LCD/Plasma/CRT/DLP - questions

[andrewfee]

That's a bit disappointing about the Sony - I'm glad you're happy with the Toshiba though.

How are you finding the black levels and response time in comparison with the BRAVIA? (the F.E.A.R. demo is always a good test)

Does 100/120Hz make much of a difference?

[EvilBoris]

To be honest, I'm not too sensitive to the black levels, they are noticably dark grey in comparison to the black surround of the set.

I'm not even sure what the official response time is of the set, but when I tried geometry wars It didn't seem quite as smooth as the bravia did (although I've become more accustomed to it so I might not be able to see it?)

The active M100 thing, I'm unsure about this, I don't know if it is actually 100hz or the faked interpolation. It is very subtle but you can see it making things noticeably smoother although it makes certain things look odd (the occasional advert looks weird) It seems quite useful and thankfully you can turn it off. It doesn't come close to the weird effect that the big SONY CRt in our building does to things though, that IS weird

It applies to games too and the set accepts certain VGA resolutions at 75hz, so it might be real 100hz, who knows.

[Matt]

I'm delighted with my 40" "N"-series Samsung. I've only played GRAW and Splinter Cell on it so far, so there's been plenty of tearing, but everything looks so vibrant Even NTL SD looks nice, the blacks on this are so much better than my previous Samsung.

A quick question - apparently my TV can display "138% of the colour gamut", compared to the R-series which can display 72% of the gamut. Now I could be seeing things, but the image does look very vibrant and there honestly appear to be more colours on the screen, so could anyone explain this all to me.

[mt50]

any one got any ideas if this 19inch wide screen would be good or not?
LINK
thinking about picking one up for my bedroom until i can get a 37inch one(only just got a new CRT so its going to be a year before i can upgrade really)
would use this for PC and 360 only and have the 28inch CRT for TV and xbox1.
its got VGA/component and DVI iirc, saw one in argos today and the size next to a 26inch LCD wasn't too bad so really tempted to pick one up in a couple of weeks. as i could do with a new PC monitor as well.
any reviews anywhere or does anyone have one?

thanks

[sj33]

What's everyones opinion on Sony's Live Colour feature in the S series?
I usually disable such enhancements, but I quite like Live Colour.

Then again, as much as I like detail in an image, I think an image that shows all detail but looks washed just looks plain ugly.

[andy572]

A quick question - apparently my TV can display "138% of the colour gamut", compared to the R-series which can display 72% of the gamut. Now I could be seeing things, but the image does look very vibrant and there honestly appear to be more colours on the screen, so could anyone explain this all to me.

If you (or Samsung) meant '138% more'...

Assuming that the entire colour range can now be displayed (that's 100%, Mr. or Mrs. Samsung!), you have an extra 28% to play with. That extra 28% of gamut is an approximately 38% increase over the old display. Add that on to the '100%' of the earlier telly and you have - *sigh * - 138%.




All of which is supposed to mean that it looks better. Or something.

Marketing, eh?

[EvilBoris]

I hate the word Gamut.

[Oh_Mutants]

Well after much deliberating i've FINALLY decided to go for the Toshiba 32WLT68... just waiting for John Lewis Welwyn to get back to me on a price match with Empire Direct.

How have people found SD on this tele, from what i've gathered it's one of the better SD HDTV's?

[RLench]

I haven't seen the 68, but the 66 is very good with SDTV as long as it's a decent signal. The majority of Sky looks very good; from my seat, it looks as good as my previous Sony CRT tbh. Very clear and vibrant colour, excellent black levels and shadown detail, and no artefacts. A few channels do look very bad though (especially UK TV G2) with very washed-out colours, and a lot of noise.

It's the same with DVDs - most of my DVDs (ie every film I've tried, and the majority of TV shows/concerts/documentaries) look fantastic but if it's a poor source then it will look bad.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Well after much deliberating i've FINALLY decided to go for the Toshiba 32WLT68... just waiting for John Lewis Welwyn to get back to me on a price match with Empire Direct.

How have people found SD on this tele, from what i've gathered it's one of the better SD HDTV's?

Depends on a few things really, but most importantly is the compression of the channel. On the BBC channels they have higher bit rates, so look low-res but watchable. On the lesser channels the quality drops significantly, and on, for example, some of those super crap-tastic quiz channels on freeview they're completely unwatchable. Just a mess of gigantic pixelated mush. No great loss though.

Compression is a little better on cable than on freeview but it's still a million miles away from a good DVD.

If you're going 32" it should be small enough to hide a fair few nasties of course, and especially if you don't sit super close to it.

[andrewfee]

Sorry, but I still don't buy that argument. I've had a 2 metre (maybe larger even) image in my lounge from a 480p projector running NTL Digital via S-Video, and it looked better than most LCD TVs I've owned, even when sitting far closer to the screen (relatively) - it's all about what kind of processing is done to the image. (virtually none on the projector)

If I take Freeview off my PVR and send it to pretty much any display via my laptop and a VGA lead, it will look significantly better, as it's getting past whatever crap processing usually gets done.

There's no reason Freeview etc shouldn't look good on a large display, regardless of the technology.

This was done at the smaller end of the scale, but should show off what I'm talking about:

[Brim]

My Sony 40S2030 handles SD far better than my old Tosh 32WL66, despite the fact that it's far larger and I sit the same distance away.

[RLench]

I was just watching Malcolm In The Middle, which normally looks very good. During an advert I looked up (I was playing Age Of Empires DS at the time) and I was shocked...the advert looked incredible. I took a picture to show this but it doesn't do it justice at all.

This is regular digital TV (via Sky+) and using a craptacular JVC scart lead, so hardly the most cutting edge connection



tbh if some DVDs looked this good then I'd be happy This is what the Toshiba WL66 can do with a decent digital TV signal! I have done absolutely nothing to enhance this. I was sat 3' away from the screen and just left my camera on its default settings.

Another shot - excuse the blurriness.

[Lyris]

Great advert shot but what the HELL is that gigantic line of text doing under the Sky Onc logo!!! Does that stay on through the whole programme?!

[RLench]

Pretty annoying, isn't it?

Luckily it doesn't stay there for long. It's only visible for about 10 seconds when a show comes back on after an advert break. After that it disappears and it's just the Sky One logo