I was in my local Asda recently and they were selling 43" (is this a strange or new size) Samsung plasma tv's for £299 is this a bargain or will they be crap .I have had my 42" Samsung 2 years now and fingers crossed no problems and I'm delighted with it but £299 seems an amazing deal .

About average now.

There are better TV's but it will have a watchable picture in colour and at the price there is little else around .

Just be a aware that the screen resolution on all these super budget TV's is only 1024 x 768 , but again its quite watchable but unless you are coming from a very old TV or even a crt tv the you will be going backwards in screen resolution .

For most people the resolution won't make a real difference and so they shouldn't be put off by it. Obviously that depends.

It's perfectly fine for SD, but HD hardly looks any better on those kinds of Plasma's - but at the price you can't really grumble.

I would buy a £299 Plasma any day over £299 LCD - You will get a better pic £ for £.

Jeez you must be disappointed reading this Nigel. A Samsung lasting 2 years without a problem lol I hope mine lasts that long or longer

I don't believe it . You've actually posted something I agree with.
That must be a first.

Having used LCD for over 4 years I wanted to change to a 3D set and opted for a 42" Panasonic plasma (I always have {Panasonic) but once it arrived I was expecting to be amazed at HD just as I was when I upgraded from 32" to 37" , but what a letdown.
HD looked very drab.
Often on here I see posts from members asking what the fuss is about HD and I can only assume they have plasma because the HD was really disappointing.

When I first viewed Toy Story 3 on Bluray on my LCD I was blown away at the detail of the images .
Testing out several Blurays including TS3 confirmed my suspicions .Plasma is shit.

Even with the plethora of image enhancing tricks like Vivid Colour ,Smoothmotion etc the picture was dull and drab compared to the LCD.
What were colourful spectacles on the LCD were lifeless on the plasma.( and the Intelligent Frame creation feature is dreadful)

Fortunately I was able to swap it for a 37" LED Viera set and wow.
The pictures make even the earlier LCD look inferior.
Not sure what the exact difference is between LED and LCD but I've never seen pictures like it before .
Everything from SD broadcasts , dvd , Bluray etc all looks fantastic.
The 3D is nice too although I'm finding it hard to get the brightness as high as I would like it to be .

I'd never touch plasma ever again although I agree that SD looks better than it does on LCD

Not tried any in that price range , but I tried an £1100 Panasonic plasma and the pictures were far worse than the £600 LCD I had (although the plasma was a 42" 3D set).

The LED blows them both away

Can I ask which model of 42" Pana you had ?
Just a aside is that some people mistake picture brightness for picture quality , which is one of the reasons why TV's with led back lighting are popular . Plasma's particularly at the medium to high end need a while to appreciate & on things like the 42gt20 / 30 need CATS turning off !!

Sounds like you like cartoon colors is all, neo pdp panasonic plasmas have amazing picture quality.

http://10rate.com/best-hdtv-reviews/
Top tv's are plasmas

I usually have all the processing tricks off but even trial and error on the plasma couldn't do anything.
Rather than needing time to appreciate I think you mean time to get used to and I didn't want to get used to a dreary picture where the wow factor from all HD sources was gone.

Not sure off hand what the exact model was but it was a 42" 3D smart tv set.

The LED I have is from the new range released in February.
I think most people can tell the difference between brightness and quality.
With Bluray I like to see the detail of the image - thats what HD is for , but the plasma couldn't deliver regardless of how it was set.

The LED finallly delivers a true real deep black that I've not seen before

Pocatello - I've had you on ignore for several months now but I clicked on your post just to see if you had improved but I see its the same old rubbish as before.
I can't take seriously anyone who claims that you can't appreciate HD on a 32" set

A set where the difference between HD and SD is not at all clear is not what I want .
I'm surprised I'm agreeing with Nigel Goodwin for once who as a retailer likely sees more sets than we do.

Lol ignore, well I can't take anyone seriously that claims black levels are better on an led than a decent plasma, as my ratings link shows, there is no agreement with you over your opinion of plasmas, you claim to know a lot but I've yet to see credible confirmation of your opinions. If you couldn't calibrate a decent plasma for anything other than a "dreary" picture, then the fault probably lies with you, not the display. I mean what are you going to claim? Every other expert reviewer out there is wrong? Only you know the truth? Professional calibrators are all wrong? Pretty unbelievable...

When everyone else disagrees with you, you might do well to reconsider your stance...

But who are we kidding, you won't see this because you need to ignore any information that does not fit your preconceived views.

My statements over 32" being too small for HD are just logical, at normal seating distances, your eyes have limited resolving power, just a fact of nature.

John Lewis are selling a 60 inch LCD for £999. I was very tempted, but have not had good experiences with SHARP televisions. I have read good reviews about this monster though.

http://www.johnlewis.com/231400528/Product.aspx

That link is now £1299 -- still very cheap , but then again its got to be to sell against the opposition !

