LCD, plasma, HDTV, home theatre, the works

[Binoculars]

Don't know whether this qualifies to be in the computers forum but here it is. As retirement approacheth, those silly toys so beloved of some but which I have ignored for so long in favour of the Binoettes' dancing lessons, uni fees, emergencies etc, suddenly come on to the radar screen. Chief among them would appear to be the home theatre experience.

I would appreciate some learned input here, but because the field is so wide I'll ask specifically for suggested sites where someone who is in no immediate hurry but starting off from a knowledge level of just above zero can find what he needs to know in layman's language. HDTV, set top boxes, DVD recorders with hard drives, all these things are still Swahili to me. (An Australian input would be welcomed here).

However, let that not stop the geeks and nerds from posting their own personal preferences and why. I'm not after ultimate performance, but if I'm going to be paying a chunk of money for an all singing all dancing TV screen to watch the 875 channels of **** available to me, I think it's reasonable to expect at least that a good picture is available from wherever you sit. Doesn't appear to be my experience from the large screen plasmas or whatever in pubs. Should I just settle for a HD CRT?

On these and other matters all input is welcomed. Feel free to thread drift as required to wax apoplectic about your own preferences.

[ORAC]

An Introduction to Home Cinema (http://www.homecinemachoice.com/articles/introduction.php)

[CherokeeDriver]

Sony 36" Wide Screen HD CRT. Abslutely amazing. Not overwhelmend with the Sony DVD / Dolby Sound system though.

[Gonzo]

I have a Toshiba 27in LCD (27WLT56). Absolutely brilliant.

[redsnail]

We got ourselves a nice little set up now we have the space. An oldish Pioneer surround sound NXT speaker set up. Yes, NXT is a bit left field but they sound fine and look good.
Tv. Lovely 42" Panasonic plasma number. Good colour definition, High Definition read and it is brilliant, good contrast as well.
A Panasonic Hard drive/DVD recorder too.

[planecrazy.eu]

After looking at these things for hours a day and then selling them, i would say the following are the best, in the order they are in.

Plasma
1) Pioneer
2) Panasonic
3) LG
4) Samsung
5) Sony

LCD
1) LG
2) ACER
3) Philips
4) Tosh
5) Sony

Home Cinema
1) Panasonic - By Far!
2) Denon
3) Techniques
4) Sony
5) Samsung

Best Selling Makes
1) LG
2) Samsung
3) Philips
4) Sony
5) Goodmans (really)
6) Panasonic

Get out there and look at them all, dont take some ones word for how good they are as every-ones eyes are different and people like different screens. Skin tones are more nateral on Panasonics but some people love the Vibrance of the Sony, others prefer LG's colours, etc. DLP should not be ruled out either, they are great. Acer LCDS are uncommon for TV's but trust me, they are great, and you can get a proper 1080 LCD for a good price. We pass 90% of our HD from a computer to the screens, this looks better than Sky HD. HD DVDS (BlueRay and HD-DVD) Will be out soon so keep a hold onto your cash till they do, they will be the next big thing as the normal DVD will be out-dated by the end of the year, well thats when we're getting HD-DVD. Most HD DVD Players at the moment might say HD on them, but they just upscale normal DVD's to 1080 or 720.

BlueRay and HD-DVD are a new format of DVD, I belive they have 30gig capacity and a rumour of upto 90gig on blue ray with tri-layer discs?

Not much else to say, i am talking from a sales persons point of view, and some-times we are washed with what the company and manufactures want us to belive there products do.

One more think, buy good cables but dont go over the top. Monster Cables are good if you can afford them and dont forget the surge protector, many a customer wishes they would have belived us and got one before the storm hits and knocks the satalite dish out and in-turn damage all that gear. Some surge protectors clean the power to, many think this is a Gimic, and it is to a degree, but it really does clean the power, it provides constant power, as normal power spikes and surges, its very rare to get it dead on 240v, it ranges -/+5 or so they tell us. Belive it or not the sound is clearer with a power cleaner, it just sounds more definate and sharper, but then i get 10% commission for selling these things so maybe i am just brainwashed to the lot...

