Need to buy a Sony PFM 42B2U plasma. Would like to know if anyone has purchased one thru DTV Express - an online order company. No local retailer is carrying it. This is a new unit. They also offer a 3 or 5 year warranty thru Phillips - is it worth it - do they honor it? Also has anyone see this unit and have experience with it. It will be used for HDTV, computer, cable, and satellite. The other contenders in the 42 inch class seem to have media boxes which I do not want to be married to since all components are going to be housed in a Middle Atlantic rack in another location. Any advice or previous experience would be appreciated.

DVD I'm a home theater designer in Manhattan NY. We are the 3rd largest volume NEC plasma dealer in the country. We sell between 150-200 plasma's a year, all differant types. We have many preferances. I can get you the Sony if you want. Email if you're interested. [email protected].

DVD, we cover the absolute other end of the country, out here on the Left Coast in Beverly Hills. We can also get the Sony.

I know you did not open this thread thinking of these repsonses, but here we are. Now, where are you? You did not give a location or email address when you signed up -- let us know and I am sure someone, quest, or me, or someone closer to you, can help you get this.

Keep in mind that when you buy even a multi-thousand dollar item over the internet, you will not necessarily have a person to talk to if there is a problem. Calling Sony is easy; it's just staying alive until someone takes you off hold that is the problem.

Ernie Bornn-Gilman
The Sound Center
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
[email protected]

DVD - A little advice. The Sony PFM 42B2U has a very loud fan in it. You might want to look at a Fujitsu or Pioneer first. These are the kind of things that a local custom installer can help you with. You'll never see an online retailer sharing that information with you.

You are crazy if you buy online! How about tec support? Is the online store going to help you install? Manufactures have a factory warrenty for a reason. Sony, Pannasonic, Pioneer, and many others will flat out tell you that the warrenty is void if you buy from an on-line WHORE. Contact your local Home Theater company and review your options. Brett is right, the Sony is one of the loudest units I have ever heard. It's not worth more than $2,000.00 to me.
Get a unit with a controller/switcher. You will have less wires to run to the Plasma. Runco includes a scailer that will upconvert all inputs to the monitor's native resolution while allowing you to only have to run a 5 wire RGB and a Cat5 for RS232. FIND THAT ON-LINE!!!


Dan Johnson
DJ's Custom A/V
321 Spode Way
San Jose, CA 95123

Office # (408) 229-2224
Cell # (408) 497-7873

I guess you are going a little fast spitting on online retailler.

As an online retailler I don't really appreciate the type of denomination you are using. There is more positive way to advertise your business than calling people ny names. This is unprofessional and shows a very little level of repect to other people's way of doing business. I guess you are not a member of the CEDIA organization otherwise you will probably remember the paragraph 2 of the principles of conduct and ethics.

Now to go back to the original question. If the installation is a concerned, you should definitly not go through on online retailler. The other problem you might be exposed is that the plasma are very fragile units and do not support the transportation if they are mishandled. One example is if the package is dropped straight on the ground, the packaging will not be damaged but the unit can be. If you have signed the paper saying that everything is Ok when receiving the box because the box is mint condition, the freighter will not use his insurance and he will say that the unit was deficient when shipped. The retailler will most likely telling you the reverse: unit was perfect and the freighter damaged it. Quite a battle in perspective.
The other issue is also the manufacturer's warranty. Some of the brand will void the warranty if you bought the unit online. One more time, check with your retailler on the warranty and the cost of shipping the unit if it needs to be repaired.
So the morale is if you want to go through an online retailler, check with them about their return policy in case of the unit not working properly, most of them will do the exchange for free but some of them will not and will ask you to pay extra.

So if you ask me if you should buy a plasma online, I would say no unless the saving is so substantial that you are willin to pay from your own pocket the repair should anythign happen during the transport. For most of us that is unacceptable.

