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Sedans Luxury Lounge
21520 messages, Last post on Dec 08, 2009 at 10:26 AM
You are in the Sedans Forum. Your Hosts are pat & karens
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Replying to: blkhemi (Oct 20, 2009 8:07 am) I wanted one in yellow and I still do but those claustophobic rear seats is what kills the deal. And please dont tell me that Audi S4 of yours is yellow or else I will become green with envy. So now you got an Audi this. An Audi that. A few of those Audis. And now a spanking new Audi. For me novelty is a spice of life. I dont always want the same kind of car. At least that's what I told myself when trading in my BMW 335i for a Prius.  A hybrd MB  Whatever makes you happy. But I think this car will be a big flop. Luxury hybrids other than the Lexus RX are doomed to be flops because mileage-wise these vehicles will choke Mother Nature to death no matter how slow you are driving them.
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Replying to: jlbl (Oct 26, 2009 8:24 pm) love visiting your side of the Ocean though I hadn't gone to Spain since the 1980s. I may go with my family to Barcelona next year. That is one city I cant forget. I kind of regret that Europe and North America are starting to resemble each others. I liked the world better at least aesthetically when the world was not so globalized. Well at least North Americans prefer hybrids over diesels. That is one distincition I hope will remain the same at least here in North America.
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Replying to: tagman (Oct 20, 2009 3:43 pm) My mother owned Benzes for decades and so far reliability-wise she's happy even with her 2001 MB C240. My mother plans to replace her 2001 MB C240 with a 2010 MB E350 4Matic. I am trying to persuade her to buy a yellow Audi S4 but so far I haven't been persuasive enough. She still remembers the horrors of owning an unreliable 86 Audi 4000S. I cant blame her because after my BMW 335i I vow I will never ever buy a BMW again. Unless ofcourse BMW starts producing yellow Audi S4s.
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Replying to: lexusguy (Oct 20, 2009 11:15 pm) you are a true connoisseur. It ceases to amaze me on the depth of your knowledge on almost every fine thing that is in the sphere of luxury. Audio equipment, autos, watches, wine, restaurants, travel. Not to move off topicI just have one single guestion to ask you. Is it worth getting a Samsung LED TV versus a LCD TV? Being more a value guy myself is it worth the extra $$$. |
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Replying to: dewey (Oct 27, 2009 10:27 am) Dewey, Short answer is YES..if and only if it has Dynamic Contrast Not going into too much details LCD TV's with LED backlight have better color gamut, and consumes significantly less power. High resolution OLED (TRUE LED) TV's are still in pre production/trial phase as the life of blue OLED is much lower then red/green...hence color drift with time is a big problem. Most of the advertised LED TV's are LCD TV's with LED backlight as oppose to CCFL backlight. Now to come back to Autos's the Yellow Audi S4 vedio review will look spactacular on Samsung LED TV. Next best option to owning one. OK PAT I will stop here..Sorry |
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Replying to: dewey (Oct 27, 2009 10:07 am) First scene, he's dressed all shabby driving an old Mercedes. He's going around a corner and crashes into a fruit stand or something around the turn. Second scene, still dressed shabbily, he's driving an old BMW. He's making a turn and flies off the road and gets airborne through a billboard that reads "Le Mousse is Loose" or something like that. Third scene, he's dressed dashingly driving a new Audi. He makes a clean getaway. The tagline is something like "Progress is good."