[Jimmy Macintosh]

I found that CNET helped me a lot when looking at my set up. Don't know if there is an Austrailian version or not though. It covers specialist reviews and owner reviews for alsorts of equipment.

[IO540]

I would be careful with buying any HD screens right now.

One needs to be very clear about where the material is going to come from. Currently, Sky TV is the only option. With all other data sources there are compatibility questions.

This is partly because of HD security. Hollywood doesn't want HD data cracked the way that DVD's CSS security was cracked several years ago, by disassembly of a piece of PC-based DVD player software. This time around, there won't be any PC based HD DVD players. The data stream will be encrypted all the way from the source to a decryption chip inside the display device, or a chip on the PC's video card if you want to play a HD DVD in a PC.

There are all sorts of other measures going in, like blacklists of known compromised keys which will be distributed on all HD DVDs as they are pressed, and every HD player (or anything else that decrypts HD data) will have to download this blacklist and update it's internal blacklist.

It's quite a nightmare. I used to work in comms security so know a fair bit about the challenges. They will probably fail too, a few years down the road, but they will cause a lot of users to get screwed with expensive HD gear that is next to useless.

There is a lot at stake for the movie business, because if a true HD version (i.e. 1080 lines) of a famous movie gets compromised, that movie will be done for good. It won't be like cracking a 625 line DVD of the same movie; a cinema will always be better quality.

In a lot of respects, a lot of the HD screens that litter the floor at the High Street outlets are a massive con, because they are good for Sky only, and work natively only for 720 line data.

Most of the HD screens currently out will never be able to play HD DVDs - except via their analog inputs.

Cables are the biggest con going. I used to design power amps, 0.001% THD at 400 watts RMS. That was before the bottom fell out of the hifi market, and to stay in there people started selling gold plated mains plugs, solid silver speaker cables, and phono leads (made in China for £5) for £300. Even Comet etc are playing this ripoff game, selling gold plated SCART cables for £75 (made in China for £1).

[planecrazy.eu]

Hey I0540, I was lucky enough to be in Las Vegas for CES this year and i have seen both BlueRay and HD-DVD drives in PC's. Sony had a Vaio playing a BlueRay Movie, the name of the Movie is on the tip of my tounge but i cant remember it, some Japanese thing. I have seen a difference with some cables compared to others, a £30 cable we well is better than the cheap £5 one, but the £30 is not better or worse than the £120 thx one, so i guess there is a con there to a degree. Getting the right conectivity is the key as scart is not the best connection going.

Remember there will be four types of HD 720I, 720P, 1080I and 1080P, Canon and Sony make a Camcorder that records 1080I.

I dont follow this stuff in depth, just touch on the basics, but i am sure there will always be a work around for copying, i remember when DVD's couldn't be coppied, then they could. Security is tighter on the next Generation, but i doubt its impossible to crack. I am told that Sky HD is copy protected, but i have downloaded a HD version, or what says is HD version of a few discovery channel shows. I cant tell if they are real as a 30 minute show in HD will be three gigs i think.

http://www.blu-raydisc.com
http://www.hddvdprg.com

[IO540]

OK, I am not saying you can't play HD data on current equipment.

What you can't do, on stuff currently in the shops, is play data that has been copy protected.

I have a Sony HD camcorder (the "cheap" £1000 one) and it makes great HD movies. The quality (ignoring my cr*p movie making skills) is stunning, and the stuff plays back on anything that will handle 1080i data; typically this means WinXP and the latest Media Player.

Similarly, the fantastic quality shop demo material which is being played continuously, using those specially built DVD players they have in the shops for driving their HD screens, is unprotected.

But copy protected movies? No way. Only possible via the analog input.

It's worth doing a google on HD security. It's pretty amazing what they are doing.

Yes it will be cracked. Probably not as quickly as CSS was cracked. However, this won't be relevant to Joe Public and the capability of the £1500 HD screen he has bought from Comet to show anything in [I]native HD other than Sky broadcasts.