And by the way the trick about using 5 Coax and a Cat5 is common knowledge for anyone doing installation. If this is what customers are paying to get a professional custom installer, no wonder they are going online. You forgot to mention that if the converter/switcher is integrated in the plasma as suggested, you will have several wires to run from each source or the switcher to the converter. I would say get a pure monitor and a separate scaler, you don't need a custom installer for finding a good one. Keep the switcher/controller away from the plasma and run the necessary wires in between (the recommended coax + cat5). The day the technology is changing you don't have to buy yet another box that will convert to a different standard to be then upconverted to the plasma resolution. You just change the controller and if you have selected a good controller in the first place (meaning upgradeable), most likely you will just have to add a card in the system but that no custom installer will tell you that because they want you to call them back! The separation approach allows you to scale your project and to get the best products in each area and not necessarily the one bundled in the plasma.

Just my 2 cents.

fdelacou

Oh! Boy can we cry!

I see you know your customers well since you visit their homes and check out the situation and needs, make recommendations on what you see. Have you ever noticed that only 1% of customers really know what they need. No, I guess not because you sit in a chair behind a desk answering a phone and emails. So I have ZERO respect for someone like you who does your job because you have no idea what you are doing. Belive me I'm not far off here. Why you say. Well I'll be happy to answer if you come to a clients home and I'll show you why.

I DO agree with you about checking on returns and warr.


David

See you can agree with an online retailler.

I perfectly agree with you that only 1% of the customers knows what they want. Why because they have heard by someone that this is a good product when they have no clue what it is doing but it sounded cool.
While I'm sitting behind my desk, I'm usually not just cashing the money and shipping products.
I always have a first phase where I'm asking what they are trying to do and question them. It usually takes several email iterations and frequently ending on the phone. I can't make the interview live but I have a very good idea of what their house or their room look like. I usually even have the drawings of the house for a whole house system.

Now, I would not call myself a custom installer because, yes I'm not on site doing the work or directing the team that do it. But you can believe me I know definitely more than you think about assembling and programming systems and make complex systems work together. I understand the technology perfectly! I'm in it 18 hours a day. So if I'm not a custom installer, I'm definitly at the level of a lot of consultants in A/V. People that don't understand the difference between a device based system versus an activity based system.
I've spent the last CEDIA attending classes from opening to closing and talking to the manufacturers about their products, their plans, their pilosophy and target. Guess what? most of my believes are completly in sync with the manufacturers. So I guess my take on the business is not that bad after all.
I've seen some installations in $1M~$1.5M house that was shameful for the profession and for the custom installers. I've seen front speakers in media rooms places at 90 degrees angle from each other and from the main listening area. I've seen custom installer creating a 'home theater' with plain drywall and paint with high back chair and no relay of IR. They had a projector, a screen, a grafik eye to play with the light and 10 different remotes. That's it! I can multiply the examples ad nauseum.

My point is that there is a lot of drop shipper in the online retail but they are not all like that. And while the ratio bad vs good is probably higher in the retail than the custom install it is far from zero in your area! It is your right to not like the online retailers and I DO respect that but this person was asking a question that needed a more comprehensive answer than saying "Online retail = WHORE". Online means taking a huge risk during shipping and on the warranty. For a plasma screen and (almost any TV) it is a huge risk (I would even say unacceptable) that he should NOT take unless he has really double checked everything.
It is also the risk that the seller will disappear with the money (let's add crooks to whores!).
That I think was the answer this guy was looking for. So you see I can listen behind my desk!

So, next time someone is telling you he is retailing products online, have at least the decency to listen to him and see if he is just a drop shipper. Feel free to hate him as much as you want after that. I do feel the same way about them anyway! And I hate this people in stores that don't know shit about the products they are selling and try to impress me with a buzz word. They are usually crawling back in their hole after the first question anyway. The last one had a tee shirt with the word EXPERT written on it.
I have about 4000 products available. I'm not claiming to know each of them perfectly but I know the one I'm retailling perfectly and know how to combine all of them to have a winning system.
Behind my desk and my keyboard, I've actually made more education than sold products so far and avoided several huge costly mistake. My customer satisfaction is prime and goes before selling any products.

Frederik Delacourt

Hate is a word that takes up time in ones mind. "So I have ZERO respect" is what I said.

That sill hasn't changed.

Nothing personal, just business.


Dave

Granted hate is too strong. I should have said "Can't stand.". As you probably realized my english is not perfect.

