Gateway Plasma

Gateway is advertising a 42" plasma TV for $2500. Sounds too good to be true. Does Gateway make their own TV? Have they been around long enough to have a service record?

 

I seriously doubt they make their own. But, has any plasma manufacturer been around enough to have a good service record???? About 10,000 hours for a half-life = 10 hours of viewing everyday for almost three years. Then what do ya do??
Buy a new plasma??

So I guess the best thing to do is go give them a good look and find out what their warranty is.

fred

 

Gateway plasmas are rebadged Sampo tvs.

 

My gripe is not so much with the plasma technology, as I am the format (wide movie screen, or fat TV). I love to watch movies, but my TV spends 90% of it's life displaying normal television broadcasts. On a widescreen plasma that means the center gets used all the time while the edges get used less than 10% of the time. I'd use a plasma in a home theater that will use the full screen but if you mostly watch normal TV I'd stick with a traditional TV.

If you ever go to Las Vegas (they have tons of plasmas and have been using them for years) look at the plasmas. I've noticed that many of them have been "burned in" and many are not working or have bad pixels. The burn in is not as bad as you see on an old arcade video game, but it is noticable. The screens in Vegas probably run 24 hours a day so they do get a serious workout.

As for the price of the Gateway plasma screens. You will probably get a decent plasma screen, but it's one that does not come close to offering HDTV resolution. Plasma screens price seems to closely follow their resolution. The higher definition, the more expensive. All Plasmas can receive an HDTV signal, but almost all do a conversion do drop resolution to something the plasma can display. The picture quality will depend just as much on the electronics processing as the plasma screen itself.

 

my two cents....
Plasma televisions are prone to burn-in, have poor black levels, don't display standard definition (regular) television signals very well and don't have the best contrast. Frankly if you really want one, buy the cheapest because you'll be trading it in pretty quickly!