HDTV LCDs

[Captain Chickenpants]

Anyone here know much about either of these tv's?
http://www.rgbdirect.co.uk/Referrer.asp?SKUNumber=103348&ReferrerCode=3
http://www.rgbdirect.co.uk/referrer.asp?SKUNumber=103184&ReferrerCode=4

I have seen reviews of the JVC and seen it playing DVD's, High Def content and Digital TV. Haven't been able to find any reviews of the Tosh. But their are lots of comments inthe AVForums about them.

Anyone seen the both of them? How do they compare?

Will be going to visit a shop with both of them and test them out but some longer term impressions would be nice.

Constructing a test dvd to use

 

[London Geezer]

Not sure about the JVC but the Toshiba is a fine piece of kit. It's the only one to have 2 HDMI ports, although it doesn't have component, which is very very strange...

There are a few very good panels, i'd recommend the Bravia V series and the Panasonic TX52 or 500 (same panels but more mainly useless for me features on the 500). These 2 seem to be regarded as the top when it comes to image quality, especially the Bravia's on crappy signals.

With high-quality feeds, most high profile LCD HDTVs will look gorgeous anyway, it depends on how much standard definition material you expect to be watching on it.

The Tosh can be found for about 1300-1500 quid these days, though online shops will get the price lower.

The Panny 500 32" is also about 1500 quid and is an amazing piece of kit. The Sony Bravia's are just beautiful even on the crappiest sources (compared to all other LCD's that is) but also come with the standard Sony Overpricing Policy on them (I think the 32" is about 1700-1800 in shops). Careful cause there are also Bravia S series which do not have the Wega Engine which is what makes the V series look amazing even on crappy analog signals.


The JVC seems to be receiving mixed reviews so between that and the Tosh, i'd go for the Tosh. But personally, seen how you can get a Panny 500 for the same price, i'd go for that one instead...

These days there are the new Samsung M-series which have quite amazing specs and are receiving very very good reviews. And are generally cheaper than the competition.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

The tosh doesn't have component? That is odd. In fact I believe that means it cannot be classed as HD ready. From what I have read to get the official HD Ready badge it has to be able to accept HD over both HDMI and component.
If it hasn't got component that kind of rules it out from my choices I will double check that when I get to look at one.

The price we are looking at is actually closer to £1000. At the moment all we have got is standard def (and that is what we will probably have for quite a while), it just seems dumb to buy a new TV that isn't HD ready.

Looking online the Panasonic looks to be a bit more than we were planning to spend, and a decent Sony is definatly outside the price range.

CC

 

[London Geezer]

The tosh doesn't have component? That is odd. In fact I believe that means it cannot be classed as HD ready. From what I have read to get the official HD Ready badge it has to be able to accept HD over both HDMI and component.
If it hasn't got component that kind of rules it out from my choices I will double check that when I get to look at one.

The price we are looking at is actually closer to £1000. At the moment all we have got is standard def (and that is what we will probably have for quite a while), it just seems dumb to buy a new TV that isn't HD ready.

Looking online the Panasonic looks to be a bit more than we were planning to spend, and a decent Sony is definatly outside the price range.

CC

Yes the fact that it doesn't have component should theoretically disqualify it from being HD-Ready.. It is very odd, but if you look at the mammoth thread on the AVForums about this set, it's explained there. No component.

Well the Tosh is well over £1000 anyway so that rules it out...

If a grand is your budget, i'd seriously look at the new Samsung's M series. The 32M51 is quite amazing and is around that price. Also the Sharp have been getting very good reviews, but you really need to be careful which set you're getting because their model number nomenclature is very confusing. The Samsung R series (the ones that have a triangular shape at the bottom, the ones everyone bought) is also quite nice and very cheap, around 800 for a 32" set, although not the top of the range by any means.

It all depends how picky you are. The Panny TX52 is exactly the same panel as the 500 so same amazing picture quality, costs around a grand, and has everything apart from the SD slot and other things the 500 has.

It's so irritating, i've been waiting to get one and i change my mind every day...

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

When I look at the rgb direct price for the tosh it is £1044.40
http://www.rgbdirect.co.uk/Referrer.asp?SKUNumber=103348&ReferrerCode=3

Thanks for the info. I will have a look at the Samsung. I did look at a Samsung but it was not an M series one. It looked horrendous.

