In September, our TV blew up, as I reported previously here : My Home Theatres...
Since then we've been making do with the replacement baby TV in the lounge, but in practice we mainly only watched the little LCD TV in the front room. It was handy, and since we'd watch it over dinner, we'd usually end up just staying out there, sitting on the dining table chairs to watch whatever we wanted to. But that meant our lovely plush recliners were sitting out the back, feeling very unloved. And as nice as I think our dining table chairs are, they're no recliners.
So on Saturday, we went down town to have a look at some TVs. I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy one before the Christmas sales, in case a good deal came up. I was hoping to pick up a Sony if they did their "Free PS3" deal again, not necessarily because I wanted a Sony, or a PS3, but because you just can't say no to a free PS3. Panasonic, however, were doing runout prices on the older model TV's, and had a promo running that if you bought a FullHD TV between now and Christmas, you got a free Nintendo Wii with it. Again, I didn't particularly want a Wii, but I DID want the Panasonic TV.
The particular model I was after (PZ800a) has earned very good reviews, and is generally regarded as actually having a better picture quality than the newer model (PZ850a), despite the 850 being built in Japan. I'd had my eye on the 800 for a few months now, but just couldn't justify the $2800 asking price.
JB HiFi had them on run-out though, so we went in to have a look. The intention was to compare the picture between a 42" normal HD plasma, with the Panasonic FullHD. The normal plasma was about $1200, so it wasn't an inconsequential price difference. Almost twice as much. After looking at both TV's though, I came to the decision that I really wouldn't have been happy with the cheaper option. Sure, it was cheap, but it didn't look anywhere near as nice, and actually looked permanently (slightly) out of focus.
Upon talking to the sales guy about them both, he revealed to us that he was actually finishing up at JB the following day, and so would be long gone before any manager has found out what he was doing. So, for Saturday and Sunday, he was selling everything for cost + 1%. He said he liked making people happy, and big discounts did that, and that buy the time people noticed it would be someone else's problem! So he called up the stock control on his PDA, and showed me that it was listing their buy price for that model for $2200, so said he would do it for us for $2220! Not a bad saving off RRP!
So, the next thing you know...
It's a Panasonic TH-46PZ800A - a 46" FullHD plasma TV. It's got both the digital and analogue tuners in it, and picked up all the local channels on it's second go (missed all the channel 10's on it's first pass). I've already hooked it up to the PC, the XBox and the sound system, and it's all working perfectly. It's even got three HDMI ports for that future XBox360/PS3...
We were lucky to get it home on the back of the ute (it wouldn't come close to fitting in the Pathfinder, and being a plasma, you can't lay them down) before it started to rain. We were home not 5 minutes, and were suddenly engulfed in a surprise downpour. Would have been very cranky if we had been out still!
After getting it all set up and connected, we gave it a good test run with the last round of the V8 Supercars for the year, and the last race ever at Oran Park before it's turned into a housing estate next year. To say I'm happy with the performance of the TV is a complete understatement - it really is amazingly good, and I'm very happy we finally decided to spend the extra and get the one we wanted.
Unfortunately, the sad thing involves our Free Wii. It's done by redemption, so on Sunday we went to the website and filled in all our details. It printed off a page for us to mail in with our original receipt, and once verified, they would send us out our free Wii. Jess was mucking around on the website, and ended up coming across a section in the FAQ entitled "My Wii hasn't arrived yet - when can I expect it?". And the answer was "Panasonic intends to have all Wii's dispatched for delivery within 30 days from the 1st of February 2009 (my emphasis).
So we're not even going to have a chance to play with our Wii before we go OS, and we might even be back before it arrives!!! It's not a problem for us, but it makes you wonder how many people bought a TV on the promotion with the plan of giving away their Wii as a Christmas present. Of course, from Nintendo's perspective it's a great strategy - keep as many Wii's on the shelves leading up to Christmas for people to buy, then give away the surplus stock later. I'm sure ours will arrive, and it's not as if we're holding our breathe for it, but it's still a bit of a downer after an exciting weekend.