I am puzzled though about e.g. Sony. They make a huge marketing case of their laptops playing movie DVDs. I can't believe that they will go away from this capability with HD movies. Perhaps only future models, with the appropriate decryption in the video subsystem, will play HD movies. Can't see how it's going to work otherwise, because if you can get access to the unencrypted digital RGB data at any point, the whole system will fall over because you will be able to make an exact digital copy of the movie.

[ORAC]

If you want to be sure, in the long term, of being able to play copy protected material you will need a TV/screen with a HDMI (http://www.panasonic.co.uk/technology/pukweb04-dynamic-tech-hdm1.html) input. It also has the advantage of carrying all audio and video on one thin lead so tidying things up.

Presently, up to 32" LCD screens are better, Above that Plasma probably still has the edge. But, if you can wait a year or so, wait for SED (http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/sedtech.html) screens to become available. They are just starting to arrive, but only at the top end of the market.

[planecrazy.eu]

I am a little confused here too. I have seen a Sony Vaio Playing a BlueRay HD Video, same as i have seen a Tosh HD-DVD Player. I am sure that Sony will sell Blue-Ray drives for Laptops towards the end of the year, but i have to say i dont have enough knowledge to say if they will play a proper BlueRay HD Video (Pre-Recorded). I seen a demo, but this was a writeable duel layer BlueRay disk. I am sure that there must be a plan for Sony with them playing Video BlueRay disks as Sony PCS are entertainment PC's, there normally aimed at that. I wish i knew more about this subject, will read-up.

One more thing to say is, where will this all end? As i have seen an Apple MAC Playing back 2500 X 1600 of a TV Advert. Wallis and Gromit was made with an EOS 1-II 16.? Mega Pixel Camera. So in theory that can be played back at more or less 5000 x 3000.

There are not many about at the moment but a 1080 x 19?? screen is amazing (1920? cant remember) they are True HD. That Sony Camcorder you have is an amazing feat for the price. You cant get close to it without making your wallet at least 3k's lighter.

M$ Have a good HD section on there Windows Media Player Website, Got great footage of the Blue Angles and a heap of other planes like C130 With JATO Bottles, etc.

[ORAC]

UHDV, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Video) but it is about 10 years away, mainly because of the storage capacity required.

[IO540]

There is absolutely zero problem in playing any HD video on a PC. You just need a decent video card.

The resolution itself in not an issue; sufficient resolution was available 10-15 years ago as a routine matter.

Well, assuming you have a player that can play it; typically you need the latest Media Player which implies WinXP and not Win2000 etc. Or some other media player; there are loads of them.

Likewise there is no problem is setting up a really impressive shop demo. The shops use a box basically containing a PC, a DVD player, and a high end video card. One can't get a 2 hour HD movie on a DVD but they don't need to; their demos are only minutes long.

The salesman will even tell you it's coming off a blue-ray DVD player...

The other day I walked all the way down Tottenham Court Road, to be fed all kinds of bu11sh1t, and not one shop had an HD DVD player of any kind, nor did they have any imminently arriving.

The issue, as I mentioned before, is playing back copy protected material. On HD, the decryption has to be done inside the display device. Anything else is a cheat. Which is not to say many people will notice when feeding analog video to their £1500 "HD" screens.

The cam I have, HDR-HC1

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HCR-HC1-Review.htm

is very good but poor for moving images. The image movement gets very jagged; a bit like early 100Hz-processed TVs were on anything that was moving fast.

You do need a really top-end PC to transfer the data from the cam though. It has to use XP, 3HGz+, 1GB RAM, SATA HD (pref 10k RPM), and I use Pinnacle 10 (very basic but does what I need). I had to take my boys' gaming PC and put in the fastest SATA HD I could get :)

[planecrazy.eu]

I agree with the BS you talk about. We get very very poor training, and the trainers dont know what they are talking about half the time. When these "HD Dvd" Players came out, we was told they would play HD-DVD's and upscale normal DVDS. The TRUTH is they wont play HD-DVDS or BlueRays, they just upscale normal DVD's. So in retail stores, unless you talk to some one who reads about this stuff in their spare time, the sales person knows the same or less that the average jo. Everyone knows, or they should do that most of what a sales person tells you is rubbish as its normally made up on the spot.

