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

Oh no, the tuner scare again

[Anonymous Coward]

having the ATSC tuner built in is a big plus, since a standalone ATSC tuner will set you back another $200-300

Blah! I have to say that the cost of a tuner is either in or out of the price. I mean that if a TV sells for $3000 with a tuner than I bet a bargain based TV will sell for $2700-$2800 without a tuner. The cost doesn't magically go away. Besides I like the tuner to be outside the TV so I can upgrade one component for a little money verses buying a whole new TV when (I-Z)DTV comes out or when I want new features that haven't been invented yet. Read tuner not tuna, so no dolphins were injured in the making of this post.

Re:Oh no, the tuner scare again

[Kevin Stevens]

Well, I have experienced four different providers in the past year (time warner in upstate ny, cablevision on LI, comcast in NJ, and RCN in NJ) and to get cable HDTV, each service needed you to use one of their boxes which have the tuner built in. This is not to say that you can't get it over the air, but presumably if youre buying a high end tv, you are going to be getting digital cable. For the low end market I agree with including tuners, but on high end HDTV's 40" and over, I would rather save the space, weight, and price and have the speakers and tuners left out. Its just a completely different market.

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).

Re:They do it well

[Mantorp]

Dell is a smart company that runs a lean & mean R&D machine

If that means "Dell doesn't really invent anything they just take already good ideas and commoditize them", then I agree.

24" 1920x1200/12msec LCD is pretty interesting too

[xmas2003]

While the W4200HD is pretty cool but a bit pricy (nutshell summary of the article), a perhaps more interesting display coming from Dell is the 24" LCD offering 1920x1200 resolution and 12-16 msec response time - also reviewed by Extreme Tech with a sticker price of $1,199 ... although I have not see it for sale yet on Dell's websitee. This is going to put a lot of pressure on the large LCD makers, and with the occasional 25% off deal from Dell, could drop below $1,000.

My christmas lights and BBQ Grill would look HULK'ing on that monitor! ;-)

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....

Not HDTV

[mamer-retrogamer]

At 1024X768 this "High Definition" television can not fully render neither of the two High-Def resolutions of 720p (1280x720) nor 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced).

-Mike

Not a true HDTV

[That's Unpossible!]

I quote:

"The W4200HD has a native pixel resolution of 1024x768, and as such, isn't a true HD device, since it doesn't have enough pixels to draws [sic] a 1280x720 (720p) HDTV image."

Which means it also can't do 1080i (which requires 1920x1080, almost twice the horizontal resolution this TV is capable of).

Re:Please mod me down right now!

[Anonymous Coward]

"But what does a company built around making inexpensive PCs know about HDTVs?"

Not much, I'd wager...since said company doesn't know much about making inexpensive PCs to start with (see above post).

What Dell does know a lot about is marketing inexpensive PCs...and I'll bet that knowledge can be made to apply to the HDTV market fairly easily.

Maybe just wait for SED display.

[zymano]

Flat panel SED

Photos of SED

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.