LCD/Plasma/CRT/DLP - questions

[sj33]

I know this might sound like a dumb question but whats the difference between HDTV Ready and HDTV Compatable?

HDTV Compatible merely means it's compatible with most HD signals, which may be enough...

But HD-Ready is a certification. A set that has the HD-Ready certification basically has everything you will require for HD now and in the future.
It has to conform to the following -

-Accept 720p and 1080i at both 50 and 60Hz
-Minimum vertical resolution of 720 at a 16:9 ratio
-Must have both an analogue (Component) and a Digital (HDMI and/or DVI), all accepting the above HD resolutions/refresh rates.
-Must support HDCP through the DVI/HDMI

If a set says it's HDTV Compatible, but does not have the HD-Ready logo, you have to wonder why... maybe it doesn't support HDCP, or only supports 720p in 60Hz...

Always look for the logo, you don't wanna regret it in thr future.

'* Resolution - * 960 x 540'

I'm not sure about LCD's deal with HD, but wouldn't the resolution have to be a minimum of 1080x720 to be a HDTV?

Yeah, must be at least 1280x720 (unless it's a Plasma, they work different... but that's not a Plasma).

[Cuber001]

how do you guys clean the screen on lcds? I just used the cloth provided and a touch of a damp cloth. Will this wreck the picture in any way? Make it grainy, wet spots etc? Is there a better way?

[t-dog]

cuber, be careful with what you use to clean the lcd screen, as some products can leave marks/spots on your screen! also, on lcd, you mustnt press too hard on the screen.
i would assume that just a damp cloth would be ok, but i would have second thoughts on chemicals of any kind.
if i were you, i'd check it out first. not worth ruining the screen for!

[Cuber001]

cool., thanks a lot! what sort of marks or spots are we talking about? Would it make the screen fuzzy or blurry? I just used a damp cloth, and the watched boogieman, and it was really grainy. Is that the movie? I hope so!

EDIT: Well i just checked Finding Nemo, and it is still the same, no graining or fuzziness so it was just the movie! Phew, never doing that again! Scared the **** out of me, i thought i ****ed my tellie! How hard would you have to press to stuff it?

[Spatial]

Got my JVC 32? LCD on Friday afternoon. I just love having new toys to play with

I bought it from TV and Video Direct (service was good too) for ?1010.

Spent a lot of time playing around with it since arrival and here?s what I think so far:

JVC LT32-DS6



80cm screen size

1366x768 Panel Resolution (so HD and Prog scan are all there via component)

Response time - I?m unsure on this. Depending on where you look it?s anywhere between 12 ? 7 ms due to the technology used in the unit.

Adjustable backlight function

Built in Freeview tuner (not tried out yet)

1x S-Video input
2x SCART

1x Component

1x Composite input

1x VGA input

1x HDMI input

1x RF aerial input

1x Headphone socket

First impressions on seeing it in the flesh are that it looks nice. The speakers are on the underneath meaning that, unlike some sets, it doesn?t look some jug-eared farm boy. The silver and black surround looks good and the blue tinted light above the power LED is nice at first, but could get irritating. Thankfully it can be dimmed or turned off altogether. Not sure if this is the norm for LCD sets but the connections at the back have removable panel covers to them, which is a groovy touch.

First problem came trying to run my Audio Authority component AV switcher through the PC input. For some reason it really didn?t like it

It's something I?m going to have to fiddle with to sort out (as I eventually want to connect my PC to it for gaming). As I don?t have a male to male VGA cable at the moment I don?t know how this will turn out, but people over on Avforums have had good results in getting it to display at full resolution with a bit of help from Powerstrip

As I?ll be going the normal component route anyway, I?ve been forced to connect each bit of kit in turn (as I don?t have a spare component cable at the moment).

On getting the set connected properly the first thing I did was tweak some of the settings and then run a few DVD?s through my Xbox at 720p. To be honest, I knew hi-res panels were going to show up the flaws in DVD encoding, but Ouch! Some films can look pretty nasty.

As expected by far the best were animated ones like Appleseed, the O-Ren sequence in Kill Bill and any of the Pixar films you care to name, but ordinary films looked hit and miss with colour gradients very evident.

A bit dismayed at this I ended up tweaking some more settings to get them down to a comfortable level. They looked better, but not brilliant. A full day of tweaking and tuning later and the set is really beginning to impress me.

The colour gradient is still evident if you look into the background of scenes, but it?s far less of a problem. Aside from this issue films like The Matrix Reloaded are pin sharp. I noticed parts in The Burly Brawl and Chateau scenes that I hadn?t seen before. Every motion in the fights was perfectly visible; unlike the last time I?d watched it on CRT and my Panasonic Series 6 plasma.

I also wanted to test the black levels (something that put me in two minds about buying a LCD panel). I chucked Sin City at it for this. The black issue was a total non-starter it would seem since the film looked excellent, with black definition as good as my Plasma. No disconcerting loss of detail and the colours (where added) look extremely vibrant. I could even see the spots of rain that landed on the woman in red?s dress as Josh Hartnett cradles her at the start of the film

I should add at this point that I was never too impressed with DVD?s on my Plasma set, so the LCD?s motoring miles ahead so far.

I?ve taken some pics ? they aren?t the best quality and some don?t really do the set justice as my camera work leaves a lot to be desired.





Next up, the Xbox for gaming. Games look OK in 480p (on a par with the plasma), but 720p is where the love is truly at.

Soul Calibur 2 was so crisp and sharp.

I?d played the game at that res on my Panasonic (albeit scaled back down to around 800 x 600 by the set) but on the JVC it was a sight to behold. Again I could make out extra details that I?d never ever noticed before on any other set I?d played on (like the drips of water from the ceiling in the caves and the leaves blowing up and down in the drafts). Other games like Hulk: UD were equally as impressive.

