CDS 42" HDTV Plasma

[Ten Midgets]

Does anyone own or have an impression of the "CDS" brand 42" plasma HDTV sold thru Sams Club? (please click on the link below)

As someone who is looking for a low budget HD plasma and have been seriously considering the Maxent 42x3 from Costco, I must say I really like the specs I see here and I am certainly intrigued. When you throw in the fanless cooling system, high resolution, contrast ratio, ALiS technology and a wall mount INCLUDED it sounds like a deal! What say you?


samsclub.com

Bill

[dirtydan]

Don't forget that it has 2 yr. warranty, plus 3 more yrs. after that $198.

[TJ22]

What is Sams clubs return policy?

[dirtydan]

What is the samsclub return policy?


Member Satisfaction is 100% guaranteed by samsclub on both products and Memberships. You may return your online purchase (except auction items) to any of our SAM'S CLUB locations nationwide. (Use our Club Locator to find the Club nearest you.) Or, you may return your merchandise directly to samsclub using our online return process in the My Account section of our site. You may also contact our Member Service Department for simple instructions.

Items purchased on auctions can be returned within 30 days of purchase by contacting a Member Service Representative for approval and instructions. Merchandise purchased from samsclub auctions can NOT be returned to a local SAM'S CLUB location.

No matter how you choose to process your return, a friendly SAM'S CLUB Member Service Representative will provide you with a full refund. For purchases returned through the online process, you will receive credit to the account that was charged at the time of purchase. For purchases returned to your local Club with a printout of your order, your refund will be in the form of a Shopping Card, cash, or credit to the account charged (if available in the Club of choice.) Returns made to your local Club, without a printout of the order, will receive a full refund in the form of a Shopping Card.

Exceptions to this policy include:

*

Computers, which can be returned within 6 months of the original purchase date, except Dell computer which carry a 30 day unconditional guarantee.
*

Theme park tickets, which are non-refundable.
*

Shopping Cards, which can not be redeemed for cash.

At samsclub, we reserve the right, at any time, to modify, alter, or update this policy. Your order constitutes an agreement to be bound by such modifications, alterations, or updates to this policy. Our ultimate goal is for you to be satisfied with your samsclub shopping experience and purchases.

[Ten Midgets]

This is a VERY attractive offer! I googled CDS and did not find much about them as a company, perhaps someone here knows more? But regardless I gotta tell ya, as someone who is in the market for a low-budget plasma I may have to purchase this set. I can save (less a Sams Club membership) buying this one over the Maxent *and* I get a wall mount thrown in! Any Sams Club members here who may be able to drop by their local club and have a look at the PQ? This thing has some serious specs...

[dirtydan]

I will take a look at it this week in Reno. I'm not sure it has a wall mount, might only be the bracket that fits the tv for mounting to your own wall mount.

[Ten Midgets]

You might be right - "Includes adjustable wall mount bracket".

[sojodave]

http://www.maistek.ca/English/plasma/m42pv6.htm
CDS is Maistek. I tried to do more research but was unsuccessful

[dirtydan]

avs-vb/archive/index.php/t-576857

Here is a little info, I can't put url in, but a search on AVS might get it.

[Ten Midgets]

Thanks Dirty Dan. I don't have a Sams Club near me so hopefully you can stop by your and give us a quick review? Only if you have a chance of course....Thanks, Bill

[epauladams]

Has anyone got to see this set yet??????? I live 85 miles away from the nearest Sams, so would take an extra trip just to see if they are in stock.

[epauladams]

shameless bump for the night crowd. surely someone has seen or bought this set????????

[Motegi]

[QUOTE=Ten Midgets]
As someone who is looking for a low budget HD plasma and have been seriously considering the Maxent 42x3 from Costco, I must say I really like the specs I see here and I am certainly intrigued. When you throw in the fanless cooling system, high resolution, contrast ratio, ALiS technology and a wall mount INCLUDED it sounds like a deal! What say you?

