Buying Your First Flat Screen TV, The Fujitsu P42HTA51ES Plasma TV, Expensive For What It Provides?

Now available in all types (and colours), television sets have certainly changed over the years moving on from cathode ray to digital and now LCD TV sets that we assume to be the norm today. It has now become almost impossible for most people to do without TV.

Much like the conventional approach to driving a car and our understanding of how the Internal Combustion Engine works (or not depending on your point of view) very few people understand entirely what happens behind the screen of a TV or do they? The term television may refer at one point specifically to a television set yet also at the same time be used as a term to refer to the medium of television broadcasting itself.

Understandably if you were to ask the average man in the street his biggest issue with television today most would reply that the one problem they have is an increasing dependency on technological terms and an increasing ignorance of what these terms actually mean.

Rather than continue with a basic history of the industry, it might be best to stop and take a look at the latest developments within the industry mainly that of digital television, what digital television actually means, its formats, bandwidth and the technical terminology and jargon used today.

So how would you describe Digital TV? Digital Television very much came to the fore in the late 1990s and is a technology that appealed to the television broadcasting business and consumer electronics industries as representing opportunities for increased financial development whilst at the same time providing a much cleaner and faster product and service for the end user.

So in basic terms, how does a Digital TV differ from a more conventional one? Let us use one of the newer LCD TV�s available to help us as we detail what exactly this all means.

The LCD TV that we shall use for our illustrative purposes here is the Fujitsu P42HTA51ES Plasma TV.

When considering a new Digital TV it would help if you were familiar with the following items of information.

Firstly we have to understand the phrase Screen Resolution and all of that implies. Here we refer to the exact number of pixels that can be displayed in each dimension.

Whether the TV is Hi-Definition Ready would be the next thing to look at. Hi Definition TV essentially makes a TV picture in a quality format that is at least four times better than conventionally available at present.

We would need to look next at what types of connectors are used to connect the various peripherals that go to make the entire Digital Package work.

In this case we mean SCART Plugs and sockets and their usage. Here the definition of SCART refers to �Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d�Appareils Radio et Television (SCART).

Lastly on the technical side we would need to look at what types and what numbers of High-Definition Multimedia Interfaces (HDMI) are being used. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a licensable audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams between digital audio/video sources such as set-top box, HD DVD Player etc.

The P42HTA51ES is a 42in Plasma TV and currently these TV's can be found for 2000 pounds sterling or 4000 US dollars. The screen resolution is 1024 X 1024 and with regards to being HD Ready the answer is yes. The Fujitsu has 3 (3 RGB) scarts and the type and number of Multimedia interfaces the P42HTA51ES uses is HDMI and DVI (I each). The type of Tuner for this TV is Analogue and the Fujitsu is available from limited outlets only.

So given this information, what would be our view of the Fujitsu P42HTA51ES?

First up, we would look at the picture quality and our score here would be 4, next we would look at the sound quality and our view of this would be 4. Another useful aspect to review is the availability and number of relevant connections and our score here would be 10. As far as overall features are concerned we would give it 8 and the final individual verdicts would relate to the ease of use and overall value for money and our scores here would be, 8 and 4 respectively.

Finally our overall opinion would be that this TV might have impressed the guys in the Office if it was a budget or mid priced TV but for the price quoted we expected a whole lot more

Remember that all the prices we use in these reviews are very much designed for illustration purposes only and in some cases you may well find the actual price cheaper but also in some cases, more expensive.

Scott James writes quite regularly on the Internet about TV and Home Entertainment issues and more on the above can be found at sony flat screen tv and also at http://bestflatscreentv.biz