Anyone familiar with the X360 Samsung LCD?

There is no requirement for a Xenon title to support 4:3, and in that case the internal scaler will letterbax the output which would be the equivalent of being supersampled.

Having said that I would expect the vast majority of titles to support 4:3 natively.

 

Unnecessary scaling in just about every situation.

Yes, you'll have thin black bars 24 pixels high each at the top and bottom of the screen (in case of 1280*768). If that's the price you pay for an unscaled image, I'm all for it.

This one I agree with, except that a) most people don't use TVs as monitors, and b) the 1024*768 res you get is much too low for just about any type of PC work.

 

Just so people know a representative from Bizarre Creations has said they think the Samsungs look best when hooked up with the VGA cable. The component cables come free with the system though.

 

Lcd-tv

Are you referring to the Sammy LN-R328W model?

Recently, I almost purchased the LN-R329D which has a similar screen, only it has a lower response time and it includes an ATSC (OTA) tuner. There's also a LN-R3228W model which seems to be the all-black version of the LN-R328W. The picture on these screens is, indeed, very good. I visited BB several times to take a look. The reason I held off on the purchase, is that apparently the LN-R329D has some issues with ghosting when it comes to gaming (according to several hands-on reviews at avsforum). This is even with the display's 8ms response time. There's speculation that this may be due to the DNIe processing that it does on the picture.

So after holding off for a while, I started eyeing the Sony KDL-V32XBR1 BRAVIA which does seem to have superior picture and (apparently) no ghosting problems. Of course there's a catch. As usual, the Sony XBR model is about $400 more expensive than the Sammy. This brings it into the low $2000 range which is at the top of my budget. I figure: if I'm going to spend this amount of cash for a display, I might as well wait a couple more months and get a next-generation 37" 1080p display (which should also be in the same price range), or get the XBR at a lower price.

BB already has a 37" 1080p display by Westinghouse (LVM-37w1) in the $1600 range, which is a steal. The catch: this model will soon be discontinued and be replaced by a better version. This is one of the very first 1080p displays of this size, so maybe something didn't go as planned...

 

From what I read a few months back because it was cheaper to go from XGA to WideXGA (WXGA) than to create an all new panel, and its seems they just continued with that... (not that it makes any sense to me at all. But now that they started they probably wont stop because of cost and because regular consumers probably wont buy "a low res 720p TV" when you can get "a high res 1366 TV". They should market 720p as true HD...)

XGA = 1024*768 (4:3)
WXGA = 1366*768 (16:9 ish)

I dont think Ill bother with a WXGA screen and rather wait out for a good TV with true 720p. Not like most TVs has good scalers anyway... (And PC support for 1366 isnt that good, some gfx cards outputs 1365 as the closest resolution (which may or may not be scaled IIRC) and of course all TVs doesnt support that high input resolutions anyway but limits the input to 1024 (which is scaled)).

Oh and... (not that anyone will notice it but...)
1366/768=1,778645833...
16/9=1,77...
1280/720 =1,77...

EDIT: rephrased and clarified

 

Master-Mold

Probably the Samsung 23" LCD HDTV you saw was a 12ms panel. Did you saw any blur?
Samsung has 8ms panels too.
Some new Samsung HDTV have problems with 720p sources and need a firmware upgrade: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241782

Also Sony has 2 new HDTV series (S and V) which use the same 8ms Samsung panels but with different embedded electronics.

 

Thanks for the info

From newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16889102021

 

You can disable the DNI.
At any rate, I bought one a couple of weeks back cuz I got a price offer that I couldn't really resist (I actually wanted a 40" model but they were already sold out). Anyway I didn't really notice ghosting problems so far - though I haven't tried many games on it yet.

Picture quality is nice though, as far as LCDs go, it's tough to beat IMO, though I was surprised these LCD tvs aren't as good with viewing angles as latest PC screens. (the viewing angle changes are similar to that of SXRDs).

That might be a long wait Pretty much every recent PDP/LCD I've looked at is WXGA. It might be better off just getting a 1080P display, PDPs are starting to support it, I figure it won't be long before bigger LCDs do.

 

The Bravia's are amazing, it's hard to deny.

 

It's good that you have the choice of disabling it. Apparently this isn't an option on some of the newer Sammy sets. And I agree, the picture quality is very good for what you're paying. Hopefully my Dell LCD can hold me off for a little while. I have an old 27" CRT TV that's itching to be handed down.

And it would look so nice in my room...

 

I wonder why they'd do that hmm... Anyway it's interesting to observe the changes when you disable it. My LN-R329D also has some other 'auto' adjusting options available, such as auto-volume and auto-colorbalance (or something similar, I forgot exact name of the feature).
The volume thing can be nifty if you're in a building with noise sensitive neighbours - though personally I don't use it.