We are expecting the real HD-DVD players, which are Tosh's technology towards the End of the year. Sony;s BlueRay Players are for sure a 2007 thing. It will be interesting though with two HD technologies that you can buy into, both Tosh and Sony have the goods and bads.

You are right, we have a PC running our HD demos. High End? Well not really, cheap ATA 128 Dedicated Card with DV out and a HDMI converter. The video is played from the HD. We are upto 45 Mins of loaded video now, this drives you crazy, but i never get tired of the Blue Angles C130 with the full JATO take off.

I think the Camcorder you have is great, ok its got some issues, i have never seen it on a PC but the LG screen i have seen it on, it looked great, i think LG LCDS have an Anti Aliasing feature though, maybe why i never noticed the jagged edges.

[IO540]

It isn't so much edges; the whole image looks like it's breaking up, if you move (pan) the camcorder around too fast.

If you want good quality you have to hold it steadily and pan it around slowly.

I am suprised most of the reviews didn't pick this up. Apparently it is caused by the image sensor; it scans one line at a time, whereas a high-end progressive (non-interlaced) cam (or the old DV ones, if supporting progressive mode) captures the whole image in one instant, so you don't get movement within the image.

This isn't related to DV though.

Interesting about the video card in the demo box. Is this running under XP? The data rate isn't that high; it's the Windoze bloatware that needs a fast PC.

[The Voice]

Bino's - hubby and I toddled up this path only a couple of weeks ago.

Check out Choice articles - you may have to join to get the full report ..

We did settle on JVC 32" LCD - bloody nice it is .. wasn't keen on the 'burning pixel' problems of the plasmas' everyone mentions, and also have friends that have 12mth old screens that are u/s ..

got a great deal during the end of fin. yr sales (can you wait till next year?) seriously, saved nearly 1k ... have in fact connected it to the sony stereo system and it is a beauty!!

the catch with these things .. the $ spent on the cabling required to hook it all up .. my next trip into the shops will be to buy the DVD recorder thingy as it isn't just that easy to hook up the mighty VCR!!

[Loose rivets]

This is about me trying to catch up on a subject that I used to know a bit about. When I did me City&Guilds in the 50s, we all looked forward to a world with a common standard. Maybe in my next life. If I need to know about current technology, I ask me grandson. But this is what I have gleaned in the last while.

A year or so back, SIL in Texas got the 60" Sony LCD. [there is a 42 and a 50] It's okay, and it's certainly big, but as I said at the time it had a screen surface that was fine in fixed frame, then showed up when the image was panning. It looked like the old anti-reflect coating on the surface of a PC's monitor.

At that time I deemed it the best buy cos of the problems with flat screens. The bulb on the LCDs seemed the only issue. [claimed 10,000 hrs $c350]

Then came the new model.

I have looked at T/Vs for 55 years, a lot of the time with a professional eye. The new 50 or 60 was stunning. Non interlaced 60HZ [here] and 6m pixels. With some clever 3 dimensional configuration. I had never seen anything like it. No sign of a pixel from 2 ft away, and every hair of some blond guy's head was a clearly defined thread.

I was standing next to a middle-aged couple in a Sear's store in Austin. They guy said, in a British north country accent, ‘that it looks more real than the real scene....if you were there, it wouldn't look that real.' LOL, but I knew what he meant.

Yesterday, I was offered the 60" old tech one at $2,000, about half what SIL paid. But then the salesman threw a new die. "There is a new one coming out soon, this is why we can offer the current 50" NI 1080 6mpix at $2,500 ish. I threw away my plan for the new Yamaha digital piano...well, my playing is crap anyway, let's have the telly. But what will I feed it with?

Camera. Colchester last summer, £c1,250 blew away the pix from my old [broadcast quality] Sony BVP200 ..[.today's money would be about £45,000.] but........I read above that it does not process the panned image quickly enough. Interesting comment, I will be forearmed. But still, it was stunning.

