LED TVs

[banjo]

I have a Samsung 42" at the moment and I am very pleased with it, but I just wondered if anyone had seen one of these LED TV's and what they thought of them ?

not worth the money when you are happy with what you have now

[Rockabilly Spike]

Originally Posted by Saaf_laandon_mo

I was looking at getting the 40" Samsung series 8 LED but have been put off with the fact that its just a backlit tv as opposed to true LED (as the arguments above have pointed out). So that leaves me with getting a 8 series LCD (@£850) but I am also contemplating a Panasonic Viera 600mz plasma. Can anyone guide me as to which TV I should go for, given a budget of 850ish. Everyone I've spoken to has told me to steer away from plasmas, but surely a 600mz set would give me a better picture than the Samsung LCD? Would the LED stll not give a better picture given its much higher contrast ratio?

anyone who tells you to steer clear of plasma tvs, especially panasonic, has no idea about TVs.

the amount of myths about plasma TVs are unreal.

[banjo]

Originally Posted by Rockabilly Spike

anyone who tells you to steer clear of plasma tvs, especially panasonic, has no idea about TVs.

the amount of myths about plasma TVs are unreal.

Quite right.

[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by Rockabilly Spike

anyone who tells you to steer clear of plasma tvs, especially panasonic, has no idea about TVs.

the amount of myths about plasma TVs are unreal.

Totally agree. I have a TH42PZ80 and the black levels are awesome. The clarity and depth of picture is the best I have seen at this size and budget.

[Saaf_laandon_mo]

So come on guys, what do you think i should buy?

[Flyboy]

Well, not being an expert on these things, I can only say that the TH42PZ80 has been a very good television set and has been of excellent quality, in my inexpert opinion. It is easily within your budget of eight hundred and fifty pounds and you can not really go wrong. I got mine at John Lewis and they were really very good. In fact, I always make my large ticket purchases there. Their "Never Knowingly Undersold" price promise guarantee is a no-brainer.

[jonbxx]

I've got a older Samsung 7 series LED backlit LCD and the increase in contrast over the TV it replaced (a standard Toshiba LCD) was amazing. I believe my TV has 64 individual LED zones which adjust the backlight levels as needed. Even the wife, who would have been happy with a 14 inch portable went 'woah' when we got it set up. You're not going to get plasma levels of contrast but you won't be far off them.

On where to buy, I got this TV to replace the old Toshiba on warranty from John Lewis after 3.5 years so that 5 year warranty can come in handy

[Rockabilly Spike]

how quick was the service with John Lewis warranty?

we're constantly being told at work (Currys) that JL's service is free but its severely limited in terms of time span, home collection, loan TV, repair time etc.

i've never been able to find anyone that has HAD the warranty and actually used it!

I know loads of people who have bought there because of the free warranty.

i wish DSG offerred this sort of service but they wont and cant afford to take an underwritten insurance policy out to cover all large TVs they sell cos the figures are far larger than the amount that John Lewis sell.
they dont have half as many stores as Currys/PC World do

[Flyboy]

Just to put that into perspective. I bought an HP PC a couple of years ago. The first one I bought, the hard drive was working overtime the whole time it was switched on and it kept crashing. I had it seventy-two hours and John Lewis said just bring it in and we will swap it over. The next one, after three weeks, kept crashing as well, would not go into stand-by, would not recognise the HP monitor and would not make movies from the software provided. Again, John Lewis swapped it. Another three weeks later, the darned thing kept switching itself on at random. John Lewis said, "although it has gone past the initial twenty-eight days from original date of purchase, when we give an automatic replacement, as this one was only three weeks old, we will honor the twenty-eight day replacement." I have had relatively few problems with it since.

I bought a refurbished DVD and HDD recorder from there in the January sales. The DVD tray became locked after about five months and I took it back. They repaired it within seventy-two hours and called to tell me that it was repaired and as they have a delivery in my village the next day, would I like them to drop it off on the way.

Can't imagine Currys, Comet or PC World saying that.

The television set I bought form there was eight hundred and fifty pounds. It had been advertised at eight hundred and ninety-five pounds, three days after I called to confirm the price of eight hundred and fifty pounds, but as I had called them and asked about the cost, I was given the price I was quoted. I then, two weeks later, saw an identical television set in Comet for seventy pounds less and I was refunded the difference by John Lewis.

[Chris]

Another vote for JL service from me. They've always been superb when we've had problems (which hasn't been often, to be fair).