I must admit I must admit I haven't seen those particular plasmas so can't comment specifically. Have you seen them or are you extrapolating from your own very old plasma?

lol, that has been £999 for weeks now. I post a link and it goes up after a few hours.

I haven't seen those specific models, but we do sell a few Samsung HD Ready Plasma sets - and they are crap on HD as well.

Pocatello - I know that you base your opinions on links and the theories of others rather than making up your own mind and you have quite rightly been frequently ridiculed with the junk you trot out about peoples ability to see HD on smaller screens and the distances they need to sit to enjoy it .
It was pretty evident last time you said the same guff that most people in the real world know your figures are a nonsense.

As for your comment about "cartoon colours" . As I have Vivid Color OFF and the colour setting below the 50% factory setting its another example of you not having a clue.

I suggest you have a look at Panasonics new range of LED's .
I have one that was released in February and I was able to compare it directly with one of their 42" Plasma sets that retails for £1100.

Did you - or are you just relying on the tests that you read about as usual?

Making up your own mind? Sorry but thats not how the logic works, there are experts rational people rely on to form opinions, you don't just "make up your own mind" about evolution and pretend its a bad theory because you don't like it. The fact is I've been the only one to provide links justifying my position, your side only has ridicule as you've said, and that kind of says it all.

I honestly don't care about your anecdotal experience, you've tested whaT? 2-3? tv's personally, a sample size of nothing in terms of any rational testing. Never mind your possible calibration mistakes or set up issues.
The rankings say your opinion on image quality is far from the norm. A bevy of expert reviewers do not agree with your opinion, I think I know who I'm going to give more credence when "making up my own mind".

By your line of reasoning creationists and evolutionists are on equal ground. Sorry that isn't how things work, like the creationist you've come up with zero backing for your position, only ridicule. Everyones free to have their own opinion, that is true, but don't even pretend for a second that every opinion is valid.

In a way you are both right.

However to say LCD (Which LED is) is best goes against much of the industry and expert views + opinions of many av nuts.

The best two TV's you can buy at the moment are Plasma - and the Panasonic ST50, VT50 & GT50 are just out now which have drasticly improved upon last year making them the ones to beat in 2012.

LED is the next best but the wash-out and halo/ghosting effects are visible in the vest majority of cases. Colour wise there's nothing in it (plasma does easily achieve a lot more natural and warmer pic across the tech) If the LED is full back light it can achieve blacks close to Plasma level, but response time and angle fade are setbacks that wont do imo.

Pocatello - I know why I have you on Ignore now. Its so long since I bothered to read any of your posts and I can see why .
Personally I prefer to watch tv based on what I like and not what the "experts" claim.
I'll leave that to sheep like you

I've tested out LCD, plasma and LED and I know which one is best for me.
I like an HD tv to display HD as HD , not as a marginal improvement over SD.

If Panasonic plasmas are the ones to beat then I'm glad I didn't try any of the others

You choose to ignore because you find it easier to bury your head in the sand than to come up with a cogent argument. One could also consider the whole phenomenon of you bringing up your need to "put others on ignore" and announcing it so publicly as just a veiled insult. You've resorted to this tactic rather than dealing with whether your opinion is based on anything at all.

since you keep prattling on about how size doesn't matter when it comes to whether you can appreciate the full detail of a picture whenever you bring up your personal issues with me. Well heres just a little more supporting my case.

"The precise acuity of human eyes seeing with 20/20 vision is an established scientific fact based on our common physiology. So theater designers have always known how distance from the screen affects our ability to resolve detail. This can be expressed as a function of screen height, commonly called picture height. And from this relationship, Cookson and others inside DCI surmised that 2K, which was already establishing itself as a de facto standard for digital cinema, wasn’t going to cut it for the long term in these newer theaters. They advocated another option for the future, one that amounted to a full doubling of pixels in both the horizontal and vertical planes to bring the grid to 4096 x 2160. That’s 4K." http://www.hometheater.com/content/4k-revolution Considerations based on the limits of the human perceptual system have always been taken into account, its not "opinion" based. If the sheep are considering the majority of evidence which happens to be completely in disagreement with your opinions, then how is that an insult?

But yes you can go back to ignoring people,, or just announcing it, I really don't care.

Jeez , that must make my 3 year old 32" Samsung geriatric then! Anyway , my parents bought one of these 43" plasmas and sometimes get an overheating message on screen saying it's going to shutdown in 45 secs unless the OK button is pressed. Any thoughts on this (yes it is well ventilated)? Had a google but can't find anything. If you look on avforums there is quite a long thread about this model (ends in 450) which is worth a read.

Are you sure it's about overheating?, recent TV's switch off automatically if you haven't pressed a button for a while - and this is turned ON by default (more stupid EU legislation).

It wouldn't be a very useful overheating response if pressing a button prevents it.