Bill[/QUOTE]

ALiS is Hitachi plasma technology as is the 1024x1024 HD plasma panel (a very unique resolution in the 42" PDP world) - so in all likelyhood this set is built around a Hitachi OEM PDP. Look into reviews of Hitachi sets on these forums to get an idea of how they perform. Note that Hitachi ALiS is not true 1024 lines of resolution as not all 1024 lines are lit at once. In actuality only half the lines, 512, are lit at any given time with the sets circuitry rapidly alternating odd/even lines (kind of like interlacing but not quite). More typical 42" plasma displays with 768 lines of resolution display all 768 lines at once. The word on the street is that ALiS does provide some resolution advantage over a 768 PDP but have a loss of black level performance.

I have not seen this set in person so I cannot comment on how it performs.

Sams club from my understanding is not quite as open to returns as Costco tends to be despite similar return policy wording. Be aware of this. Especially since they "sell" an additional extended warranty plan.

Looking at the specs the "fanless cooling" that you speak about is also true of the Maxent.

This CDS set includes 1 DVI input and 1 component input whereas the Maxent has 1 HDMI input and 2 component inputs.

They both have PC RGB/VGA inputs But the Maxent also has an RS-232 port fot accessing some of the advanced settings.

This CDS plasma appears to be a good deal. However, I would spend some time watching it and reading up on Hitachi ALiS panels before purchasing.

[hypaspazz]

[QUOTE=Motegi] Note that Hitachi ALiS is not true 1024 lines of resolution as not all 1024 lines are lit at once. In actuality only half the lines, 512, are lit at any given time.....[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the info on the Alis glass. I did not know that the Alis glass was a pseudo-interlaced technology. I was looking at the older 40 series Fujitsu that uses that glass but I might reconsider.

[hypaspazz]

Has anyone bought one of these yet? Still interested to hear what people's impressions are.

[hypaspazz]

Stopped at Sam's club today and they are not stocked in the local store. Either these are very new or they are online only. I am not brave enough to have one delivered sight unseen. Has anyone spotted one of these at their local Sam's?

[wtfiorg]

After doing a little reasearch I decided to buy this set. Once I get it delivered I will write a review to let you all know how good it is.

[dirtydan]

Well, I got to Sam's in Reno and they have never heard of the CDS 42", for what it's worth I went to Costco and looked at Maxent 42", it was equal to any other Plasmas they have. Went to BB and their Maxent is diff. model and it didn't look good next to the Panny 42 ambilight.

[tedfulton]

I bought the 42" CDS Plasma HDTV Model: M42PV6 from Sam's club website online. It arrived on 3 Nov 05. By 5 Nov 05 it had stopped working and I have returned it to a brick and mortar Sam's Club for a full refund minus shipping. (Online guys claim shipping will also be refunded but that has yet to happen)

It does have a wall mount included. However, it is a poorly designed mount. Stud spacing will dictate where tv can be mounted. I fabricated a metal backing plate so that I could mount it in the center of a wall. Using the bracket alone it is likely you will not be able to wall mount this tv exactly where you want (if you plan to wall mount)

The tv only has a single NTSC (analog) 121 channel tuner. (It does not have an ATSC (digital) tuner (as required by the FCC for a tv this size. As of this writing the FCC has mandated that analog signals will stop being broadcast on Jan 1 2009 at which point this "television" will only function as a monitor (requiring a seperate digital tuner box). Website states the tv has PIP capability. However, PIP requires an additonal video signal input (VCR, another tv etc. There are not two built in tuners as in higher priced televisions). Website states this television also has split screen capability. I was unable to detect this capability.

Website says it has a two year warranty. Materials included with television state that there is a one year warranty. Warranty included with television is one paragraph of unclear jibberish. Seems to have been written in Chinese and poorly translated into English. Owners manual is extemely basic and virtually of no value.