When 720p is the standard with next gen we?re going to be very, very spoilt visually (and I can?t wait now)

Some SC2 pics ? again, excuse the crapness of my photo skills.





Next up the PS2, again through component. It looked OK but not mind blowing with the resolution of the panel tripping up some games (but not to the point where you?d sit there and wonder why you bothered buying the set). The panel features something called D.I.S.T. scaling technology and while I have no idea what it does on a technical level, it must be doing a decent job.

The same goes for the Gamecube. Good and perfectly playable but not jaw dropping like the high res Xbox stuff.

Trying the set for PC output over VGA was also pretty impressive. It will run at 1366 x 768 (despite the manual and JVC telling you to the contrary) but it requires a copy of Powerstrip to get it to work (and some tweaking with the settings to get it to run full screen). With a bit of patience the results are well worth the hastle.

Half-Life 2 is a sight to behold on a 32" screen, but again the set shines when being fed HD trailers. Dark ones like V for Vendetta looked just as good to me as the one for Madagascar.

Here's two pics of the Gears of War 720p Trailer (bad camera work still a factor I'm afraid)



Click for Larger Versions

As for motion blur (another big fear of mine when considering an LCD), I can?t say I?ve seen anything and I?ve put it through it?s paces somewhat with all sorts of action scenes and fast moving images in Soul Calibur, Tekken 5 and Burnout 3. The truck scene of Matrix Reloaded where Morpheus squares off against the Agent is filmed in a juddery fashion, and there wasn?t the slightest hint of smear or blur.

I think this is because every input is Component which means there?s no deinterlacing involved. Whatever the reason, blurring and lag are another non-issue here.

The only real downside to this set, and this is due to me having a 40? Plasma before hand, is that it seems? well? a little small compared to what I?m used to. Still I was sitting less than 8ft away from that so no doubt it was killing my eyes. Hopefully using a smaller set will save me from going blind at an early age.

In short, I?d give this set an 8/10 for SD but a well-deserved 9/10 for HD content.

The sage word of advice that everyone keeps saying (and with good reason) is that if you feed a panel like this rubbish input / signal, then you?ll only get rubbish out.

If you?re looking for a HD panel that?ll see you through next gen, then this won?t steer you far wrong.

[Leon Retro]

Thanks for the review Spatial!

I have had my eye on this set for a while. I have heard great things about it, and there was one magazine review which said it's the best LCD on the market. They stated that with the right movie things can be like looking through a window at real life!

DIST stands for Digital Image Scaling Technology. It upscales SD content to a higher res, and makes things sharper. I have a CRT with the technology and it performs excellently.

The better the tv's image quality the more it will show-up bad feeds. A bad DVD will look even worse on a screen as good as this JVC. These screens are built for HD material- with Blue-Ray etc.. the screen will be really come alive.

It's good to hear that there isn't any noticeble ghosting- and that the black levels are not an issue. These two factors are what people fear most about LCD's, and now they have no need to be worried with screens like this JVC on the market!

I have to decide now whether to go for this JVC, which is a great price too. Or go for the new Phillips which hasn't been reviewed yet, but sounds very promising!

Cheers!

[Salsa Party Animal]

Nice to have another option apart from Samsung. Price look a bit too high for me though. I am hoping to buy a HDTV by end of next month.

[Spatial]

It might be worth paying the extra (if not for the JVC, but for another) set which has an adjustable backlight.

From what I understand (and having a quick playaround in my local AV store) the Samsung doesn't have the option to adjust it, which I could imagine would give you a serious headache / eyestrain after a while. The more tweakable a set, the better

In regards to the price, the JVC has come down quite a bit in the last few weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of most current 32" LCD's came down again before the end of the year (as I think newer models from most manufacturers are due soon?)

[IanE]

Just wondering, what is HDMI for? It looks all nice and small and hi-tech, so I want to plug something into it! VGA through the 26" Samsung is gorgeous, highly recommended, took me a little tweaking to get it right, but it's all lovely now.

[andrewfee]

The Samsung has a brightness sensor with eight different steps it'll adjust the backlight between. It works pretty well if there's some ambient light in the room, although it does seem a little dark with my new light fixture in the room now. (it's got a bright "daylight" bulb in it, and is brighter than before, but the backlight is going down lower than it used to)

[Cuber001]

colour gradient is that the like graining in the background etc? Boogieman is the worst for this! Is it just because of the compressing of dvds? And nice set!

[sj33]

Just wondering, what is HDMI for? It looks all nice and small and hi-tech, so I want to plug something into it! VGA through the 26" Samsung is gorgeous, highly recommended, took me a little tweaking to get it right, but it's all lovely now.

HDMI is going to be THE standard from now on. It's a superset of various different video formats, including DVI (and thus, is completely backward compatible with DVI). Many people assume it is the same as DVI - this is incorrect. It just supports the format DVI uses (4-4-4 RGB), along with other YUV-based ones.
It's also a completely digital connection, unlike VGA and Component which are analogue.

[Cuber001]

so why does the xbox360, which claims to be the "HD ERA" not support a DVI or HDMI connection?

[sj33]

Well, the accepted reason is that the 360 uses an analogue scaler, so converting the signal to digital just to be able to use HDMI/DVI would be a little pointless, and just adding another conversion to the process.
But there has been no official confirmation if that's true.

But bearing in mind the 360's 2 methods of outputtting HD - Component and VGA - are both analogue...

It's no biggie though, on something like a games console it's not that big a deal.

[Cuber001]

ok thanks. So I gather that the 360 will not upscale dvds then? Oh well, i will go buy a seperate one then!