As you I'm confident on the work I'm doing and most likely appreciate a work well done. As you I realize that this domain requires a lot of education of the customer not for us to actually do a good job but to havethe customer to let us do what is good for them. This is a though and delicate balance for the customer to understand that it is not about pushing products but to ensure the quality of the overall result.
My take is that there is more and more people, which are educated enough to start small installation and that need just some good advices and the products. The same people that you will find on this forum and forum like AVSForum. Meaning there is a place for online retail AND custom installers. Proper use of both of them will make the customer happy and the system behaving properly, which is the ultimate goal of this business!

You are right: just business! ... but I can't let someone calling me a whore!

Frederik Delacourt

Get serious.

To clarrify, I did not call anyone a (Online Retail Whore). The Title "Online Whore" will be given to any orginization Practicing the sale of products below Retail. If Online sights were selling at Retail (some do!), manufactures wouldn't void the warranty!

I agree that there are a lot of Online "Whores" and "Crooks", and I would also agree that there is an equil amount of Retailers/Custom Installers that are worthless. I am not speaking for everyone, and I am not including everyone in one specific area or another!

I, too participace in Online sales. Check my posts! I will not discount retail product, and I will not sell plasmas Online. I will only discount rep samples, items that we no longer carry, or items that do not have a listed retail.

If you sell retail product Online or Offline below retail, then you earn the title (Whore). If you take off with someone's money and stiff them on product, Online or Offline, you are a "Crook". I didn't pull these words out of the air. These are industry terms used to describe companys that lover the value of a manufacture's product. If this is not you, then it was intended to slam someone else.

Regards to Online Shipping, this was not on my mind when I added my post. Shipping is the least of my concern. If you think about it, a plasma is shipped at onte time or another. It's getting someone to take responsibility for the repairs that concerns me. Agreed?

And fdelacou,
I didn't put my company info with this post to promote my company. I include all of my contact information in the chance that someone reading this post can comment or discuss the toppic of this post without getting "But Hurt" about not agreeing with the business practices of companies lovering the product value and slowly destroying the thread of our industry without quoting CEDIA's principles of conduct and ethics.

Need I remind a couple of you what this post was about? Sony Plasma? are to comment about the plasma?Thank you Brett for not getting sucked into this.

Back to the Sony Plasma. Sony has 2 42s out, a consumer model and a comercial model. I hear that the comercial model has 1 more cooling fan which allows the others to spin at lower RPMs while still moving the same amount of air. Also, the comercial unit has an outer case that is 2 different colors. The case- Dark grey, and the screen trim- silver(Same). I don't know if this is true. So DVD, if you are still sold on the Sony 42s this might be worth looking into.

Let the comments fly!

Dan Johnson
DJ's Custom A/V
321 Spode Way
San Jose, CA 95123

Office # (408) 229-2224
Fax # (408) 229-2284
Cell # (408) 497-7873

who ever is looking for a plasma go to www.hometheaterphiles.com or check out there ebey feedback hometheaterphiles these guys are cheap reasonable and fast call them toll free at 1800-481-2709

read the above threads on why you shouldn't buy multi-thousand dollar items online...

which would you rather have... a product that goes bad and you have to spend many, many hours on the phone trying to get their tech support...

or would you rather just buy one from one of us and see our smiling mugs at your front door if there's a problem...

Let the buyer beware...there will always be a variation on all . We have actually done part of installations with customer purchased components...no problem...we do not warranty their purchase, and will let them know time/labor costs will be incured for their purchases if failure or improper operation (or none at all)arises. Our plasma purchases are delivered by our distributer and turned on at site to verify operation (sometimes we use this service-depends on 'busyness' of our trucks )...On line savings on fragile components like plasmas are subject to the buyers perspective...thats all...no bashing

Digabighold - You must have been in the dark way too long. Fujitsu DOES NOT warranty plasmas bought online.

Let see. Spend 20K on a plasma and who you-gonna-call if there is some problem. Better yet ! Who is going to fix it under warranty? NO ONE !

Oh! Thanks for showing us the site. I just sent off a few emails to Fujitsu and a few reps with the link.

Your welcome !


Dave