I'm sure there are some good quality sets still, but you not only have to
pay more, you have to know which ones.
The badge on the front is little help.
Yep - that's pretty much the feeling I got. The AWA had the same
control layout (and jungle chip, from the on-screen menu) as another
brand a few sets along the shelf. ("Aiko?" I think it was...) I
spent a lot of time adjusting picture controls too, to try and compare
- and didn't really see any difference in picture quality between sets
- except with one LG, which was double the price. (It wasn't THAT
many years ago, the picture difference was obvious between sets.)
one of my pet gripes is lack of servicing
information. Enquire about the price and
availability of the service booklet.
No book no buy.
Regards,
John Crighton
Hornsby
Yep, I didn't think of this at the time - and I should have. Oh
well... We went with the AWA - it had DVD/component video inputs + 2
sets of normal AV inputs plus 1 AV output, S-video & a headphone
socket... Several JB staff kept telling us the Conia (and all other
68cm around that price) only had one or two AV (RCA) inputs. (They
were wrong - the Conia had the S-video as well.)
The AWA was $328 at BigW - and the other sets we could find with
component inputs was double that price. When I got it home, I found a
deep "razor cut" in the plastic shell - at the bottom where it meets
the screen. (It would have bugged me.) So back it went - and I had
to open another four boxes (all that they had) to find a reasonable
one. One had not had it's painting completed - you could see the
plastic underneath right along the bottom edge of the tube. Another
had paint rubbed off on the edges (even though the box was sealed),
and yet another had a deep 1cm scratch right in the middle of the
screen!
The one we finally got had some light scratches on the top - but I
figured it would get that way eventually anyway, so I asked for a
further discount - and got another 5% off.
If supporting the local industry matters to you, Panasonic make most
of their large screen TVs at their facility in Penrith, west of
Sydney:
http://www.pvedc.com.au/cgi-bin/articles/display.pl?article_id=66
Don't really know what Panasonic are like quality wise, but at least
they are made in Oz.
Dave
We bought several items the same day - a Panasonic VCR was one of
those. Hope it works better than it looks! It's controls are plain
and poorly laid out, like they're from the early eighties. (Pity the
build quality doesn't look early 80s..)
: )
Allan.
