Picked up a CHEAP! Plasma from frys

Hardware and technical stuff
1

So I went to Frys today to look at some ram for my often neglected Mac mini ( really 512 just isn’t enough ) and upon entering the store and looking at the ad I notice they have a 42 inch ED plasma on sale for $477.

“$477!?” I say to my self that is too good to pass up! So I take a stroll over to the TV section and ask if they have the TV out so I can take a look at it. I was lucky because it was still early in the day and every was actually being very helpful. So the nice young lady shows me the TV and I notice the brand is ILO which I had never heard of before but I figured that would be the case with a TV this cheap.

I sat there watching the feed they had going for a second (it was Ice Age) and I thought to my self “hey this doesn’t look too bad actually, how do they have it hooked up?”, I look behind the set to see what sort of inputs it has and low and behold they have it hooked up via Coax no less! Coax?! It looks pretty good over coax which surprised me to say the least.

So I check out the inputs and I notice it is not lacking in that department one bit it has the following,

HDMI
VGA
Component x2
S-video
Compset
Coax
And! It has an optical input! (I think its the first time I’ve seen an optical input on a TV before. )

I am thinking to my self they said this was an EDTV but it has all of these inputs, something doesn’t sound exactly right here. I fiddle with the settings a bit and I notice that it says that it can do 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i and that seals the deal for me.

I walk over and tell the nice young lady that I would like to buy this fine set and she asks me if I would like the extended in home warranty for a small price of 35 bucks. I accept this offer because the MFG warranty is only 90 days and 35 bucks really is chump change at this point. All said and done with tax and the extended warranty the TV comes out to $560ish.

I get the TV home and the first thing I do is hook it up to my Mac Mini via the HDMI to see exactly what it can do and it fires right up at 720p and it does not look half bad (keep in mind this is a sub 500 TV so I wasn’t expecting it to look omfg amazing). I test out all the resolutions and it does everything that it says it will.

I hook my TIVO up to it to test out the Svideo input and again I am very impressed with the overall picture quality. This set seems to handle SDTV very very well. I bought this set to replace the 20incher that we currently have in our bedroom and it fits perfectly in the space I had the other TV.

So if you are in the market for a 42 inch plasma that looks pretty good with HD and SD content and you have a frys near you I’d check them out and see if they have any left.

I did do some research and I discovered that the ILO brand is some walmart specific brand and walmart clearanced these sets out about a month ago for 599. The Frys sticker still had a 699 price on it.

I’ll see what I can do to post some pictures when it gets a bit darker to give a better idea what the TV picture looks like. So far I am very happy and quite impressed with this set. It was cheap it looks pretty good and hey it was cheap!

As a side note while doing some research a few people posted that this set also has an OTA HD tuner but I can not say for sure if it does or not because I don’t think I get any OTA HD channels here.

2

I thought “ED” didn’t do 720P? Shows what I know about the whole hi-def revolution.

Anyway, congrats.

3

480p is the maximum resolution an EDTV can really do. Some of them can accept higher resolutions, just as a lot of HDTVs that can only really display 720 can accept 1080 signals and downscan, but ultimately you’re only going to get a downscanned 480p image out of it. The results will generally look better than a non-progressive SDTV, but worse than a true HD set.

This set seems to handle SDTV very very well.

Almost all EDTVs handle SDTV signals well since they are more or less SDTVs plus progressive scan.

4

Well hooking up the Mac Mini gave me a true 720p source and the set displayed it correctly.

5

I can’t say anything for sure without knowing exactly what model of tv you’re talking about here, but if it really is an “EDTV” and not an “HDTV”, it is taking your 720p signal and downscaling it to 480p for display, just like a lot of HDTVs can accept 1080p signals even if they actually only display 720p max. If the TV could really display full 720p, they’d label it an HDTV and not an EDTV (unless you got really lucky and maybe the unit is an HDTV and they just made a mistake, but again there is no way to tell without knowing the model number).

Just because a TV can accept a signal of a certain resolution doesn’t mean it is displaying it at that resolution, but if you’re getting a good image from the mac mini or other HD sources and it doesn’t look fuzzy or soft, and you feel the tv was worth your 500$ then that’s all that matters.

6

Well I think they mis labled it or something but what I am saying is that there is a resolution change when you go from 480p to 720p.

Just like when you change your resolution on a normal monitor. See what I mean?

Now I am not saying its the best looking desktop image ever but it is a 720p image.

7

So, what’s the model number then?

8

its an ILO pdp4210ea

you wont find anything on google about it though I already looked.

9

Says you.

Anyway, it seems you are in luck - according to that thread the version you have does indeed have a native resolution of 720p. So, nice one!

10

Haha I musta finger fucked the model number cause I didnt find anything.

11

Is the aspect all out of whack when hooked up to your mac mini due to rectangular pixels at 1024X768?

Either way nice price.

12

Regardless of what the listed specs are, if you like how the picture looks, you win :)

13

Marcus, that’s an awesome deal. Too bad we don’t have a Fry’s up here too - not that I could afford an HDTV but I’d like to see the competition.

14

You know you’ve been playing too much BioShock when you glance at the title of this thread while scanning the hardware forum and think to yourself “Fry’s sells Plasmids?”

15

All I can say is, Marcus sure did wait a long time before unmasking himself as a Fry’s viral marketer :)

Marcus
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 5,069

Seriously, nice find. Now that you’ve had it for a while, are you pleased with the PQ?

16

Hrm… oddly enough if you go by the specs for that model from the manufacturer’s site, it is an EDTV.

PDP4210EA
• 42” screen with 16:9 aspect ratio
• 852 x 480 native resolution

In the thread you linked it’s mentioned that this year’s BF plasma deal was an HD set, while the PDP4210EA was last year’s BF plasma offering.

If you enjoy the set and could afford the price, good for you. Since it sounds like you’re using it for a lot of SDTV I think this is probably going to be ideal since it should display SDTV quite well. Fixed-pixel displays love their native resolution.

17

Well 480p is dvd’s resolution, isn’t it? Also works great with the Wii. Movies + Tennis, good for entertaining.

18

EDTVs usually have more pixels than SDTV. But not an HD amount of pixels. So it does a little upscaling here, a little downscaling there.

19

The manufacturer’s listing says that the EDTV version doesn’t have an HDMI port. His TV does have one, which according to the thread means it’s the 720p version.

I have no idea why I am arguing about the specs of someone else’s TV purchase. Damn Internet!

20

I got my Vizio plasma for 800 bucks… My brother in law has a 4000 dollar Sony LCD.

Sure his may look a bit better, but not 3000 dollars better imho. I figure that if you look at the picture and say, “wow, that looks good”, then you got a good TV. I do.

Although it does sound like yours handles SD much better than mine. Awesome deal- would have run to Fry’s if I need one.