Shaun

I have been looking at purchasing a Plasma for some time now and have always found reasons to hold off on purchase. For the past few weeks I have been looking at the Hyundai HPT-4240. Admittedly the price drew me in to begin with, but I really wanted to know what I would be sacrificing against a screen that could easily cost over twice as much.

Unfortunately I was unable to find anything of any consequence regarding this screen, apart from a few specs but never any personal testimants on what it was like (and I scoured the internet for weeks). At the end of the day £1800 is a lot to spend if the set proves to be a total piece of junk. If the set was crap then I would of course looked at spending a lot more cash...... but you have to look in to these things and a lot more cash doesnt always mean that "I" will reap the benefits.

I had been in to Comets on a number of occasions to see the Hyundai along with many other sets, but of course having a spurred composite signal shared by many sets will never give you a true indication of the capabilities. Because of this I asked one of the assistants to plug a direct feed in to the Hyundai (DVD Player) to see what that was like. Along my travels on the web I received mixed spec's on whether the set had SCART RGB, as this input was very important to me (as I used this for all my sources on my present CRT). I looked at the back of the set and didn't see the normal three dots above the scart socket so assumed the worse. I asked the assistant about this and he looked and also concluded the same. "Oh well" i thought and still went ahead with the demo. The image from the DVD player was sharp and smooth and impressed me enough to take the plunge and buy it.

Since I had to wait for delivery, I did a bit more research on these and many other forums to find anything else out I could. I also contact JS Technologies about an RGB to Component and RGB to VGA convertor to get me around the lack of RGB SCART issue. Big thumbs up to John for his help and guidance..... excellent response and help!!! At least I now found a way of connecting via component now.

I must admit I did start to get abit concerned to how the picture would look from my Sky box... which is not Sky+ hasten to add, as I started to see so many negative posts about this type of source.

I took delivery of my set yesterday and got straight to work to get it setup.

Upon setting it up I tuned the set in via the analogue in built receiver (well twin actually as it has PIP) just to get a quick look. To be honest I was well impressed by the aerial signal on such a big screen.

Next up was Sky connection. Since I hadn't had chance to sort out a convertor I used SCART to SCART (full 21pin) between decoder and Plasma. Once I set it up I couldn't believe how clear the picture was, especially after reading so many posts on how these things looked on a Plasma. As I was playing I looked at the setup of Sky to change the format to 16:9 and noticed that the menus in Sky were pin sharp.... very strange for composite. After more playing, I did indeed find out that the SCART input on the Hyundai is in fact RGB..... BONUS!!!!!

With this happiness in hand I slapped my SCART RGB switch box on and connected everything up.

I was amazed by the overall quality of images on such a cheap Plasma Screen and am overjoyed with the purchase. With the added benefit of the SCART RGB input, meant all my analogue sources could be connected at there native highest output of quality.

I am no AV purist, so if a purist looked at it he may moan, but for me it is ideal and a well worth while purchase.

The screen has all the inputs I require should I need and looks really cool sat on my glass table. I expect that much dearer screens are better, but it's horses for courses and this horse certainly is a winner for me!

I managed to wangle 9 mnths interest free credit and free delivery from comets, so for £1800 I am over the moon.

Game consoles are a sheer joy to look at through this screen!! I havent had time to connect my progression scan DVD player up yet, but that should be really cool as well hopefully.

Hopefully this will give some others an much needed insight to this screen, which is something I never had.

Regards,
Shaun.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

i bought a light gun for my xbox to play on the big screen ive got 2 tv's in the same room and itll not work on either one is an lcd tv similar to your plasma ( dont buy a light gun) and the other is a projector was gutted to find the light gun needed a proper tv

JackClark

Cheers for the write up Shaun, great looking set at an almost reasonable price.

Are the built in speakers up to much?

suba

me thinking about plasma as well but always think cheap = no so good quality. but after your posting, maybe they are not that bad after all

http://www.richersounds.com/index.ph...ist.php&c=1102

Shaun

I scoured the internet for weeks on write-ups about this set, so just thought I would give my experiences out should people wish to do the same.

Jackclark,
Anybody using this type of screen should be using external audio (5.1 at least). The internal speakers are functional but the set is only nicam.

Suba,
Not the case in my experience, but then I would expect a £4000 plasma to be better...... but £2200 better, perhaps not. As I said, horses for courses and this particular set suits me down to the ground.

Regards,
Shaun.