Here's my 2c, and I actually own one of these so its not random opinion or heresy. Sampo is not a sony "sister company". They havent got a thing to do with each other. These panels are built on Fuji flat panels although fuji doesnt market their own sets directly. Sampo is a big company that makes products on a perceived value/quality scale as say a samsung. Not as good as a sony/toshiba sort of level but certainly not "boo-bobs tv's and video emporium" level.
I would buy one of these if you need the 'flatness' or if the 'coolness of flat' makes it worth $3000 to you. I happen to have a shallow alcove in the built in entertainment center thats about 4" taller than the plasma and a foot or so wider. Its either that or a 13" tv or one sitting on the floor in front of the only window in the room. Hence worth it to me.
With regards to using it as a computer monitor, the native resolution of this set is about 852x480, a typical 16x9 resolution for basic plasma glass. more expensive sets will have a higher resolution. This means your pc will look ok on it at that resolution, at higher resolutions its going to be down-converted to 852x480 and not look substantially better. Make sure your video card can do 852x480 as a standard or optional resolution with this set. On mine, XP does see it, know what it is, and my laptop with the older ati mobility chip can use it. Its not real pleasing though after using native 1024x768 on the lappy most of the time. But its big, if you have a vision issue or want to play video's off your lappy, its ok. As a full screen monitor unless you're going to sit pretty close, not so useful.
Program sources such as cable, vhs, or even satellite through the s-video using the internal scaler (makes the picture bigger to fill the screen and fills in the gaps between horizontal and vertical pixels)/converter (converts s-video or composite to an rgb signal) are feasible. Most plasmas and this one included do not have any rf input. And if they did you wouldnt want to use it.
Two things: #1 is you WILL get used to fat headed people watching a 4:3 picture stretched to 16x9 mode, and if that just sucks to you there are a couple of modes that inflate and then crop the picture, either from the top or the bottom, to give you a normal picture size, except these have to be up-scaled even more. #2 In a set under 5k the interal scaler/doubler/converter will probably suck and the sampo is no exception. You will get funny color conversions, patchy/creeping areas especially in dark colors, and the set probably wont be able to display both a true black and a true white. What this means is that by itself my plasma displays dark grays as a dark purple and other grays like concrete walls have a bit of hospital gown green in them. Dark scenes may be mostly invisible unless you turn up the brightness at which point daylight scenes require you wear sunglasses. The bottom line is the plasma wants its input from the progressive scan rgb inputs or the 15 pin monitor style inputs from an external scaler/doubler/converter that usually costs a grand or more. Usually more. A 10-15k plasma has higher resolution, more flexible setups, a better scaler/doubler/converter and so forth. Thats why its 10-15k.
Fortunately its possible to solve the problems with a cheap plasma equally as cheaply. Viewsonic makes a couple of boxes, the vb50 and the nextvision n5. They cost $99 and $150 respectively. The vb50 has a better remote and a good picture. The nextvision has a crappy remote, more fine grained tweakability, and a good picture. Both can be bought online from viewsonic, or in a compusa/fry's type of place that sells viewsonic gear. They both work the same way: they take rf/coax input, composite, and s-video, upconvert/double/scale the picture and shoots it out to the rgb 15 pin input on the plasma. MUCH better than the internal scaler. Blacks are black. Whites are white. Grays are gray, etc. And you have two sets of picture controls - the plasma and the viewsonic device - to tweak to get the picture the way you want it. I'm damn happy with the sampo plasma and a vb50 although its not as perfect as a 10k set. The vb50/n5 are also pretty cool setups for their originally intended purpose, allowing you to watch tv on a plain old computer monitor, either tube or flat lcd, and since the output is high definition, making that cheap monitor into a high definition set. Push of a button toggles you between your pc output and the tv source.
Couple of other things: these throw a ridiculous amount of heat. This will raise the temperature of the room its in by 3 degrees and its a big room. The speakers in them are crap. You will need a small subwoofer at a minimum and think about an external receiver/speakers. They were slotted for multimedia usage for things like slapping on the wall of a board-room for powerpoint presentations and watching the occasional ceo speech from afar, not exactly for watching tv on at the house, although thats where most of them are being sold.
ALL THAT having been said, if as mentioned initially you dont NEED the flatness or coolness, spend half the money on a quality rear projection hdtv thats got a larger screen and better capabilities and leave it at that.
Any questions?
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