New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

"TonyGamble" wrote in message
...
I am surprised that few people are making much of the difference
between plasma and lcd.

I'd have thought that would be the starting point (just like deciding
whether you wanted a petrol or diesel car) before worrying which
country it came from.

Not at all.
We are talking about do you spend £300 on a supermarket cheapie, or £400-450
on a quality name.
At both price points you can get a Plasma or LCD set, so once you have
decided on a budget, *then* you look at specific models and types of
technology

--
Alex

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:36:20 +0100, Bill Wright
wrote:

Bill wrote:

The bunch of no-marks who "planned" the digital changeover have stuck
Welsh TV onto a mast designed to face the opposite way and provide the
sheltered-from-Winter Hill, Mersey shores of Liverpool with English TV.
This mast is now pointing Welsh at the mainly English speaking Welsh
banks of the Dee and in the process has made reception in this part of
Cheshire pretty weird. Polarisation and channels of these backward
facing Welsh are virtually the same as WH, so this is a real test of the
logic of tuner set up procedures.

All verrrry interesting... See also
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/article...at-retunes.pdf

Does this problem also affect DVB-T2?
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:03:40 +0000, "Bob Henson"
wrote:



"geoff" wrote in message
:

You might be surprised to know that even central heating boilers are
expected to only have a 5-7- year life now

I'm not that surprised. Mine has been running for 20 years, and I'm
resisting all attempts to persuade me to change it until it goes
altogether. On something as low-tech and yet as highly priced as a
boiler it's a disgrace that the expected life is so short.

Ours lasted about ten years, according to the memory of the previous
owners.

I was hoping the new one would do better as we installed a water
softener.

The fitter reckoned this was about an average life nowadays and
although they may be repairable with varying amounts of difficulty the
price would be such as to make replacement more worthwhile.

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

In article , Bob Henson
writes

On something as low-tech and yet as highly priced as a
boiler it's a disgrace that the expected life is so short.

They have become a lot more complicated in recent times.

--
Mike Tomlinson

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

In article
s.com, js.b1 writes

An LCD TV is Panel + Processing + Backlight + PSU, and that is about
it. Of those PSU & backlight are replaceable if you have a branded
unit - on cheaper TVs it can prove difficult to source the parts
rendering it landfill..

I had a devil of a time finding the chopper control IC for a LG 19"
monitor power supply a couple years ago. The chip ID was 2AS01. Found
a UK supplier who claimed to have stock but wanted 15 quid apiece. Ebay
turned up a seller in Florida who sold me one for $3 delivered. It
arrived in three days and fixed the problem.

--
Mike Tomlinson

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
:

In article , Bob Henson
writes

On something as low-tech and yet as highly priced as a
boiler it's a disgrace that the expected life is so short.

They have become a lot more complicated in recent times.

So several people have told me, Mike, and I don't dispute it. However,
compared to a modern TV (which we were doing, by implication at least),
the technology is still relatively crude, and nowhere near justifies the
prices charged for it, IMHO. I would expect to get six boilers for the
price of one TV, not the other way round.


Regards,

Bob

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

"Bob Henson" wrote in message
...


"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
:

In article , Bob Henson
writes

On something as low-tech and yet as highly priced as a
boiler it's a disgrace that the expected life is so short.

They have become a lot more complicated in recent times.

So several people have told me, Mike, and I don't dispute it. However,
compared to a modern TV (which we were doing, by implication at least),
the technology is still relatively crude, and nowhere near justifies the
prices charged for it, IMHO. I would expect to get six boilers for the
price of one TV, not the other way round.


Regards,

Bob







But items made of metal - requiring welding, brazing, assembly, etc seem to
carry a premium as their production methods aren't as advanced or as
efficient as a purely electronic item. On this assumption though a TV should
cost even less - but there is a lot of material in the casing and the
screen. Packaging and shipping - along with what the market will pay is also
a factor. Selling plasma TVs to people with a perfectly adequate CRT TV
proved that people will pay for very little improvement in 'functionality'.

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 06:25:18 -0700 (PDT), "js.b1"
wrote:

CRT TVs were invariably repairable.
A CRT TV has a lot of discrete components. A component failure did not
write-off the TV despite a bit of labour involved particularly having
to resolder everything in sight.

Is that still true though? CRT TVs used to have a lot of discrete
components that could be individually replaced but in recent years
hasn't everything miniaturized and been integrated into chips? I
didn't think there was much inside the box these days and even if it
could be replaceable, can you order spare parts and can you find
someone who knows how to replace them? If you can, are you likely to
be told their labour cost will be more than a new tv?

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:42:14 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Sony Bravia panels are
brilliant, but many Samsungs have the same panel - do some reading and know
what's in the set. Panel is everything for vibrance, contrast (blacks on
LCDs are sometimes not actually very black - look for the contrast ratio
figures). And as js says, viewing angle. I have 2 Samsungs. One 42" decent
on with a Sony panel and it is brilliant. And one little cheap one that is
OK until you look at it from the floor and it blacks out fast below 0
degrees.

When I was looking for an LCD tv last year, the criticisms we poor
flesh tones and blacks are not black. Whether these are still valid, I
don't know.

I was also warned about viewing angle but I see Tim has beaten me to
it and mentioned all of that already.

If looking at contrast figures, I was told to ignore any "dynamic"
contrast figures and if there is a dynamic contrast option on the
menu, turn it off.

It gets confusing when one make, e.g. the Samsung, has panels by
different manufacturers. I remember reading that the 40" at the time
was a good panel butt he 37" panel made by someone else was not.

BTW I bought a Samsung LCD and was very happy with it. The problem is
technology moves so fast, the TVs now have "freeview HD" built-in. If
this becomes the next big thing, I'm going to have to plug in yet
another box.

The other thing you get with a decent make is more likely a decent decoder.
It's not just about reception and picture anymore - with DTV it's aboout how
good the MPEG decoder is.

I never realized that. I just naively assumed they all used the same
codec or whatever.

New televisions from China or Taiwan
 

On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 06:36:41 -0700 (PDT), mike
wrote:

Given that, until a few years ago, we were all used to CRT, how come
so many have gone over to LCD and CRT are now impossible to buy new?

I was told it was due to weight. CRTs are heavy so it costs more to
ship them halfway around the world. LCDs and plasmas are lighter and
also thinner, so they can fit more in a container too.

There is also the WEEE regulations whereby (IIRC) manufacturers are
charged the cost of disposing old electrical equipment and they are
charged by weight, so CRTs would attract a higher charge than LCDs.

So it's all about money, not necessarily quality of picture.

One disappointing thing is that you used to be able to get small TVs
(~14 inch) quite cheaply to use in the kitchen/bedroom/wherever but I
haven't seen anything small and cheap yet.