I went shopping today. Bought myself a MFM-HT75W set.
It's a 17" widescreen LCD TV, so the screen isn't all that big, but hey, my wallet isn't all that big either!
Damn, I saw what looked like a 50" WEGA plasmascreen too today, and DAMN... It was as big as a freakin WALL, and I wanted it! But I don't have US$2500+ to blow on a TV, so I had to settle for something slightly smaller.
As it turns out, this is a pretty well-featured unit anyway, it's got these I/O options all as standard:
*RF in
*Composite in
*S-Video in
*Component in
*HD15 VGA in
*HDCP DVI-D in
*Stereo line-ins (x4)
*Headphones out
The tuner is ye standard 125-channel thingie, unfortunately no HDTV decoder. However, it handles both 720P and 1080i from an external decoder so not all hope is lost. Two line-ins are in the form of standard phono plugs; one in-line with the S-video/composite inputs, the other is in-line with the component inputs. There's a 3.5mm stereo jack next to both the VGA and DVI inputs as well.
Unfortunately, there is no RGB scart connector, that would have been good to have for the gamecube but alas, we can't have everything. Now it has to live on the composite input like before. PS2 connects to the S-video jack using a cable I bought like two years ago and had no use for until now. Component in is reserved for my x360 of course, and DVI will receive my PS3 when I get that. Had the included VGA cable been long enough, I'd hooked the screen up to my PC just to check what it's like using a widescreen monitor as a display...
The unit comes with a full range of cables in the accessories box too in addition to the ubiqutous remote+batteries. Power in is a standard PC-style plug socket with three prongs, then there are both VGA and DVI cables included complete with ferrite beads moulded into the cable and plastic caps on the sockets to protect the pins. Furthermore, Sony packs in a nice-looking shielded coaxial RF lead with shiny metal connectors crimped onto it, and a 3.5mm stereo cable (for the DVI or VGA inputs, if the device is used together with a PC). Finally, there is a scart-to-composite/stereo line converter cable too for use with older cable decoders and such I guess.
The TV (or monitor, as it functions just as well that way) is fairly thin - around 6-7 cm I judge - and stands upright using a very sturdy spring-loaded leg support made of solid metal. There is a small rubber roller mounted on the support leg and small rubber feet at the front of the unit, so that it's easy to adjust the inclination just by pushing slightly. Height is not adjustable, other than taking a stack of bibles or some other books you never intend to read to put the thing on top of. There are four screw holes on the back as well for mounting it on the wall or an arm, but it's not a standard VESA mount so one probably has to buy it from Sony. PC-Engine will have a field day here about all these proprietary Sony solutions...
Neato features include a photosensor to automatically adjust the backlight intensity according to ambient light level, teletext and PiP (Picture-in-Picture) between any of the video inputs. That's cool stuffs. There's also "surround" sound via WOW TruSurround simulation, and it sort of works too I might add. Well, it does something anyway. This sort-of surround sound is produced by a set of 2x3W stereo speakers and a 5W subwoofer, if it can be called that when so tiny.
From what I've been able to tell so far from some random listening, the subwoofer isn't worth the name. But I didn't really expect that either. I plan to extract TV audio through the headphones output anyway and feed into my real surround system with 105W RMS aggregate output. Just need to buy the appropriate Y adaptor...
TV image is bright, very colorful, and the 16ms gray-to-gray screen doesn't show any signs of ghosting. The built-in noise reduction works well, though it isn't completely foolproof. That'd been too much to expect out of crappy RF anyway, but the image is still nice and sharp compared to my old set (19 y/o). Perhaps extremely bright areas are a little washed out, and hard contrast edges get sort of a shadow to the side of them. I have to fiddle with the contrast setting a bit to see if I can fix that, or if it's something inherent to standard antenna input (like I said and we all know, RF is crap). I also should consider there's heavy rain outside, which probably messes with the reception of satellite channels right now.
I watched some DVD through the S-video input from my PS2, and that image is really nice and clear. I selected Beavis and Butt-head Do America to watch simply because of all the edges of the hand-drawn animated cartoon images to check the sharpness, and there was nothing wrong with that.
The video scaler seems to work satisfactory. It effortlessly stretches 4:3 images to cover the entire screen, it can also zoom in letterboxed video in 4:3 format slightly to get rid of some of the black bars, though that sacrifices a little of the image on either side. There's a further zoomed mode too, though I haven't found any use for it yet.
All in all, I think I couldn't have made a better choice really, other than spent more money on the 19" version. Or that plasma WEGA screen, heeh. I got all the inputs I need, the unit is extremely well-built (Sony quality, yum), and the image quality is excellent from what I've seen so far. Haven't even found any dead pixels yet, at least not any that are stuck in an on position as a black screen is solid black. Haven't found anything with solid white yet but I will, sooner or later.
In all, I'm rather stoked. Now let the poo-pooing begin, starting with why the hell I bought a crappy sony, and why it's so small and blah blah... Come on, I know you're desperate to nag on about something!
