Dell Enters HDTV Market with Plasma Display

ThinSkin writes "It was only a matter of time before PC giant Dell would jump headlong into the HDTV market. But what does a company built around making inexpensive PCs know about HDTVs? ExtremeTech has done a full review with benchmarks on Dell's offering, the Dell W4200HD 42" Plasma HDTV."

Comments

They do it well

[erick99]

Dell is a smart company that runs a lean & mean R&D machine. They seemingly put a lot of thought into new product introduction as well as price point. These folks are going to be hellish successful for a long time. It doesn't really matter much what product they are putting out, they seem to do it well. Hate 'em or love 'em, you gotta admire them.

They are particularly good about not reinventing the wheel, rather, working with other vendors or manufacturers who have already figured it out (so to speak) and then putting the Dell spin on it if needed. Once again, a pretty cool business process from my point of view.

As an aside, I don't work for Dell and I don't buy their products (I like Sony Vaio's and HP printers for some reason) but I do admire their business acumen and their business models. (I do, however, have extreme HDTV Plasma Display envy).

Plasma/LCD vs DLP

[Bruha]

I'm sorry but there is no compelling reason for me to ever want a plasma tv. We've got plenty and they have all had burn in issues.

I dont think image quality is better than a CRT

And I dont need to mount it on the wall.

I consider either a DLP big screen or projector as a more logical choice and the price helps also.

Plasma short lifespan...

[cayenne8]

I dunno. Unless plasma TV have gotten a lot better...I don't want one. I guess I'm old school, but, when I lay out money for a nice, large TV, I expect to get more than 2-3 years use out of them. We have plasma tv's in the lobbies of the bldgs I work at...they're on during the day on the news channels. They have to be replace almost annually as you can see where the logos and talking heads of people are....the first ones were early ones at $25K each...cheaper now, but, still. My $2K 60' projection tv has a great picture on it in my living room...is on every hour I'm at home...and doesn't have the problem with display degradation over such a short period of time.

Are LCD tv's any better?

If I'm gonna lay out over $3K...I expect a tv that will still be working well for at least 5-10 years. All my old ones did....

Maybe just wait for SED display.

[zymano]

Flat panel SED

Photos of SED

There is a bigger fish to be had... better n cheap

[zioncity]

A friend of mine recently got a Pioneer Plasma at Best Buy recently. The size is like 42 or 43 inches... After all rebates, 500 from Pioneer, 100 from Comcast and also with buying the 4 year warranty for like 400 clams.. and taxes... I believe the set was costing about 3500-3550. Now he also got a 300 dollar best buy gift check and 200 in bonus bucks... for 500 in extra spending cash.

This set also comes with their PureDrive video processor which handles processing, filtering of all HD, SD and ED signals... for those rednecks out there... Standard TV or SD, ED or 480progressive signals and of course, HD or 720p. This processing unit on his tv.. a 43 inch now confirmed, fuckin rocked serious ass. Cartoon Network and Dexters Laboratory or Toonami never made Standard TV look so good and for us size queens,.. bigger is better... LOL.

But seriously.. even with the PixelWorks chip... the Pioneer is not only superior quality in terms of longevity, but that PureVision Box rocks and is an excellent video processor for the buck. Another comparison is my 30 inch Syntax Olevia HDTV lcd has the same PixelWorks chip and contrary to popular belief... it is freaking awesome for the buck... especially after you fine tune each input via the setup on the remote, each input has it's own settings...

So unless Dell can come up with a better trick,.. I say go Pioneer for Plasma... Syntax Olevia or other for a better deal and and better quality LCDs. By the way... I got mine for $999 at MicroCenter in Boston and with my Denon 1910, with DVI and 720p upscaling... Finding Nemo, Sky Captain and LOTR 3, Return of the King with very good night fight scenes on the Syntax... gave me a good ole woo... er uh... you know what I mean.

Nuff said.

Zion

Advertorial Alert

[SethJohnson]

This fellow, ThinSkin, is a schill for ExtremeTech.com. Check his user info. In February, ThinSkin has submitted four articles that were accepted for Slashdot publication and all of them were links to ExtremeTech.com content.

Clearly this is paid placement to increase traffic to ExtremeTech.