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Replying to: tayl0rd (Oct 27, 2009 12:37 pm) Regards, OW |
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Replying to: dewey (Oct 27, 2009 10:27 am) You'd be surprised at how much you can pick up when you don't have any kids to worry about, hahaha. Not to move off topicI just have one single guestion to ask you. Is it worth getting a Samsung LED TV versus a LCD TV? The answer is rather complicated, as these things usually are. First and foremost, Samsung (and Sony's) LED sets technically are LCD. The display technology is the same, as are most of the drawbacks. The only difference is the lighting, traditional LCDs are lit by CCFL tubes, whereas the LED models are lit by you guessed it, LEDs. There's also two kinds of LED lit models, edge lit, and fully back lit. The Samsung B6000, B7000, and B8000 are all edge lit, which allows them to be razor thin. They are also fairly light weight and very efficient. That's the good news. The bad news is that lighting uniformity is a big problem - the edges of the screen look brighter than the middle. Some CCFL based sets can suffer from this as well, but it's much worse on the edge lit sets, to the point where I think they look worse overall than the cheaper CCFL models. The edge lit models also cannot turn the LED's off individually, the lights are either on or off, so black level suffers badly in brightly lit scenes. I'd take a pass on the edge lit models. The other type of LED lighting - fully back lit - is the interesting one. Instead of the lights on the sides, the entire back of the set is covered in LEDs. These aren't as thin yet as the edge lit sets, but they are much better, thanks to a trick called local dimming. There's a few of these on the market now, but the only two worth talking about are the Sony XBR8, and Samsung's brand new B8500. Local dimming means that they can turn individual LEDs off in dark parts of the picture, allowing for black levels better than any plasma, including the over hyped Pioneer Kuro. There's still a couple of downsides. Price for one, the B8500 will set you back quite a bit. The XBR8 is from last year and is more affordable now, but it's also harder to find. Then there's an effect called "blooming". Because there's not an LED for each pixel, light from LEDs that are on can leak into parts of the picture that should be dark. The B8500 is better at avoiding this than the XBR8. Samsung's model from last year, the A950, isn't as good as the XBR and isn't worth trying to find. Finally, the last downside is that back lit LED sets exacerbate LCD's most significant flaw vs plasma - viewing angle. The B8500 is the best looking flat panel TV you can buy - if you're looking directly at it. Start moving to the side, and it's advantage basically disappears. The XBR8 is a bit better in terms of viewing angle. What I would ultimately suggest depends on what you want. If you're a huge movie fan and you want the best possible experience in a darkened room, and your seating position is directly in front of the TV, it may be worth the $4500 US for the 55" Samsung. The 55" XBR8 is currently going for around $4000. The 46" models are both significantly cheaper, about $3500 for the Samsung and $2500 for the Sony. If an extra wide viewing angle is a top concern, your best choice is still a plasma, and the best of those is Panasonic's V10 series. Energy efficiency is better than it used to be, though it will suck up more watts than a big CCFL LCD and quite a bit more than an LED set. The old knocks on plasma, life span and screen burn, are really no longer issues. If anything the plasma will probably out last the back lights on the LCDs. Last but not least, if you just want a decent TV with a fairly good viewing angle that's reasonably efficient and affordable, a Samsung B650 or B750 would be fine. We're still several years away from reasonably priced big screen OLED sets, and the other potentials like SED seemed to have all died off. Mitsubishi's laser set is an interesting but ultimately pointless exercise. 10" deep is great for a rear projection, but nobody wants a set 10" deep in 2009, especially one that costs $7000. I'm not really sure what dynamic contrast has to do with anything, as you'll find some version of it on just about every flat panel TV. Sony's version is applied in a rather ham fisted way, which is why I tend to prefer Samsung sets over Sony. Sorry hosts! 
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Replying to: tayl0rd (Oct 27, 2009 12:37 pm) That's actually a fairly old ad, it may have been from the Superbowl if I remember correctly. It covers four eras, the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s. The message is basically - in the '70s you drove a Mercedes, in the '80s you drove a BMW, in the '90s you drove a Lexus, although in the funniest part of the commercial, he looks at an ES300 and just sighs, he wouldn't even drive it. Finally, cut to the modern era, and an A6 3.0T. It's a good commercial, and you can watch it on Audi's website by clicking on the photos and videos section under the A6. IMO Audi's best commercial though is still the online only "Meet the Beckers". Their jabs at BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus in that are much sharper. |
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Replying to: lexusguy (Oct 27, 2009 5:52 pm)  I have a Mitsubishi HD DLP and I love it. To these eyes, it's every bit as good or better than the plasmas and LCDs I've seen. I can't recall having seen an LED set yet. I don't do a whole lot of TV shopping. Heck, I still have a 12 year old 33" Goldstar CRT TV going strong in my bedroom.
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