LCD/Plasma/CRT/DLP - questions

[sj33]

When you use 1280*768 does it scale the image to fit?

Haven't tried it on the 360 specifically, but by default any VGA resolution is displayed 1:1 (so 1280x768 will take up 1280x768 pixels exactly w/ boardering),and you can then make it full screen on the remote.

Example, Dreamcast is 640x480 so is in a tiny window... push of a button makes it full screen (Full 1 maintains AR, Full2 stretches to 16:9).

[EvilBoris]

Component or HDMI doesn't work on it.

Also it ONLY has 1:1 pixel mapping so 360 has great black bars down the left and right of the screen.

[Soi]

Sounds faulty. Send it back asap.

[EvilBoris]

Its gone back and magically turned into a Sony Tv.

Bastards. I don't want Sony to have my money

[sj33]

I know the feeling, but this TV makes those 2 months of me having no TV while Comet/LG made a farce of repairing my old one all worth it.

Used to be well chuffed with my old LG, but this is a different level.

[andrewfee]

That is why the Panasonic commerical plasmas looks so nice, there is no processing going on, it doesn't soften the image!

I'm sorely tempted to try one of these, but after my last experience with a Plasma, I know it would just be a waste of my time. (I assume they're still dithering and have trailing / "rainbow" issues)

I've done a lot more testing on this Sharp today, and it seems that the main problem is, unsurprisingly, the processing. The posterization is not caused by the panel/driver, it's a software issue. They've got a stupid gamma curve which can't be changed, and to get things looking normal, you have to use dynamic contrast. These two combined bring out any compression in the source, and the poor greyscale colours it differently, making it stand out.

Anyway - poor viewing angles:




Awful response time - Stationary:



Moving:


There's a huge green trail coming from the wall on the right (highlighted) and loads of other ghosting all over the image.


I've now found that using VGA has a proper gamma curve (presumably so you can use a PC) and HDMI has a "dynamic range" option - when set to "normal" rather than "enhanced" it appears to do the same thing. If only this option was available everywhere - RGB/Component might look decent.

I did find out what was causing the smearing from my PVR though - it seems that you can select what kind of signal all the inputs are using, and that EXT1 defaulted to composite, rather than RGB - I thought it was strange that I had comb filter and tint options. After finding this (it was buried in the menus) and changing it to RGB the noise reduction has disappeared, so the smearing it was causing has gone, although you still get the tint option. The image doesn't really seem any better other than that though, and you still get the smearing caused by the response time.

Anyway, I forgot that I still had my "XVGA Pro" splitter box, so I decided to hook up a monitor to do some side-by-side testing with the 360. (while the TV doesn't work with 1280x720, 1360x768 does work, but it's a bit soft as both the 360 and TV are scaling)

The TV compared surprisingly well, especially after what I had seen with component.

I forgot to convert these shots to sRGB, rather than my camera's profile, so they look a bit washed out (unless you're on a Mac and using Safari - no other browsers are colour-managed, as far as I know) but you can still see the differences.


Overall a pretty good match, although there's less depth to the image, and yellows are looking a bit desaturated.


Greens could be better, but that's why Sharp have a five wavelength backlight for their best sets.


The Orange used here doesn't look right at all.


The LCD compared very favourably here.


And here - I actually preferred the image on the LCD.

I did spot this though:


As you can see, the LCD is a bit behind, the arrows are desaturated from moving quickly, and there are five of them - there are only supposed to be three; red, yellow, and blue. (you'll also see that the CRT even ghosts a little here)


LCD wins again - shadow details are just as good, but blacks are deeper, and colour is a little better saturated. Temperature isn't quite as good though. (and things smeared a lot when there was movement)


Again, colour temperature is better on the CRT - the LCD just can't go low enough, but blacks are a noticeable improvement.


Colour temperature is way off in this shot.


And greyscale still isn't right. (purple / green bands from brake upwards)


It's possible that it's just my camera, or the fact that I'm on a laptop with an LCD, but the differences are far greater in person, however, for an LCD it's surprisingly close.

It's such a shame that it doesn't look like this all the time, and that the response times are poor smearing the image a lot. The difference between this and how the television normally performs is huge though. If everything looked like it did over VGA, I'd be tempted to keep it.


