Sparrow Posted May 30, 2008 Posted May 30, 2008 Decided to upgrade from my 'cheapy' 32" TCL LCD that I bought a couple of years back. It has been a great little set that I have fed with mostly component input Optus Aurora via satellite reciever due to attrocious FTA analogue reception & no digital feed being in regional area. Also had been using Samsung HD850 upscaling dvd which gave a pretty reasonable piccy !!! Bought a Samsung BD player last year & that livened up the display but was still lacking. I 'thought' it was pointless buying a 'better' quality tv due to having crap analogue reception & NO digital ... so believed it wasn't worth going bigger or better ??? Last weekend had been perusing Retravision catalogue & was quite taken with 42" Pana TH-42PX7A for $1299 ..... got me thinking just MAYBE is worth upgrading ??? So I checked out eBay and did a search for completed listings & found that 50" plasma were selling for not much more than that ??? I ended up bidding & winning a Samsung PS50C91HD for the princely sum of $1290 plus delivery !!! Was advertised as 'factory second' so before bidding I e-mailed the seller to ask just what that meant .... was told most were simply 'carton damaged' units. I was also aware after checking out the Samsung site that this panel was a superceded model & that the 'Q' model had an extra HDMI input & a few other features. When it arrived the carton WAS pretty tatty but the panel itself was unmarked & still in the factory wrap ... all the accessories were still in their original packaging ... un-opened too !!! I also bought a tilt wall bracket off eBay for $40 delivered, the EXACT same item as Retravision sell for $150 !!! Got it all up & mounted & working yesterday & WOW ... am I impressed !!! The colours are so much more vibrant & 'real' compared to the 'cheapy' LCD display I was using previously. Bluray set on 720p looks beautiful !!! I pretty much 'took a punt' buying a so called 'factory second' off eBay as although it had a 'RTB' 12 month warranty ... sending a 50" panel back to Sydney from the SW of WA would have not been cost effective ??? So it seems we are fast becoming a Samsung family ... have Samsung fridge, plasma, dvd player, bluray player & mobile phones ... *lol* ... Best 'cash' price I could get the same panel for from my local Retravision was $1999 ..... so I reasoned that saving what I did was worth taking a punt on a proper 'name brand' & if it was DOA I at least had a warranty of sorts ....BUT if something minor goes wrong ... it will be at my expense to fix ??? Am I happy with it ??? YEP ... worth every cent even though all I have to feed it is SD feed from sat box or 720p from bluray player. Haven't stopped watching it yet .... Xbox 360 displayed on it looks UNREAL too compared to the little 32" LCD !!! Was interested in seeing 'Tru HD' 1080 50" display .... but no one near us stocks them due to NO digital FTA transmission. So will just have to be happy with the bargain I think I got .... until I get the next 'upgrade bug' !!! I just 'wish' we could have Digital FTA here where I live !!!
kulfi Posted May 30, 2008 Posted May 30, 2008 I think you got a good deal and the TV looks to be just a case of carton damage. I hope that all goes well in the coming years. But how is this a thread about Brand names vs Cheapies ?
the_wonderchild Posted June 2, 2008 Posted June 2, 2008 like i said previously, glad to hear things worked out. Most of the time it really does appear, 'you get what you pay for', but every now and then there is also a diamond in the rough to find.
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