[nick h]

imo very, very little

the internet has allowed anybody to voice their opinions about equipment or anything else

but now if you enter any site seeking advice you are assaulted with dramatically diverse opinion

now these posters can't all be right

only recently in another place a poster has said that the Panny commercial panels eg PH9 are rejects because they could not meet the standards for home cinema (his dealer told him this!!)

i'm happy because i know the score and can advise people - but to a newcomer its a minefield

and it will only get worse

whats to be done

[rhubarbe]

But how do we know that you know the real score, nick, rather than the score you were told by a bloke down the pub who might have thought that you were asking about another score entirely and thus accidentally gave you the wrong score, even though he did know the right one but didn't know which score it was that you wanted?

As you so sagely put it: a minefield.

[Richard46]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick h

but to a newcomer its a minefield

Yes it is a bit like real life. However I would bet you will usually get better advice on here than from your High Street CE purveyor. If people post crap they usually get put right pretty quickly.

My advice to newcomers would be wait for a bit of agreement from a number of posters and dont spend cash on the advice of one person. Unless it is rhubarbe of course. He does know his stuff.

Richard

[Richard46]

Actually it would help if there was some way of seeing who has a rep. for good advice, perhaps a thanks system (limited to the media zone) with scores posted here and not buried away in profiles would help identify them.

There are posters like nwhitfield; marcdavis; pop roberts; David (2) ; chrisjr; SimonBlackham; rhubarbe and many others who consistently give good advice but apart from their total posts* there is no way for a newby to know who they are.

*Some posters have massive post totals but rarely contribute anything useful to anyone else.

Richard

[Orbitalzone]

I thought I knew the score and everyone else was wrong

seriously though, everyone and their dog has become a self appointed expert on everything, the Internet just gave them a convenient place where you can 'be' whoever you want.

[Chris Simon]

You do have to have a bit of nouse to sort out the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the signal from the noise, and all other cliches. But that's just like real life - ask a number of people and you'll get many different answers. And this is the internet - full of information, but it's how you use it that's important.

The best things about forums such as this is you get an awful lot of experience from people who have a specialist interest in the subject. It brings like-minded people together and you find out things that the salesman never told you or that could only be found out by many hours playing with the thing.

You could ask "Is xxxx any good?" and you'll get one reply saying "It's the best thing I've ever bought" and another saying "It's hopeless, don't touch it with a bargepole". But over the course of a thread and several threads, you can piece together the information. You might find out that the person who thought it was rubbish had not set it up correctly, or maybe the person who though it was fantastic was simply because he'd never bought such a thing before and it was a novelty. Also, regular posters build up a reputation, whether good or bad.