Oh, any idea if these displays allow you to turn off the 'Smart Zoom' or whatever they are calling it. I like my 4:3 displayed with borders damnit! I don't want some godawful fishbowl effect.

Thanks,
CC

 

[London Geezer]

When I look at the rgb direct price for the tosh it is £1044.40
http://www.rgbdirect.co.uk/Referrer.asp?SKUNumber=103348&ReferrerCode=3

Thanks for the info. I will have a look at the Samsung. I did look at a Samsung but it was not an M series one. It looked horrendous.

Oh, any idea if these displays allow you to turn off the 'Smart Zoom' or whatever they are calling it. I like my 4:3 displayed with borders damnit! I don't want some godawful fishbowl effect.

Thanks,
CC

Heh that will be a bit tough to find out, but i'm quite sure all sets have the option to keep the 4:3 stuff like that, leaving black borders on the side, like some sets will let you display 720p material at 1:1 pixel mapping, leaving a black border all around the picture - that's because most LCD's have a native res of 1368x768 and upscal everything to that res... The result should be a bit sharper, but i personally wouldn't use it as it makes the whole image smaller.

 

[Mariner]

When I look at the rgb direct price for the tosh it is £1044.40
http://www.rgbdirect.co.uk/Referrer.asp?SKUNumber=103348&ReferrerCode=3

Thanks for the info. I will have a look at the Samsung. I did look at a Samsung but it was not an M series one. It looked horrendous.

Oh, any idea if these displays allow you to turn off the 'Smart Zoom' or whatever they are calling it. I like my 4:3 displayed with borders damnit! I don't want some godawful fishbowl effect.

Thanks,
CC

The thing to remember when looking at LCD TVs is that if you are in Comet/Currys/Dixons, the image will most likely look atrocious on normal TV feed. These companies take the whole "pile them high, sell them (not very) cheap" attitude and don't provide the screens with a decent feed or even bother to set them up correctly. I've seen the Samsung R series running the HD demo disc in one of these stores and picture quality was very good but practically every other TV was running a really crappy SD feed and looked absolutely awful.

That price for the Toshiba looks pretty decent when you consider that it comes with the floor stand which I think looks very nice. I, too, am looking to buy an LCD TV in the New Year but unfortunately, I don't think my budget will stretch that far (damn the necessary repairs to my windows and leaking roof!).

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

The thing to remember when looking at LCD TVs is that if you are in Comet/Currys/Dixons, the image will most likely look atrocious on normal TV feed. These companies take the whole "pile them high, sell them (not very) cheap" attitude and don't provide the screens with a decent feed or even bother to set them up correctly. I've seen the Samsung R series running the HD demo disc in one of these stores and picture quality was very good but practically every other TV was running a really crappy SD feed and looked absolutely awful.

That price for the Toshiba looks pretty decent when you consider that it comes with the floor stand which I think looks very nice. I, too, am looking to buy an LCD TV in the New Year but unfortunately, I don't think my budget will stretch that far (damn the necessary repairs to my windows and leaking roof!).

Yeah.
I got the impression that I was really annoying the sales guy in HiSpek by asking them to connect a DVD player to it so that I could test out some DVD's.
It was a spur of the moment decision so just grabbed a few discs that I thought should be representative of my typical viewing.
Ice Age,
Finding Nemo,
Lord of the Rings,
The Fifth Element,
and Friends series 1 as it is about the lowest quality SD feed I am likely to throw at the thing.

When I go shopping in the new year I will hopfully have had time to select some specific clips and also manufactured some streams to test other bits and pieces.
My planned disc will have.
Clips from the above mentioned films (and any others that seem appropriate e.g. Sin City).

Test brightness and check for dead pixels.
Full White,
Full Black,
Full Red
Full Green,
Full Blue,


Grey steps from low to full to test contrast.
Red,Green,Blue and Grey gradients to test for banding.
Some streams to test the SD to HD progressive scan conversion. Looking at jaggies and aliasing artifacts etc.
I am fully aware that I can't expect a TV at £1000 to perform fantastically on these tests, but I wan't to get the one that performs the best for the money.