They are also very good at recovering from their own mistakes ... some years ago my Handspring Visor broke down when it was still under their warranty; they sent it away for repair but didn't do the paperwork properly and it got lost. So they just gave me a completely new unit. However, as the Visor was no longer in production, I got a free choice of equivalents. I chose a Palm m515, which was top-of-the-line at the time. Then they threw in the accessories I needed to replace my now-useless Visor ones (a leather case and a collapsible keyboard).

It was their mistake and it cost them hundreds to fix, but they did so promptly and with a smile (although I expect the assistant that bodged the paperwork probably got a right kicking behind the scenes). There was no arguing with a call centre, no raising tickets, no nonsense of any kind, just good old fashioned face to face customer service.

[danielf]

I bought an £80 pair of shoes from JL a couple of years ago. Went to have them resoled some 8 months later only to be told they couldn't be fixed because the spine was broken (or something like that). Took them back to JL, saying that I expect an £80 pair of shoes to last longer than that, but didn't have a receipt. They refunded me for the pair of shoes on the basis of a bank statement which showed an £80 payment to JL 8 months earlier, with obviously no mention of what item I purchased. Top service...

[jonbxx]

My warranty experience was somewhat complicated but only because of me kicking up a stink...

My old LCD started to get really bad image retention. If I watched any 4:3 program with the black bars down the side for more than 30 minutes, I got a purple cast on the screen for the rest of the day. I called JL and they scheduled an engineer there and then to come and take the TV away with a loan set to cover. They use external companies for their TV servicing.

They took the TV away and after 3 days told me this image retention was normal and they were sending it back to me. I was not happy so I called JL again and they offered to get another company to come and have a look. They did and agreed there was a problem but they couldn't get a replacement screen. the long and the short of it was that JL gave me a nice credit note to spend on a new TV. That note was on the full value (£1450) and not the price matched value (£1035) A £1450 TV these days is a lot of telly!

[Flyboy]

And that is why I am always prepared to pay a few extra quid to shop there. It saves me more money in the long run than it costs me in the short term. Whenever I go in at a busy period, they have a "floor walker" (today's equivalent of Captain Peacock from "are you being served") who asks what the customer is looking for, assigns an assistant, asking them to wait on a customer seating area (sofas, coffee and water cooler). The assistant then helps you make your purchase and doesn't bugger off when after they show you the shelf. They are fully trained in all aspects of their department (and in many others as well) and I have yet to fault to their knowledge on the products (as much as can be expected. EDIT: No.....more than can be expected).

Whilst shopping for four slice toaster last year, the assistant knew about every product and all the features, what they did and why. The assistant did not leave my side until I was satisfied I had all the information I needed. She even had four cardboard cut-outs of different sized bread slices (all marked with different makes of bread, Hovis, Kingsmill etc.), to demonstrate that the slots would take the bread (a particular issue with many makes of four slice toaster )

I used to go to places like Comet, Currys and Dixons. If I asked an assistant to tell me about a product, they would pick up the card from the shelf and read it to me. I mean, I could quite easily do that myself. If I asked why features were there, I would get replies such as, "how am I supposed to know." I bought a DVD player from Comet six years ago. I wanted to see how worked and what the quality of the picture was. They would not hook it up to a television set to demonstrate it to me. When I bought the refurbished DVD player from John Lewis, before even asking, they offered to demonstrate it to me and show the controls.

I won't shop anywhere else for these sorts of things.

---------- Post added at 12:23 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------

I also understand that it is a very nice to work as well. If I ever decide to enter the world of retail, that is where I would work.

Each employee is not an "employee," they are "partners," with a genuine stake in the business. They earn a basic salary, but also earn shares in the profits from the company. The employee benefits are second to none. They run employee committees (I think they call them "councils"), who have a real say in how the company is run.

[spanna]

Originally Posted by Saaf_laandon_mo

I was looking at getting the 40" Samsung series 8 LED but have been put off with the fact that its just a backlit tv as opposed to true LED (as the arguments above have pointed out). So that leaves me with getting a 8 series LCD (@£850) but I am also contemplating a Panasonic Viera 600mz plasma. Can anyone guide me as to which TV I should go for, given a budget of 850ish. Everyone I've spoken to has told me to steer away from plasmas, but surely a 600mz set would give me a better picture than the Samsung LCD? Would the LED stll not give a better picture given its much higher contrast ratio?

Where are you getting an 8 series for that sort of price?

My wife has fallen in love with the 7 series & I can only see that at £899