Website states an RF cable and warranty card are included in box. Mine had neither.

Remote control is simple and cheap looking. If it breaks I am unsure how you would replace it as there are no codes for this model's remote on the internet. A "learning remote" could be used to copy this remote's capabilities before it breaks. But if you wait until after you are likely stuck without a remote capability.

Definitely recommend anyone considering this television to include the purchase of the extended warranty into their price calculations. Also, you should live fairly close to a brick and mortar Sam's Club in case you need to return it.

Good Luck!

[bccomstock]

Guess that answers that.. Thanks for the update ted..

[SammyXp]

Hoping this is just a shipping fluke, or something. Mine shipped today.

[hypaspazz]

Thanks for the info Ted.... I had a feeling that it might be too good to be true. Was the image quality decent or was that poor too? SammXP, I will be interested to hear if your experience is better.

I bought a Sharp Aquos and it died within 10 days due to a power supply issue. Build quality / quality control seems to be rather poor these days in manufactured products. My experience would suggest that even paying the "name brand" premium doesn't make you immune to issues.

[SammyXp]

I suppose it's the price of admission for buying into emerging technologies. And as tempting as it might be to consider Plasma something that's "nothing new" - it's still in its infancy as far as technological cycles go.

I'll post a review as soon as it arrives (due in 1-2 weeks). Crossing my fingers and toes!

[SammyXp]

Got my screen in a few days ago, so I've had a chance to spend a few days with it. I'm definitely impressed! Take this with a grain of salt, as this is my first non-CRT TV, but I've done weeks of shopping at the local Circuit City, so I do have some sense of what the current industry benchmark might be.

My impressions weren't good at first. I grabbed the first DVD I had laying around (House of D) and it turned out looking horrible. Snowy, especially in the dark scenes. I had only quickly hooked up a composite video cable laying around, so I figured that might be the problem, but connecting component video cables only made it marginaly better.
I tried another DVD (Lord Of The Rings) and it looked much better! No more snowy noise during dark scenes. Color was awesome, screen door effect was only noticeable if you got within 4 feet of the screen (looks like Fujitsu's eALiS technology might have actually done it's job). Blacks were dark as ink. Especially when I stuck 'Sin City' in there! The 1024x1024 resolution definitely does the picture justice, particularly during the B&W closeups during 'Sin City', showing the texture on rough skin.
Another interesting way the 1024x1024 resolution seems to manifest itself is the way the fill factor shows up as mostly thin vertical lines, with almost no horizontal gaps, even with your face inches from the screen.
I need a setup disc. I'm hoping to be able to improve some of the noise I'm seeing during some fast moving dark scenes. Or maybe that's an inherent compromise in having two rows of pixels share an electrode strip, courtesy of the eALiS technology.

Also still keeping my fingers crossed that the reliability of my screen does just a hair better than Ted's did!

Any ideas on why "House of D" looked so bad? Other than the fact that David Duchovny's career ended when he left the X-Files?

[SammyXp]

I freakin love this scene! http://images12.fotki.com/v238/fileuU7c/b4ac6/7/730934/2876734/IMG_2483.jpg

[hypaspazz]

SammyXP, Thanks for the update. I wish that they didn't take these plasmas off of the website but it appears that I am a bit too late to pick on up. Too bad since they were a steal of a price for the display that you got. The only thing that might be a concern would be the internal electronics but I already scalers built into my STB and DVD player so it is not much of an issue for me.

[SammyXp]

Yeah, the electronics might be the most significant weak point in this design. How would you take advantage of scalars built into a DVD player?

[beelove]

I think the CDS display that disappeared from Sam's Club's Website is not on Wal-Mart's site (for a higher price, I think).