I am a picky so and so

 

[pascal]

... The Sony Bravia's are just beautiful even on the crappiest sources (compared to all other LCD's that is) but also come with the standard Sony Overpricing Policy on them (I think the 32" is about 1700-1800 in shops). Careful cause there are also Bravia S series which do not have the Wega Engine which is what makes the V series look amazing even on crappy analog signals.

LB, did you have an opportunity to test the Sony Bravia s-series or compare it with the v-series?

The s-series is the only one available here. I saw it in a local store but the source was a bad composite and the setup was very bad.

I also saw some great, vibrant Philips TVs, but I discovered it was an special setup made by Philips reps and using video component. Then I canot trust this kind of store comparison.

 

[London Geezer]

LB, did you have an opportunity to test the Sony Bravia s-series or compare it with the v-series?

The s-series is the only one available here. I saw it in a local store but the source was a bad composite and the setup was very bad.

I also saw some great, vibrant Philips TVs, but I discovered it was an special setup made by Philips reps and using video component. Then I canot trust this kind of store comparison.

I haven't been able to "test" the two displays, but all i can say is that i saw a V-series Bravia running Freeview TV (usually total crap digital TV through aerial) and it looked absolutely amazing, the best "originally crappy" picture on an LCD i've ever seen.

The S-Series Bravia's don't have the Wega Engine so they are about the same quality as any other set without fancy post-processing, like the Samsungs R-series and a few others, which have the same panel (Samsung one in fact) but different "lesser quality" processing engines. Only the Samsungs R's still cost about half as much.

The new Philips are even more expensive than the Sony Bravia's (!!!) and not only the 37" 9830 is one of the first ones in Europe to have a 1920x1080 picture, but they are just amazing sets. They even let you display AVI's and MPG's through USB on the TV directly. With these sets there are so many settings and different processing sonfigurations (picel plus 2, motion interpolations etc...) that it's hard to see what's good and what's not, if you don't spend a good hour playing around with it. Also, sometimes these settings fuck up the image so it's better to leave some of them off most of the time. Ambilight is quite impressive though, it sounds gimmicky and uselessly "stylish", but when you actually see it in action it's just lovely

 

[Nappe1]

Talking about Philips, I am really happy with my 26PF5520D/10 (26", DVB-T) , though it's not that High end. Having Built In DVB-T tuner drops one external box off and it works really well. Also, I was able to get working 1366x768 via DVI with powerstrip.

After awhile, I noticed it being not so obious getting native resolution of the panel working on these TVs. For example, there's whole bunch of guys trying to get it working with Bravias (S and V models) and Viewsonic Wxx60 models without success. Viewsonic rep. even told to one guy that it's impossible resolution on PC, based on that GTF timing does not allow non-multiply of 8 resolutions. I wonder why they talk about GTF while CVT and CVT-RB has been the VESA standards since 2003...)

 

[London Geezer]

The problem is that video cards only output multiples of 8, so instead of outputting 1366x768, you'll have to force them to output either 1360x768 or 1366x768. One will leave a couple of pixels blank on each side and the other will overscan 2 pixel lines. Either will give very nice results though, since they're both 1:1 pixel mapping.

Sony "did another Sony" with the Bravia's in Europe.
They are fabulous sets, but the problem lies in the fact that the "lower" S-series has VGA - so you can get PC's connected without problems, but the more expensive V-series do NOT have VGA....
God only knows why they did that, but basically to connect a PC to a V-Bravia, you'll have to go through HDMI and set a resolution of about 1100x700 (can't remember the numbers exactly but there are thread on the AVForums about this) to avoid overscan... The result is good enough, but it does make you wonder what the hell Sony were playing at by leaving out the VGA from their top of th eline sets, when ALL other sets have VGA, even the less expensive ones, and even Sony's own S-series Bravia's. Go figure...

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Talking about Philips, I am really happy with my 26PF5520D/10 (26", DVB-T) , though it's not that High end. Having Built In DVB-T tuner drops one external box off and it works really well. Also, I was able to get working 1366x768 via DVI with powerstrip.