Is it the 2405FPW? That's a great panel as well, I was very close to buying one earlier this year. Just can't decide if I want wide screen for my desktop or not...

 

Na... As much as I tried to, I just couldn't justify replacing my 2001FP with the 2405FPW. My 2001 is pretty big, and I can imagine the 2405 must be enormous. Dell has some great deals with the 2405 sometimes. What makes you unsure about the widescreen? Personally, I wouldn't mind the extra real estate for when I'm working with two or more apps... Although the 2001 isn't too shabby in that area either.

 

I was tempted to get a 2405FPW too.. the panel is great (in VGA/DVI mode), but when using the component inputs I noticed it had a tendency to overscan the image on the left & right.. cutting around 20 pixels off each edge (when given a 1280x720p image).. Is the same on all the units I've seen (and even on the cheaper Dell LCD TV's).. No amount of playing with the image settings sorted it out (even when zoomed/shifted using the Dell's setting, the clipping was still present).. So, in the end I bailed..

As it is, I'll probably wait for PC panels to appear with HDCP support, given that everyone's going to be locking down their content over the next few years..

 

I picked up the UK equivalent of the KDL-V32XBR1 (KDL-V32A12U) a few weeks ago.. it's a great set (only gripe would be that the audio is a little weak) so now I just need to get some HD content on it. I've still got my fingers crossed that my X360 shows up this year.. although that's sounding less likely by the day..

 

How do the scalers handle fidelity? A single pixel on1280x720 would 'bleed' into adjacent pixels when scaled. Some pixels will alos be upscaled to positions between native pixel. eg. A white pixel at position 141 horizontally surrounded by black pixels would match perfectly onto a 1280x720 display. On an upscaled 1366x768 display this pixel would appear at (13661280)*141 = c. 150.5. That's halfway between pixels 150 and 151. You're not going to get a crisp white dot, unless they shift the pixel either side, but that means adding (an admittedly tiny) distortion.

Every upscaler (PC image based) I've ever seen loses a degree of fidelity when upscaling. I guess that doesn't show on movie content where the images don't come with that level of fidelity, but it probably will show on computer generated console content. I would expect the upscaled image to lose sharpness over the native 720p image. Something I'd be interested to witness.

And regards 1366x768 being better for computers, I presume the computers being attached are MCEs. As has been said computers can be set to output any old resolution; with programmable clocks I'd have thought 1280x720p wouldn't matter. Then if you're showing content on the TV the computer is scaling it. HD content is 720p so doesn't fit natively.

Basically, if the content is always going to be 720p whether it's off an HD optical disk or a downloaded movie stored on a MCD HDD, then a native 720p display makes sense, no? If no-one's ever going to release 768p content and the PC's can work fine without I don't see any point meself. Save dubyateeeff's explanation it's cheaper and easier.

 

Too much price.

I suggest you purchase 32" wide-screen HD-ready LCD TV for same price as available on many sites.

 

Shifty, the problem i believe is the fact that 720p panels (and therefore all the funny 1366x768 ones) are somehow a "stop-gap" solution till we get fully HD panels with 1920x1080 resolution.
Those panels will all have the same 1920x1080 resolution, with no strange things "in between" because that's the top resolution and that's it. Well, until they start pushing even higher resolutions but that will take some time.

The problem with LCD HDTVs is that there were 2 routes they came from and were targetted for, one was movies and one was PCs.

It's logical that the sets should be 1280x720, making things easier for everyone, but i think the whole situation of being "in between SD and FULL HD" makes it possible to have strange scenarios in between.

In the end these sets work mighty fine with 720p sources, with no problem whatsoever with regards to 1:1 pixel mapping. When downscaling 1080i/p material, they have the potential to show more detail than native 1280x720p sets because they have 127488 pixels more to pack detail in. Hardly a big difference i know, but that's one of the "reasons" the manufacturers come up with.

Other than that, it's just one of those things we shouldn't question too much, much like the decision to keeep the 50/60Hz divide even in new HDTVs, which thankfully can display both (or they wouldn't have the HD-Ready logo on them).

 

Well, I already have a 20.1 which is pretty nicely sized - 24 basically just adds some horizontal area, it's not that much of a difference. And with the prices good 20" screens go for these days I might be better off to get another one of those instead of one 24".

Granted with the way 2405 price has been falling it might not be long before it won't matter if I get THAT as the extra display

Hmm, that is indeed odd. Could it be that the scaler gets screwy at that res? Anyway, I also read somewhere that you can only get 720P via component inputs on this screen, not that I would really plan to use it as TV.