DVD player. Okay, there are some cheap players that will simulate HD. They do this by a clever algorithm filling in the missing lines. Eeeech! Like the old drop-out correction. Sony on sale at $119. It's a way of filling a big screen. It needs the single cable mentioned [with a plug a bit like a wide USB] or the T/V switches back to DVD standard.

HD players are there, and not all that costly, but the movies to put in them???????

HD DVDs not offered by Net flix and the like yet, but it will happen. For me, science/nature and the latest films in HD will hack it, everything else can be at DVD quality.

Most cable companies offer a few HD progs...but how do you record them? And do you want to see them anyway? HD Tivo-type machines are expensive and the clued-up will use computers, but several companies will offer a recording service as part of a [not cheap] package.

[ORAC]

hddvd.org, (http://www.hddvd.org/hddvd/) reviews of the available players and the movies already out.

I have read a few reviews of the players in the last few weeks, the reviewers were not particularily impressed and recommended waiting a while till the quality goes up and the price comes down, but the Toshiba HD A1 looks reasonable at $500.

[Loose rivets]

Today offered a 50 inch Sony LCD for $1300 ex demmo. Said okay. they said sorry no box.....oooooh sorry no bubble wrap or cardboard. Did i hear that Sears was going bust? Or was it that they were buying Target. Amounts to the same thing I suppose. Just plain daft.

The DVD for Hi def it seems comes in two main flavors. The one I mentioned, and the blue beam for reading progressive [non interlaced] DVDs. That one retailing for $1,000. [Sanyo i think] Mmmm not so attractive.

Leads from $40 - $120. Computer monitor RGB leads could be this kind of cost....until folk caught on and got Tiwanese products for $10. [they were better ]

The very pleasent and learn-ed young man in Sears, pulled the bulb from the LCD to show me. This cluster of plastic and bulb is $199 plus post and tax. It would only take 60 seconds to change. $100 a year for full in house maintainance. Well sort of, cos you would get the first year anyway...but they will even repair scratches to the case for that and give you a new one if you get trouble.

A popular cable broad-band and HD T/V deal is about $105 / month. this gives 2 BBC progs as well. Bit over budget for me, but not for a young [well paind] family I suppose.

[BigEndBob]

HD-DVD's already play on a good computer, so whos going to buy Blue ray?

[IO540]

Can you get a PC HD-DVD player?

It won't play copy protected DVDs in the full resolution - unless hacked and hacking them will probably not be trivial.

[planecrazy.eu]

Hey, the PC was running Win 2K, not XP. I am not sure if they are available yet, but there will be HD-DVD and BlueRay Drives for PC's, Sony will ship its higher-end Vaios with BlueRay drives next year. There are going to be four types of disk though.

1) Pre-recorded Video Only, copy protected, discs only available to industry recorders and not on public sale. (ROM)
2) Data Only Recordable
3) Data Only Re-recordable
4) HD DVD TV Recordable.

I am lead to belive that in the first instance only 2 and 3 will be usable in a PC and it will only allow data to be recorded. Video can be recorded in data mode but this will not be viewable on a HD-DVD or Blue Ray player, This is to stop downloads of movies to be burnt onto a disc and sold to be played on a stand-alone player

1 is designed just for industry/movie company use, wont be sold to you or I. These can only be played back on a stand-alone player

4, Again can only be used on a stand-alone player, cant be read by a data drive. This is for stand-alone player usage to record TV, etc.

Stand-alone cant read data, and data drives cant read movie. I am guessing that when some one cracks it, that data drives will be able to read video.

In not time there will be a HD format of DivX if there isn't already, and then people will put the codec on a stand-alone dvd player and then HD can be downloaded and played back once they have been de-crypted.

BlueRay will be higher storage than HD-DVD. 50Gig Vs 30 gig, but HD-DVD is going to be cheaper per disc and per player. Oh i think BlueRay has a higher transfer speed.

Oh and JVC has a BlueRay-DVD. Dual Layer DVD one side and Dual Layer BlueRay the other, so its cross compatable with new and old players. JVC are mounting there Blue laser on the top i was told so you will have to put a blueray in upsidedown.