I've gone through the F.E.A.R. demo again, and the start of Oblivion - while things are certainly improved a lot over VGA, there are still issues. FEAR does not have any posterization over VGA like I had seen over component - it is definitely the gamma curve used for video inputs and/or the dynamic contrast causing it.

I was surprised with Oblivion - while a most of what I had seen so far was pretty close to the CRT, this was nothing like it. The dark areas at the start just didn't have as much depth to them, and colour was all wrong in places. The menus, which are supposed to be parchment-coloured with brown edging / text were almost white with maroon. The torchlight, which is a dim yellow/orange, looks like a very pale pink on the Sharp LCD - no yellow at all.

I just wish I could get hold of one of those 24" Sony CRT monitors - that would probably hold me over until flat-panel technology gets to a point where it's worth buying. The main issue now is the software behind everything though - if you could get rid of all the processing, most sets would look loads better. I seem to remember the 32v2000 being rather good for response and viewing angles - if I could get that without any of the processing going on (or at least having everything optional) I'd be pretty happy.

Sharp does fairly well for some things though - for HD you have the option of "full" or "underscan" - the latter disables any overscan, displaying the full signal. (but blanking the top line to avoid seeing "artefacts")

With the deinterlacing, you can choose TruD (motion compensation) "Film Mode" (3:2 / 2:2 detection) and Interlaced / Progressive. You can also enable/disable "Quickshoot" which is their overdriving technology. I can't see any improvement in response time, but the quality of moving objects seems better with it off. (too much overdriving causes fine details to flicker)

[EvilBoris]

hehe I love the way you've got all that expensive kit and then a Compaq monitor....


Anyway, I'm just setting up the KDL-32S2030 I just picked up

[andrewfee]

hehe I love the way you've got all that expensive kit and then a Compaq monitor....


Anyway, I'm just setting up the KDL-32S2030 I just picked up

Yeah, sadly the good CRT died a while back, and there's just this and an even worse one left.

[EvilBoris]

I've finally got it all working.

The TV is lovely, the freeview picture is great, as is component and HDMI.

After the initial dissapointment of VGA being drab, some tweaking to the service menu has brought back the vibrancy and colour.

[Matt]

Andrew mate, you seem to have been through a hundred different TV's. Mate, you need to relax a little and just enjoy the games I think you'll always find faults in every set you get. I used to be like that, picking holes in everything, it just sucked the enjoyment out of "The Experience".

[Lyris]

Yeah, I do think those posterisation faults that the Sharp is showing are unacceptable, but the sooner you accept that consumer TVs are designed to have things we'd term as faults, the better. There's not going to be a perfect consumer TV and you'd be best saving for a commercial panel and a scaler if you're truly after perfection I think.

[Roost]

I can see what you mean on some of them pics like the ghosting. But most of them look fine to me lol

[Kotatsu Neko]

Andrew mate, you seem to have been through a hundred different TV's. Mate, you need to relax a little and just enjoy the games I think you'll always find faults in every set you get. I used to be like that, picking holes in everything, it just sucked the enjoyment out of "The Experience".

Yeah, somewhat hyper critical! These large LCDs are incredibly cheap for their size so hardly surprising they're not perfect. Just sit back, throw on some Double Agent 360 or something similar, turn up the 5.1 and enjoy HD big screen gaming goodness.

[andrewfee]

Andrew mate, you seem to have been through a hundred different TV's. Mate, you need to relax a little and just enjoy the games I think you'll always find faults in every set you get. I used to be like that, picking holes in everything, it just sucked the enjoyment out of "The Experience".

The point of my above post was that if everything was as good as VGA from the 360, I'd be pretty happy with the TV - all the other inputs look **** compared to that.

The image smearing is awful though - the worst I've seen on any LCD, even the PSP's screen is better.

I'm not going to keep a display that turns orange torchlight pink. It wasn't a slight pink tint, it was just pink, no hint of yellow/orange at all.

The image has cut out on me five times so far, and the fans are stupidly loud. (as loud as the 360, but lower pitch)

[RobRoy]

Anyone got this?

http://www.dixons.co.uk/product.php?..._id=ppc_tvcamp

Impressions?