After awhile, I noticed it being not so obious getting native resolution of the panel working on these TVs. For example, there's whole bunch of guys trying to get it working with Bravias (S and V models) and Viewsonic Wxx60 models without success. Viewsonic rep. even told to one guy that it's impossible resolution on PC, based on that GTF timing does not allow non-multiply of 8 resolutions. I wonder why they talk about GTF while CVT and CVT-RB has been the VESA standards since 2003...)

Because the difference between GTF and CVT timings is minimal.
Apart from the reduced blanking support (I have not seend an LCD panel requesting reduced blanking) The main difference between CVT and GTF is that the CVT forumula is designed such that the pixel clock required for a particular timing is acheivable with a high degree of accuracy by the PLL's that gfx cards use to produce the pixel clocks.

What are the input resolutions of those panels. Although the cell granularity of GTV (and CVT) timings is 8 pixels what you should be able to do is pad out the non blanking with a border. So calculate the timings with a 1368 width. Set active display to 1366 and add a 2 pixel border (split it 1 pixel each side).

What would be better would be to look at the DDC data from the monitor and see if it lists a preferred timing mode, (Viewsonic used to have a DDC info viewer), and then modify that if required.

CC

 

[London Geezer]

OK STOP PRESS!!!

Chickenpants, i was wrong about the WLT58. It has 2 HDMI and 1 component, making it officially HD-Ready. I was thinking about the WLT56 which only has 1 HDMI and no component and is still HD-Ready because you can use a Component-to-VGA adapter for analog HD sources - kind of a hack, but it qualifies it as HD-Ready nontheless.

Also, the 58 has a digital tuner and the 56 only has an analog one.

Sorry!

The WLT58 is one fine set by the way, if you haven't bought it already. And checking the prices, you can find it for very cheap, around a grand or so online, considering the features it has.

 

[pascal]

I haven't been able to "test" the two displays, but all i can say is that i saw a V-series Bravia running Freeview TV (usually total crap digital TV through aerial) and it looked absolutely amazing, the best "originally crappy" picture on an LCD i've ever seen.

The S-Series Bravia's don't have the Wega Engine so they are about the same quality as any other set without fancy post-processing, like the Samsungs R-series and a few others, which have the same panel (Samsung one in fact) but different "lesser quality" processing engines. Only the Samsungs R's still cost about half as much.

Well, Samsung Marketing is strong and many people want to buy this nice, stylish V-shape HDTV. The result is that Samsung is much more expensive here than Sony s-series. The KLV-S26A10T cost US$ 3,000.00 and the Samsung LN26R51BX cost US$ 3,912.00

The new Philips are even more expensive than the Sony Bravia's (!!!) and not only the 37" 9830 is one of the first ones in Europe to have a 1920x1080 picture, but they are just amazing sets. They even let you display AVI's and MPG's through USB on the TV directly. With these sets there are so many settings and different processing sonfigurations (picel plus 2, motion interpolations etc...) that it's hard to see what's good and what's not, if you don't spend a good hour playing around with it. Also, sometimes these settings fuck up the image so it's better to leave some of them off most of the time. Ambilight is quite impressive though, it sounds gimmicky and uselessly "stylish", but when you actually see it in action it's just lovely

My wife liked the ambilight idea. She wanted to buy this 50" plasma Philips with ambilight that our bank is promoting with some megastore for just US$ 10,000.00 after an special and personal/not transferible US$ 2,000.00 discount.

 

[Ty]

Ambilight is quite impressive though, it sounds gimmicky and uselessly "stylish", but when you actually see it in action it's just lovely

The concept behind Ambilight is not at all gimmicky.

Basically it covers up/hides low contrast sets so blacks don't appear gray to you (and reduces eyestrain).

Which is why I always ask people what are the viewing conditions where they'll be watching their sets.

If they watch in dark conditions, then they need a set with higher contrast ratios. But if using it in a lit room, then high contrast ratios become less of an issue.

Anyhow I always recommend using a backlight for bias-lighting wherever possible (at the 6500K range of light).

You can make one yourself or you can go the pricier route and get it done right by going with Ideal-lume.

http://asia.cnet.com/howto/insidersecrets/0,39050640,39277447-39002112q,00.htm

http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/