[IO540]

Sounds very plausible.

But there must be a 5th type: ROM, non-writable, copy protected, for public sale/rental through all the usual outlets. Surely High Street video shops will carry HD DVDs.

I am sure this type will not play in any PC HD-DVD drive, unless either

a) the decryption is done in the DVD drive and the data is analog after that, or

b) the decryption is done in the DVD drive and the data is digital after that but at a reduced resolution (not 1080), or

c) it is all part of a system where the data is encrypted all the way to the display hardware

I wonder what will happen in the "media enabled laptops". Any of the three is possible; nobody will see the difference on a typical laptop, or a desktop PC screen for that matter. It is already virtually impossible, in the normal desktop PC context, to see the difference between a normal RGB analogue display of say 1600x1200, and the same display driven via the standard digital link.

[BEagle]

Gawd - I remember when we just had a single channel Bush 405-line TV in the 1950s. Then came the miracle of ITV in about 1962, followed by a 405/625 line TV for BBC2 in 1965-ish, then finally a 625-line UHF-only colour TV (ITT/KB - it was very nice indeed!) in 1970....

Of all these, it was the colour TV which made the most impression. Even though I'd seen NTSC colour at Expo 58, this was far better. But it had a significant failing - it was limited by the studio source material quality...

Eventually I bought a BSB D-MAC satellite receiver and Nokia RGB TV. The pictures were stunningly good. Not because of the signal quality, but the high standards at BSB's gallery.

You only have to look at how Sky has squeezed down the satellite bandwidth (to accommodate rubbish shopping and yoof-music channels) to see how poor digital TV can be. In theory, all Sky channels can be broadcast in DVD quality, yet very few are. Is this simply a ruse to persuade people to throw money at HDTV?

Personally I don't like the picture quality of either LCD or Plasm right now. Nor the sound/vision synch problems. Manufacturers are falling over themselves to persuade people to buy these monster screen TVs, yet the smudgy images they show are really quite poor. As I had no hesitation in telling the Sky TV people at a recent exhibition.

I've had a Panasonic 16:9 CRT TV for several years now and I have yet to see a LCD or plasma TV with as good a picture quality. Quite simply, I think that people should wait until the quality of such large screen picture TVs improves substantially. Right now, they're simply not good enough.

Sometimes technology is self-defeating. Remember 'teletext'? Wasn't it so simple and easy to use, compared to the 'Press the red' rubbish we now have?

[Keef]

Wasn't it ever!

We bought a 16:9 "conventional" television about 3 years ago - not that I watch more than an hour or so a week. The bloke selling them did us a very good price, and reckoned everything would be 16:9 in a couple of years. He was wrong (not that I mind). It's very rare indeed for it to click out of 4:3. We don't do satellite or cable, and there's not much on digital that M or I want to watch.

I looked at plasma and LCD televisions a couple of weeks ago. Most were displaying videos which I suspect were designed to show them in their best light. The picture on "normal" TV wasn't that impressive on either.

I'm sticking with the old CRT job for now.

[BigEndBob]

IO540 Microsoft are already offering HD WMV on DVD, for example "Terminator 2 Extreme" that plays in standard DVD drive.

So why don't they just publish a load of films in this format and just get on with it....$$$$$

Would be interested to know if they play in standard DVD player.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

[Telstar]

I'm in the market for a new telly, and am not a total teshnophobe, and all this has baffled me a little, but let me get this straight.

The "HD ready" screens on sale in the high street mostly aren't really HD screens, they are 720 line TVs. The True HD screens with 1080 lines cant actually display in HD off terestrial, they just stretch what they are being fed with, which in the case of big screens results in a jerky flickery picture being displayed. 1080P, which is the highest quality, feed does not exist anywhere in Europe. If I did fork out for SKY HD, and pay 300 STG(Yes, thats three hundred quid) for the SKY hD box, plus extra for the subscription a month, I will be able to watch a genuine HD picture on about 8 of the 700 channels?

The "Hd Ready" screens that stretch to fit my current first generation DVD player?

