Technobabble

HDTV Television Brands

Posted by on May 2, 2006 | 3 Comments

HDTV television brands are bound to boggle your mind … whether you browse the websites, peruse the newspaper circulars, or take that trip to the big box electronics store. When you start shopping for flat-screen TVs, you’ll see familiar brands, brands you’ve never heard of, and brands you might remember from the past. So how do you know which HDTV brands are trustworthy and which are suspect?

Panasonic (Matsushita), Samsung, Toshiba, Philips, Pioneer … these are familiar brands. But who would have thought that LG would become the world’s largest producer of plasma TVs?

What about Magnavox and Westinghouse? Are these the very same companies that we knew (and possibly even loved) when we were kids? Can you draw a line from their LCD TVs of the present to their conventional CRT TVs of the past?

I never thought of Hewlett-Packard (HP) as being a contender in the plasma TV market … until today. It’s clear that HP’s making a serious run at it with aggressively priced 42- and 50-inch HDTV units. I saw both HP HDTV plasmas in person today and I was impressed. Rumor has it that the HP plasmas are built with the same components as the Panasonics, although they sell at a significantly lower price.

Which all begs the big question: Is HP in the plasma TV market to stay? Or will they bail out (like Gateway)? And how long will Dell stick it out?

  • http://n/a Dennis Booth

    Chris my wife and I bought an LG HD television set and for the first six months it was a tragedy. It kept breaking down with faults like arcing, picture size diminishing etc etc. No sooner get it right and back again to TV repairers who became just as exasperated. LG in meantime didn’t want to know about it and said parts had to come from Korea. For heaven’s sake they carried none in Australia!! Then there was a recall for a number of sets under certain registrations. Similar problems I assume. LG I think lost a lot of goodwill and customers in this time.

  • drwho

    as far as plasama tvonly tv able to be used as a monitor is not true i have had both and both had vga input my first tv a plasma was not a hidef it was digital my secound is a rear projection lcd tv it has both vga although this one does not have the white digital but supposidly the tv converts the signal

  • drwho

    my first tv was an akai my first day acidently all of the buttons under the bottom of the screen were push at the same time anyway long story short it took six months to try and get it fix the first time a board was replace that did not fix the issue then the part that was need was on back order each tech vist was around 4-6 weks apart even though akai has a coustomer phone no. that did not get any results after 6 mounths most of that my gift card was sitting on the mangers desk at my local compusa it does pay to have a extended warenty after that they started closing down several stores by the way it does pay to buy late model demos both tvs cost me less 1000 dollars one of the problems with being a guy we always want something bigger several times i ahve seen bigger sets for around the same price