It's a 17" widescreen LCD TV, so the screen isn't all that big, but hey, my wallet isn't all that big either!
Damn, I saw what looked like a 50" WEGA plasmascreen too today, and DAMN... It was as big as a freakin WALL, and I wanted it! But I don't have US$2500+ to blow on a TV, so I had to settle for something slightly smaller.As it turns out, this is a pretty well-featured unit anyway, it's got these I/O options all as standard:
*RF in
*Composite in
*S-Video in
*Component in
*HD15 VGA in
*HDCP DVI-D in
*Stereo line-ins (x4)
*Headphones out
The tuner is ye standard 125-channel thingie, unfortunately no HDTV decoder. However, it handles both 720P and 1080i from an external decoder so not all hope is lost. Two line-ins are in the form of standard phono plugs; one in-line with the S-video/composite inputs, the other is in-line with the component inputs. There's a 3.5mm stereo jack next to both the VGA and DVI inputs as well.
Unfortunately, there is no RGB scart connector, that would have been good to have for the gamecube but alas, we can't have everything. Now it has to live on the composite input like before. PS2 connects to the S-video jack using a cable I bought like two years ago and had no use for until now.
Component in is reserved for my x360 of course, and DVI will receive my PS3 when I get that. Had the included VGA cable been long enough, I'd hooked the screen up to my PC just to check what it's like using a widescreen monitor as a display...The unit comes with a full range of cables in the accessories box too in addition to the ubiqutous remote+batteries. Power in is a standard PC-style plug socket with three prongs, then there are both VGA and DVI cables included complete with ferrite beads moulded into the cable and plastic caps on the sockets to protect the pins. Furthermore, Sony packs in a nice-looking shielded coaxial RF lead with shiny metal connectors crimped onto it, and a 3.5mm stereo cable (for the DVI or VGA inputs, if the device is used together with a PC). Finally, there is a scart-to-composite/stereo line converter cable too for use with older cable decoders and such I guess.
The TV (or monitor, as it functions just as well that way) is fairly thin - around 6-7 cm I judge - and stands upright using a very sturdy spring-loaded leg support made of solid metal. There is a small rubber roller mounted on the support leg and small rubber feet at the front of the unit, so that it's easy to adjust the inclination just by pushing slightly. Height is not adjustable, other than taking a stack of bibles or some other books you never intend to read to put the thing on top of.
There are four screw holes on the back as well for mounting it on the wall or an arm, but it's not a standard VESA mount so one probably has to buy it from Sony. PC-Engine will have a field day here about all these proprietary Sony solutions... Neato features include a photosensor to automatically adjust the backlight intensity according to ambient light level, teletext and PiP (Picture-in-Picture) between any of the video inputs. That's cool stuffs. There's also "surround" sound via WOW TruSurround simulation, and it sort of works too I might add. Well, it does something anyway.
This sort-of surround sound is produced by a set of 2x3W stereo speakers and a 5W subwoofer, if it can be called that when so tiny. From what I've been able to tell so far from some random listening, the subwoofer isn't worth the name. But I didn't really expect that either. I plan to extract TV audio through the headphones output anyway and feed into my real surround system with 105W RMS aggregate output. Just need to buy the appropriate Y adaptor...
TV image is bright, very colorful, and the 16ms gray-to-gray screen doesn't show any signs of ghosting. The built-in noise reduction works well, though it isn't completely foolproof. That'd been too much to expect out of crappy RF anyway, but the image is still nice and sharp compared to my old set (19 y/o). Perhaps extremely bright areas are a little washed out, and hard contrast edges get sort of a shadow to the side of them. I have to fiddle with the contrast setting a bit to see if I can fix that, or if it's something inherent to standard antenna input (like I said and we all know, RF is crap). I also should consider there's heavy rain outside, which probably messes with the reception of satellite channels right now.
I watched some DVD through the S-video input from my PS2, and that image is really nice and clear. I selected Beavis and Butt-head Do America to watch simply because of all the edges of the hand-drawn animated cartoon images to check the sharpness, and there was nothing wrong with that.
The video scaler seems to work satisfactory. It effortlessly stretches 4:3 images to cover the entire screen, it can also zoom in letterboxed video in 4:3 format slightly to get rid of some of the black bars, though that sacrifices a little of the image on either side. There's a further zoomed mode too, though I haven't found any use for it yet.
All in all, I think I couldn't have made a better choice really, other than spent more money on the 19" version. Or that plasma WEGA screen, heeh.
I got all the inputs I need, the unit is extremely well-built (Sony quality, yum), and the image quality is excellent from what I've seen so far. Haven't even found any dead pixels yet, at least not any that are stuck in an on position as a black screen is solid black. Haven't found anything with solid white yet but I will, sooner or later.In all, I'm rather stoked.
Now let the poo-pooing begin, starting with why the hell I bought a crappy sony, and why it's so small and blah blah... Come on, I know you're desperate to nag on about something! 
