the Pioneers (43") and the latest Hitachis.

Visit the AVforums website for all you wil ever need to know about plasmas.

My two year old 42" Samsung has very little motion-blur - you have to really study the picture to notice it.
The biggest reason I went for a plasma is the form-factor. I have a small, square living room with a central fireplace on the dominant wall. A large CRT would simply have taken up too much space and would have had to be placed in a corner, making speaker placement a pain.
One thing to watch for is the price of a wall-bracket if you want to hang the screen on the wall. When I was looking, these were several hundred pounds, which can really affect the budget! And I didn't sleep too well the first night it was on the wall - a couple of grand's worth of kit that weighs a ton bolted into 100-year-old bricks. It's still up there, so I must have done it right!