TV Rental

[Panter]

Do watch out for the cheaper LCD's as the picture isn't up to much - well it's good, but I still think my Panasonic 28" wide 100 Htz 'tube' still knocks the pants off most stuff - I got the TV probably 18 months before the LCD's got affordable (i.e. about £500) - the Panasonic had been reduced from £650 to about £450 which was way more than the wife would want to pay, but I went and did it - it's been fantastic - fab picture, great sound etc. the only problems we've had have been digital related - i.e. if you don't run the channel update, sometimes the sound drops out...eh...

My sister has a new HD 42" something, paid a fair bit for it (£1k), but the picture quality isn't as nice as my old 'TV'

Our old CRT has really good picture quality, its a decent size too. Its only that we need to get it up on the wall that this has even come up TBH.

I'll have a good read up and see what we need to spend to get something decent.

 

[KitsuneAndy]

Renting can be good at the moment as the technology is changing so quickly.

A lot of LCD tv's aren't quite up to scratch with the up-scaling of pictures yet. A decent Plasma is very expensive and both may well be superceded by OLED in the next couple of years.

Hughes Electrical do rentals, no idea if they're just a local firm or not though.

 

[marinyork]

It's not changing quickly Kitsune (of course it is to an extent). LCDs are upto scratch as they were only ever meant as a budget that no one has bettered so far.

OLED much as I'd like it is not quite on the horizon apart from in micro devices. At the end of this year 7" OLEDs go on sale in japan with limited runs. Samsung have a roadmap for OLED which mentions PDAs next year, laptops, small tvs, they don't envisage getting onto medium tvs till 2010, I think for large tvs, who knows.

If you're wanting a 37" minimum this is good, things have moved on slightly and its 37"ers and above that have the deals on. If you want above 42" its quite hard to find a deal above that though. My mates 32" LCD which he's had for quite a while now broke about a year back and was covered by warranty.

 

[KitsuneAndy]

It's not changing quickly Kitsune (of course it is to an extent). LCDs are upto scratch as they were only ever meant as a budget that no one has bettered so far.

OLED much as I'd like it is not quite on the horizon apart from in micro devices. At the end of this year 7" OLEDs go on sale in japan with limited runs. Samsung have a roadmap for OLED which mentions PDAs next year, laptops, small tvs, they don't envisage getting onto medium tvs till 2010, I think for large tvs, who knows.

If you're wanting a 37" minimum this is good, things have moved on slightly and its 37"ers and above that have the deals on. If you want above 42" its quite hard to find a deal above that though. My mates 32" LCD which he's had for quite a while now broke about a year back and was covered by warranty.

Last I read there were plans for a 32" OLED by 2010. Considering how long it's taken for an alternative to CRT's to emerge then I'd say 3 technologies in the past few years (and projecting forward to OLED being viable) is very quick in the scheme of things.

There's also going to be a 32" Plasma launched early next year (Panasonic or LG I think, not 100% though). Currently the smallest is 37".

 

[marinyork]

Actually Samsung were talking about 42" inchers at the far end of 2010 - sounds good. The roadmap for samsung was along the lines of what I was saying but they then revised it, perhaps because of what Toshiba said about launching 30" screens in 2009 which seems like commercial bravado. So on the one side you have people saying small/medium tvs will be OLED in 2009/10 and on the other side parts of two companies saying you'll have massive ones by 2009/10. Bearing in mind that Samsung only started mass production a couple of months ago I'd be quite surprised if their initial roadmap was radically wrong. I think the estimate others have made of large OLEDs 2010-12 is about right.

 

[bonj2]

Does anyone out there still rent TV's?

yeah, probably. Word of warning though, some are quite realistic - make sure you don't forget at an inopportune moment. larynx is the giveaway.







IGMC

 

[Panter]

Took a little while to sink in

 

[Panter]

Actually, that was probably badly worded...................................

 

[Tim Bennet.]

We got our TV from a skip outside a hotel. It was only a 14 inch portable, but apart from the casing being all smashed, it seemed okay. It even had the remote with it!

It would have been easy to bodge it back together, but I wanted to do a proper job as it would be on show in the front room. So I went and bought some black duct tape and used that instead of my usual silver. Looks smart.

 

[Aperitif]

10/10 bonj

 

[Kirstie]

If you want a TV I can sell you my old one for twenty quid.
There's nothing wrong with it, it's 7 years old, toshiba 28" screen. It's been sitting behind the sofa in my living room for about a year, since my other half bought a flat screen one a while ago.