Need advice (1 Viewer)

[Jesse_Miller]

This Saturday, I will be going to look at a Panasonic PT-53WX42 that someone is selling for $1,100. This will be my first RPTV purchase and I was hoping to eek a little advice out of these forums.

First, I realize that this is not a new set, but it has a 3 year (started May 2003) Best Buy product protection plan thing on it. Are these plans any good? Are they transferrable?

Second, is this a decent price: $1,100 for the TV + the protection plan.

Third, how in the world do I move one of these things? I'm thinking I will rent a pickup truck from Home Depot. Or, if necessary, I'll rent something from U-Haul. Should I be concerned about jostling/ vibrations? (Obviously I would plan on securing it so it doesn't slide around, but there's not much I can do to dampen a bumpy ride.)

Fourth, when I go to look at it, what should I watch out for? I mean, it does have the warranty, but maybe something's happened to it that would void the warranty. I'm new at this :-P

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Welcome to the forum Jesse.

Of course only you can decide how best to spend your money, but I would be extremely cautious when purchasing a dealer’s showroom display (which I assume that this set is, due to your mention of the BB warranty). This is because showroom sets are normally set at very high video settings: the brightness, color and contrast get turned way up.

In many of the mass-market showrooms this is almost a necessity as there is usually a very high level of ambient and florescent light in the showroom and in order to properly see the picture, the settings need to be advanced past what would be acceptable in one’s own home. Further, if only one model has high display settings, the others will look washed out in comparison to most people who doing comparison shopping—which means that all of the displays that have ‘normal’ video settings will suffer (by comparison).

Running any display at these settinga for an extended period will likely cause problems later on, the most important being ‘burn-in’.

Finally, moving RPTVs should be done with caution, as they tend to get easily knocked out of alignment when not handled very carefully. Of course they can be realigned should this occur.

Good luck.

 

[Jesse_Miller]

Thanks, Lew. I'm not buying this as a display unit. A soon-to-be grad student at my university is moving and selling his TV. I guess he thought he would be continuing his student career here because he bought it in May (maybe it was a graduation present).

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, same problem then. Do you know how he operated the RPTV? If he has been in torch mode all this time (and, trust me, non-HT people always run their TVs in torch mode), then the set may very well be ruined already. Overdriving the set ages the CRTs in dog years, and the burn-in Lew mentioned is a very serious possibility.

I wouldn't ever buy a used RPTV (or direct-view set, for that matter). There are new units roughly within your range. Why not do a little more shopping around?

 

[Jesse_Miller]

Jack,

Thanks for the advice. That's why I'm going to actually look at the unit before I put down any money. I can check out the settings and see if he's been abusing the TV or not. I would consider buying new, but for $1,100 I'm getting the TV AND the warranty. Even if I went with a $1,100 model (Apex, blegh), I'd still need to pay around $300 more for a decent warranty.

Not that your advice isn't helpful, but I'm still looking for some answers to my other questions. Is the warranty any good? Should I hire professional movers? etc

 

[DouglasBr]

Jessie,

This Panny model is available new at Costco for about what you're paying for the used model (it was $1099 or $1199 last night - I can't remember!). Anyway, I don't know what a 3rd party warranty would cost (if you even need it), but that's a sweet price for a new set.

 

[Jesse_Miller]

Thanks for the heads-up, Doug. I'll have to go check out Costco tonight. Hopefully the deal you saw wasn't a display model or regional clearance

I was under the impression that wholesalers like Costco and Sam's Club had slightly different models for sale to prevent people from trying to price-match with places like Best Buy or Circuit City.

But they may not do that for all brands.