On top of that I might spend 1500-2000 on this TV and in a year or two when Blu Ray/HD-DVDs hit the mainstream, and after one knocks the other off the top spot like VHS Vs. Betamax, my TV will be obsolete because it does not contain the in display decoder to decrypt the signal from the Next generation DVD player?

I have to be honest people, the more I read about HD in its present form, I think the marketing people are taking the piss out of peoples desire/need to have the latest flash bang gizmo.

I think it makes a lot more sense right now to buy a 720 line LCD if one must have a flat panel, or as Keef says stick to what looks more like the sensible option of a CRT for a fraction of the price.

Or am I reading this all wrong!?

[Loose rivets]

I am in Texas at the moment, but I doubt there is any difference -- apart from the 625 line for ‘normal' viewing.

The new Sony...and I mean the NEW one just out, is 6 Mp here 60 Hz NON-INTERLACED. Ie progressive scan. There is not the slightest resemblance to the older system, and that was good.

No burn-in, no loss of pixals, in fact, no sign of pixals!!!! $2,700 for the 50"

Halving the screen area one can go to the likes of the new Toshiba 40 something inch. It is flat, and has guarantees about the loss, or I should say, lack of loss of pixals. It is again in a new arena of excellence.

DVD players will fill in the missing lines and give a simulated hi def. Not bad.

At home, watching a Phillips, the broadcast pictures were often laughable: compression causing bits of actor's faces to lag behind, then suddenly catch up. Just barmy. It wasn't the T/V's fault, but it just was not a good experience.

As mentioned before, you can save a bundle of money going for the interlaced older systems (still being sold as new) but when you see the new ones...well, just talk nicely to the bank manager.

[ORAC]

Or am I reading this all wrong!? It´s all in the Pixel Count (http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/118003.html)

[reverserunlocked]

I've a 37 inch Panasonic Viera non-HD plasma, and it has a MUCH tighter picture than my Dad's Sony which is the same size. I've a cheapy Sony DVD player from Tesco that does the job for me, along with Sky+ (couldn't cope without that now - you can watch an hour long show in 40 mins without the ads) and it's all plugged into a four year old Bose Lifestyle 12 home theatre system that I bought from the Bose Outlet in Cheshire and is still going strong. Audiophiles hate Bose but I love it. Incomparably better, punchier and ballsier sound than anything made by Sony, Panasonic, etc. Comes with a CD player and tuner so you can chuck out your stereo too.

Wouldn't get too hung up on HD right now. Clarkson in Top Gear mag this month says if they shot TG in HD it would add about 30% to their budget. In the cost-minded TV world this equates to a tiny number of TV shows made in HD. Until these costs fall you'll be good for a few years at least without an HD telly.

[Loose rivets]

Wouldn't get too hung up on HD right now. Clarkson in Top Gear mag this month says if they shot TG in HD it would add about 30% to their budget.


This is odd. As I mentioned earlier, the Sony Hi def camera...£1,250 ish. in UK was just so good, I could scarse believe it. I guess it's all to do with bandwidth and promelgation.

The trouble about waiting, is that when you are my age, and you started working with T/Vs over 50 years ago, how long do you wait?

[Loose rivets]

It´s all in the Pixel Count (http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/118003.html)


Good link, but the Sony....and I have no interest in T/v sales I promise...the Sony has 1080 non interlaced.

Some number of years ago they had the 100Hz sets in the UK. they were markedly better for folk like me that are affected by flicker. For some reason I could read the name on my DC3's props while they were turning and I hated cheap tellies with a passion for this reason.

The new generation not only has a COMPLETE picture every scan, but also is making this picture in one mains cycle. so here it's 60. This puzzles me a little, and I am taking the word of the sales guy on this for the moment. What I mean is, is it linked to the mains to stop hum (bars) and other problems like the old days. Just don't know.

Saying 'its all in the pixels' might be valid, but the 6mp of the Sony are arranged in some kind of three dimensional way...it seemed to fill in the gaps.

As I mentioned, the Toshiba 46? was as good, and flat, but not offering the large screen, so that would have made it easier to look good as far as a pixel-less image was concerned.