I was wondering if those who own it could answer this question: Does it support an overscan feature where 4:3 content is not stretched to fill the 16:9 screen but is instead allowed to bleed past the edges? For example, I watch a lot of NBC in standard definition -- E.R., the Tonight Show, etc. These and other shows are letterboxed to 16:9 ratio, even for standard definition viewers like me. If I watched them on this panel, could you set it to let the image go past the edges (thus, allowing the black letterboxes to just fall off the top and bottom edge, showing the widescreen image properly formatted as it's intended to be shown)?

Also, what does it look like as a PC monitor? What resolutions can you use? Does it preserve the aspect ratio correctly or stretch? Does it make thin lines flicker because of the nature of eALiS technology?

From the other posts, I'm leaning toward considering another panel. I like the new Dell 42" plasma, but it is a lot more expensive. ilo is another brand I was considering. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[SammyXp]

As for the Aspect Ratio display settings, there are a ton of settings, but I'm not familiar enough with the lingo to know what is what.
A few observations:
- When it is displayed in 4:3 or 16:9, the picture actually does not take up the full width of the screen. This wouldn't be such a big deal to me if they filled in the sides with black, but the background is white on the sides and too distracting to be of any use.
- For the most part, I use Normal, Native or Nonlinear (stretched more on the edges).
- With TV viewing, I've found the 'Zoom1' setting to be the best. This might be what you're talking about. It overflows out of the top and bottom of the screen slightly, but gives you a much more full picture.
All that said, I am finding it a little bit frustrating finding the 'perfect' display settings with a full screen picture, with little 'overflow'. Even with all the display options, it seems that I'm always forced into some sort of compromise.

I haven't noticed any flickering of thin lines due to the ALiS technology, but I'll try and take particular notice tonight now that you mention it. I was a little apprehensive about buying the screen since the ALiS is sort of like having a 'horizontally interlaced' display with the two rows of pixels sharing an electrode strip, but I haven't been disappointed in that respect.

I've yet to use the VGA input as a computer monitor, but I have used the S-Video output on my Dell 700m laptop to watch AVI movies and the picture is almost as good as DVD through component cables. I'm using a 800x600 resolution, but I haven't spent any time experimenting with higher resolutions. With the 1024x1023 native res, I guess I should have thought to try something closer to that!

[beelove]

Thanks a lot for your help! I usually run my computer at 1152 by 864. I wonder what 1024x768 or the widescreen equivalent of that would look like. I'm used to one pixel equalling one dot without interpolation of any sort, so I'm guessing (maybe incorrectly) that eALiS would drive me crazy.

Would you mind describing what each mode does -- nomal, native, and nonlinear? I read the manual online, but, as someone said earlier, it's virtually useless. I was also wondering if anyone with one could take pictures of it in action and post them?

The fact that it includes table stand, wall mount, and speakers is a big selling point, even if the price went up. Is the table stand good quality? I hear the wall mount is not the best, but I have a brick and plaster wall instead of wood with studs. Would that help in mounting?

Thanks!

~Billy

[SammyXp]

Normal and Native seem to be the same thing. It just displays the picture in whatever resolution the source contains, which almost always means dead space around the picture.
Nonlinear is kind of neat. It stretches 4:3 pictures to 16:9, but not linearly. Objects closer to the center are closer to their natural shape, and objects at the sides are distorted more than if the image would have been stretched linearly.

You're almost never going to get pixel-to-pixel representation. There's always going to be some processing needed, regardless of eALiS technology or not. The key is to have a good processor. Which brings me to my next point.

I'm returning this screen to Sam's. The snowy effect during dark scenes on some DVD's is just too annoying. When the scene is bright and colorful, the picture looks stunning. But I just can't ignore that snowy stuff. Weird thing is, I went to Best Buy the other day and all of their screens (Plasma and LCD alike) had this same effect, while playing off of a DVD. The sales guy said it could be related to how many times the signal is split into all the displays.
I don't get it.
The Fujitsu/Hitachi screen is obviously capable of producing a good picture. At times - it just doesn't. Internal processing?

