Very little makes a conference room look more leading-edge than a large, thin, flat display for presentations. If that's the kind of impression you want to make, the 42-inch NEC PlasmaSync 42MP2 plasma display, from NEC Technologies, will do the job.
The unit is priced at AU$14,472 (street); add AU$419 for the tabletop stand and a bit more for speakers.
A large plasma display has obvious size advantages: The 42MP2 measures 104.9 by 64.8 by 8.9 cm (HWD) -- far thinner than even a 38.1cm CRT -- and at 32 kg, it weighs about as much as a 53.3 cm CRT. At this size and weight, you can mount the 42MP2 on a wall or hang it from the ceiling.
The display offers connectors for analog and digital computer video, composite video, S-Video, audio, and more. The unit can accept computer resolutions from 640-by-480 to 1,280-by-1,024 and works with an assortment of video standards, including several versions of high-definition TV. Auto-syncing didn't always work the first time on our tests, but generally it worked well. The 42MP2's native resolution is 853-by-480, but the display accepts VGA without scaling. Anything higher will be scaled to fit the screen, and you can choose to scale 4:3 format to wide-screen format.
The 42MP2 displayed some image quality problems, how ever. A Sonera DisplayMate test screen with colors that should change gradually showed discontinuities, even though NEC says the unit offers 24-bit color. We also saw a color-tracking problem, with various shades of gray showing obvious red and green tints. The company could not duplicate either problem, though. Plasma displays shift color a bit toward green compared with CRTs, as we noticed in a DVD movie, but the shift is minor. More troublesome is that the image showed noticeable flattening compared with a CRT, an indication that the display can't handle subtle shading that gives the eye 3-D cues.
We also found that random noise was more obvious on the 42MP2 than on a CRT. Despite these flaws, however, the NEC PlasmaSync 42MP2 does a more than acceptable job as a presentation display. And its thin, flat shape adds a state-of-the-art flavor that no CRT monitor can match.
NEC PlasmaSync 42MP2
Company:NEC Technologies
Ph: 131632
Price: AU$14,500; table mount, AU$419
Rating:
13%
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