Philips 37" LCD TV @ Arnotts

WezzyB

Hi there, I just bought a house and I am looking for a LCD TV...

The Philips 37" LCD TV 37PF9986 (with Pixel Plus 2 & Ambilight) looks great, I first spotted it on their website, I really like the design of the unit and the technology behind it it also very impressive.

I went into Arnotts and asked for the price and they said:
37" was €4999
42" was €7999 (I Think)

I had also seen the 37" on display in the front of Arnotts and the sales assistant said the TV was on sale for €3999 thus a full €1000 cheaper than normal price, he said that this price was for 1 week only and they had 8 units and had sold 4 already.

I'm seriously thinking of getting this TV, I checked the prices on online stores in the UK and it comes out at £2800-3000(€4200-4500) so the Arnotts price seems a steal.

Anyone know any other places that might have good prices for this Philips LCD TV?

Do you think this is a good deal or would Harvey Normans be better?

Do the retails always display huge markdowns on these expensive TVs just to give the consumer the idea that they are getting a great bargain?

antomack

The 37" 37PF9946 is available from dwyers in Cork for €3140, I've never dealt with them myself but have seen good comments on previous posts.

Also have the 42" plasma for the same price.

http://www.dwyers.ie/acatalog/LCD___PLASMA_TV.html

WezzyB

Cheers Anto,

I actually had their site bookmarked from a while back, but didn't think of them, It would be nice to give the business to a Cork company (c'mon de rebels!).

The price difference between 3999 and 3140 is pretty big alright, I'm set on getting an LCD screen instead of Plasma, for numerous reasons. I'm off to Harvey Normans tonight to see what they have on offer, have to do some furniture/white good shopping also so it'd be nice to get everything in the one store i.e. could get a discount and everything gets delivered together....

JimmyL

Correction: The €3140 is for the Plasma 37PF9946 rather than the LCD 37PF9986!

Interestingly, the LCD is not listed on either Irish nor UK Philips web site.

WezzyB

I just bought the TV from Arnotts! thats a cool €4128 (€3999 TV + 129 Stand)

JimmyL the TV is the 1st thing you see on the www.philips.ie website (i.e. the pic of the two lads watching football)....

I won't be getting it for another few days, but will post back a short review of it here...

Ciaran500

Looks like a nice TV. What you going to be hooking up to it, a good dvd player with component out would really compliment the HIDef screen.

Kali

I've a 30" philips lcd on the wall at the end of my bed.. but damn i'm jealous looking at that, one very nice tv, great pictures for LCD, they can tend to be very bright though, mine is only really watchable from 2.5m+ away, so make sure you're sofa/whatever is a decent distance away otherwise you'll be pixel watching. And above all an excellent price as well.. enjoy!

PWEI

I was thinking of buying a Plasma TV next year.Which has the better picture quality,a LCD or Plasma TV?

lastsaturday

try sony outlet centres as they have 37" tv's lcd, plasma, etc for a lot less than that..

also on e-bay.co.uk guys are shipping plasma screens for about €2100 to ireland..

lastsaturday

PWEI, plasma re good for frequent live tv watching, lcd are probably a better quality for watching dvd's

Ricardfred

WezzyB wrote:

I just bought the TV from Arnotts! thats a cool €4128 (€3999 TV + 129 Stand)

JimmyL the TV is the 1st thing you see on the www.philips.ie website (i.e. the pic of the two lads watching football)....

I won't be getting it for another few days, but will post back a short review of it here...

I'm thinking of buying this as well so would love to hear your views.

WezzyB

I'm going to be picking it up tomorrow, will need a few days to get into it.

I was thinking of getting a DVR device to match with this and wasn't too interested in the current batch, am also interested in getting a harddisk MP3 player, so I saw this device, The Archos AV440, which is going for ~€500 off of www.mp3players.co.uk, Reviews for this product are pretty thin, but user comments on mp3players.co.uk are very positive, I also found these two reviews:
http://www.maxpc.co.uk/reviews/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=32453&subsectionid=702&subsubsectionid=509
http://print.tweakers.net/?reviews/517 (dutch)

BTW I don't normally make such extravagent purchases like these, its just that I thought I should use my recently got redundancy money for some 'Me Stuff', especially as I already got a new job...

Buzz_Irl

i have used richersounds in belfast and their prices are good

i am getting the philips pf9946 37" for €2,500 :eek:

they have a .ie and a .co.uk website www.richersounds.co.uk is better as it has everything on it and u just convert to euros (divide by 0.66)

buzz

PWEI

lastsaturday wrote:

PWEI, plasma re good for frequent live tv watching, lcd are probably a better quality for watching dvd's

Thanks for the lastsaturday.I'll probably be purchasing a LCD TV instead..

daymobrew

I've found Power City to have the best prices. DID will price match, or give you 'double the difference' back if, after purchase in DID, you find the same item cheaper elsewhere. And they do it without question

I bought the 36" Philips widescreen TV (not plasma or LCD) last year (36PW9308/05). Love it. Considerably cheaper than a plasma or LCD (2400 euro I think).
Weighs the guts of 170 pounds, it's a monster. The caching of teletext is a simple but brilliant feature (and you can split screen to view teletext on one half and the TV pic on the other [can't change channel while this is active]). Great sound quality too (Dolby Virtual).
Spec for 36PW9308 on www.philips.ie mentions Picture-in-picture and teletext word search - my model doesn't have these.

I decided on CRT TV because I heard that plasma ones need to be serviced every year or two and the service is not cheap. For LCD TVs the issue of dead pixels turned me off. The higher cost of plasma/LCD influenced too.

richieg

Just wondering what are people's opinions of the 37PF9986 now that they have it for a while. I am considering one in the near future and would like to know what people think and would they recommend it. Where is the cheapest place to buy right now and what is it going for?

WezzyB

It is a really good screen, looks great in my new house :-)

It was pretty damn expensive, I think its going for 4500 at the moment in most shops ie. Harvey Normans and Arnotts.

You can ask me more specific questions or just pop on over to the 'AV Forums' website, there are lots of PF9986 users there.

With respect to size, 37" is really big, I don't think 42" would have been too suitable for the size of the room I got the screen for, even 32" would have done.

If you are very price sensitive, maybe you could wait for Aldi or Lidl to have one, they would probably sell them for about 2000.

Ciaran500

You can get it for €3700 ex. shipping here: http://www.unbeatable.co.uk/CatalogueItem_21802.html

But you will have to ring them to confirm chipping costs.

Ricardfred

richieg wrote:

Just wondering what are people's opinions of the 37PF9986 now that they have it for a while. I am considering one in the near future and would like to know what people think and would they recommend it. Where is the cheapest place to buy right now and what is it going for?

I have mine a few weeks. Its the most stunning picture I have ever seen. Its almost 3D, with great clarity and colour. Its got the top reviews and won European tv of the year. I have had no problems and cant fault it. No dead pixels and of course being LCD no worries about screen burn.Its also one of the few sets that has a hdcp dvi input that can take advantage of Skys high definition broadcasts which start next year. However the picture is so good I feel I am looking at high definition already, thanks to pixel plus 2. The ambilight feature is also cool and adds to the enjoyment. The 37" is a perfect size for that wow factor, and it takes up less floor space than my previous 32" Sony CRT monster. I also got the matching floor stand ST009966.
One thing to bear in mind is that the better the signal the better the picture. A few channels on Sky use a low bitrate and are poor to watch. However most are great and dvd is just fab. I paid €4700 for the tv and floor stand at a local retailer. Its a huge item so would never consider ordering from UK. Well worth taking out a bank loan for!