[hypaspazz]

Do you have an upscaling DVD player? One to minimize the effects of a poor onboard scaler would be to upscale the signal from the DVD player to 1080i for your eALiS 1024i. I have the Oppo Digital DVD player and I am blown away with the picture that it creates. I wasn't able to pick up the CDS from Sam's but I would try it before abandoning the plasma. It was a great price for a "stripped down" Fujitsu. Have you ever checked the street price of a Fujitsu....... OMG!

[SammyXp]

I really want to keep it, so even though its boxed up and ready to go back to the store, I might give this a try. I have no idea if I have an upscaling DVD player. It's a 3 year old Pioneer model that cost about $250 when new. I've spent a lot of time in the setup menus on the DVD player, so what would I look for? Something that specifically said 1080i ouput? Because I definitely didn't see anything like that.

[seememom]

I'm planning on getting a similar model from Costco here in Canada. Sold by Akai with a piano black finish and no speakers but EXACTLY the same panel number.

Anyway, a friend has one and he hasn't seen a big problem with the blacks. I will also look into getting the Oppo for 1080i. I think you'll find that all plasmas suffer to some extent in dark areas.

[hypaspazz]

As far as I am aware Pioneer has not made an upscaling DVD player. They are progressive scan at best (480p) which then has to be scaled-up using the internal circuitry of the CDS display. Samsung (HD950, HD850, HD841) and Panasonic (DVD-S77, DVD-S97) make upscaling (capable of 720p and 1080i) DVD players which might be available at your local store.

I would not keep the plasma unless you can prove to yourself that the upscaling (aka upconversion) DVD player will solve the snow problem that you are seeing because no matter what the CDS will have to do some scaling (i.e. 1080i -> 1024i or 720p -> 1024i for the eALiS). If you don't have a way of doing this test before the end of the return period I would just return the plasma and search for another one.

[hypaspazz]

SammyXP,

Did you keep the CDS or did you return it?

[SammyXp]

[QUOTE=hypaspazz]SammyXP,

Did you keep the CDS or did you return it?[/QUOTE]
I returned it to my local club. Sams Club warehouses don't take visa so they had to give it back to me in cash! Sheesh, I don't like carrying that kind of green around!

Picked up a cheap 35" RCA CRT from Circuit City and couldn't be happier. I'll be in the market for another Plasma or LCD next year, probably.

[hypaspazz]

I returned a philips lcd to Sam's about 6 months ago and they did the same thing. They refunded me in cold, hard cash..... $1500 in 20's. Man that was a fat stack of bills. I have pretty much settled on the 42" commercial panasonic plasma but I need to wait until I can afford it.

I wish that I could go with a CRT since they still have the best picture quality IMHO. I have that infamous living room setup with the fireplace smack dab in the center. :(

[seememom]

I can confirm that this screen has a lot of problems in dark areas (when the whole scene is dark). Severe red/green dancing pixels, and there can also be a lot of banding at times. Very tough to calibrate.

This particular Akai does look great though in piano black, and the picture when scenes are bright is stunning. So, I will keep it for now.

[SammyXp]

[QUOTE=seememom]I can confirm that this screen has a lot of problems in dark areas (when the whole scene is dark). Severe red/green dancing pixels, and there can also be a lot of banding at times. Very tough to calibrate.

This particular Akai does look great though in piano black, and the picture when scenes are bright is stunning. So, I will keep it for now.[/QUOTE]
Brightly-lit scenes really are stunning. If I wasn't over my budget in buying the thing in the first place, I might have kept it and put up with a few so-so movies.

[seememom]

I probably will return it eventually as well, mostly because Costco sold me a used model and passed it off as new and there was screen burn-in as soon as I turned it on! It has gone away though.

I have to check out some Hitachi models at the store to see if they exhibit the same type of phenomenon on the disc I first saw it on really badly (the menu screen of Star Trek Nemesis). Nevertheless I was able to calibrate much of it away and it really doesn't bother me all that much now.