Santa brought me a 46" HDTV this xmas ...ok, so I bought it myself, shhh, don't tell the kids Anyway, as I'm a techie kinda guy, I did some research before buying, and decided the 2 specs I would require would be full HD (1080p) and 100hz (ok, 120hz for you US folks). But when I walked in the store and looked at all the screens (w/o looking at the specs) I honestly couldn't tell the difference. I wound up getting 1080p but not 100hz. When I thought about it some more, I realized most cable TV providers around me don't send full HD channels, but my cable box can upconvert (I think) them to 1080i. So since I don't have a BlueRay player, and don't receive full HD channles, does it really matter anyway if my TV has the most awesome specs? I mean I won't be able to use them anyway, right? ...also, when I playback my standard DVD's in my standard DVD player, they look pretty good. I was thining to get an "upscaling" DVD player. Is the quality from them really worth it? Or if my current DVD player is fine, should I just stick with that?
RR, HDTV gets a bit tricky, especially when you throw in the 100Hz (PAL/SECAM) playback. Right off the bat, without a Blu-Ray player or another source of 1080/24p material you don't care and can stop reading right now I'm not quite up to snuff on that, but here's what the big deal about 120Hz is. As you know, movies are shot at 24 frames a second. The process of converting it for TV differs between PAL & NTSC. For NTSC which runs at 60Hz a process called 3:2 pulldown is employed Google it if interested. For PAL it just speeds the film up, matching the PAL's 50Hz (25 fps instead of 24fps). Either way there are some artifacts introduced. Enter the 1080/24p, the latest and greatest way to watch movies at home each film frame matches exactly to a whole TV frame with no digital manipulation involved. If the TV is capable of displaying that signal without alteration, great. Problem is, some 120/240Hz TVs will still perform the reverse pulldown, converting the signal to a 60Hz, then doubling/quadrupling to match TV's resolution. Let me know if you want some more reading material on the subject
Seeing as how you are dealing with PAL instead of the NTSC/ATSC content that we have in the US I'm not sure if all of this applies for you or not. But that being said, the differences between a 1080p and 720p display can be very noticeable especially up close because you don't get the "screen door" effect of the pixels. Another advantage can be that 1080i content from you local TV stations is displayed at native resolution with the TV only having to de-interlace it. If you have a 720p panel you would be de-interlacing it and down converting it. Now, on the other hand, if most of your source material comes in 720p then the 1080 panel has to up scale it to fit properly. When it comes to the up converting DVD player, that all depends on how good your TV is at doing the up conversion. In theory if your TV had the same video processor as a DVD player, it wouldn't matter which one was doing it and it would look the same. The only way you would notice a difference is if you buy a DVD player that does a better job than the TV itself.
Yea, I think that's the key point: not all video content is HD right now. The HDTV's are ready and there on the market, but the majority of videos available to me are NOT in HD. HD video is still in a trasition phase, and will take some time until everything matches up. Till then I guess I'll have to live in a partial-HD world that isn't perfect (ie: pixelation and blurring will happen)... My cable TV box gives me a choice of 4 output settings I can choose: 4:3, 16:9, 720p and 1080i. I took the 1080i, even tho thats still not full HD (1080p) it looks OK. Except I can notice some channels have worse compression than others as the pixelation is really bad on some channels. Oh, I looked today at 2 HDTV's (1080p) side by side in the store. One was about $2000 that has 100hz and a bunch of other features, the other was half the price and didn't have 100hz. Both looked really good, but I did notice on some fast moving scenes that the 100hz did help reduce the blur/pixelation a bit, altho not completely. But generally speaking, I was really wondering why/how the $2000 HDTV could justify that kind of price when the $1000 one looked practically just as good
There is almost no broadcast content that is 1080p, it would take up to much bandwidth. If your cable box is set to output 1080i then it is doing all the scaling for you and your TV is only de interlacing it. The $1000 price difference between the 2 TV's might be for more then just the 100hz. It's probably more a factor of the higher end TV (better video processor, maybe more HDMI inputs, ect) also has the 100hz feature included.
AFAIK there's absolutely no broadcast content in 1080p. There's some VoD that is 1080p/24 offered by some satellite providers (not sure about cable). Any OTA HDTV is either 720p or 1080i. The price difference may also be because of different technologies. For instance, among LCD TVs there are regular LCD, LCD with edge-lit LED and LCD with back-lit local dimming LEDs. The only real difference in image quality are perceived deeper black levels for the local dimming ones, but usually with a significant price to pay for it.
Yea right, then there's the whole screen technology thing (plasma, LCD, LED). It looks like plasma is pretty much dead, not many are being made and the ones in the store are much cheaper than their LCD counterparts. I was going to get a plasma, but then read the power consumption is 2 or 3 times that of a LCD. LED screens are the new rage: brighter, even more energy efficient, etc. But the price is 2 or 3 times of the LCD ones. So it looks like LCD screen prices are in a "sweet spot" right now, as stores want to sell the "latest and greatest" LED screens...
The power consumption of the plasma screen is not likely to overcome a $2K price difference between it and a comparable (picture-wise) LED. Where plasma lacks is ability to perform in brightly lit rooms (looks more washed out), in all other aspects the image quality is better. But you're right, plasma looks to be on the way out...
Power consumption with a plasma isn't as bad as many think. In some cases they can use less power than an LDC because a plasma uses less power for dark sceens than bright where as an LCD is always back lit and using full power no matter what the picture is. That can be less of an issue with the newer LED panels, but it is still kind of a "flaw" you might say in the general concept of how an LCD works.
My 46" Samsung has some kind of "Eco-mode" where I can lower the backlighting and reduce the power. With no eco-mode it uses about 180W and with the tightest eco-mode it can run on 80W (I measured with a wattmeter ) but the picture was kinda dim with the tightest eco settings. After some playing around and twaeking with the brightness/contrast/etc I have it running at 100W and looking nearly as bright as without an eco-setting ...oh, and one more question: how important is the brand with LCD TV's? I read somewhere once that Samsung was the "LCD king" and that they even made the LCD screens for alot of other TV brands. Is that true? At the minimum, I know Samsung has a good rep in the LCD screen world. Before I went to the store, I researched and found a Toshiba with good spces at a nice price and was planning to buy that, but when I was in the store looking at the screens, I kinda threw out all the specs I read, and just went with what I thought looked good. The Toshiba looked good, but the colors were kind of dim or washed out while the Samsung seemed to have the most vibrant colors. Since the price was about the same, and recalling all the good things I heard about Samsung screens, I went with my gut (or my eyes) and took the Samsung.
Sammy is still the king IMHO with the latest LED TVs but it comes at a hefty price. An LED 55" Vizio VF551M costs less than half of the Samsung UN55B8500 and it'll give you an image that is 95% as good as the Sammy. hme83 seems to be quite happy with hers
A lot of times the panel itself is no different because there are only a few companies that make LCD panels. The big difference is the quality of the video processing and other features like how many HDMI ports they give you. I'm a big fan of Vizio myself. I bought one back in 2006 when a 37 inch Samsung was $3100 and the 37 inch Vizio I bought was only $1600. Like dmapr said, the tier2 manufacturers my not be quite as good as Samsung, but they get you 95% of the way there.
I've never heard of "Vizio", I guess they aren't present in Europe. As for the prices of Samsung, in all the shops I've been in, Samsung is in the same price range as Toshiba, Philips, Sharp, etc. Sony is maybe a little higher priced, and LG a little lower, but that's with everything else as well. Actually, my Samsung TV (and Samsung TFT monitor) were both made in Slovakia, so it was a nice bonus to find out I'm still buying something made in the EU (even if the profits do actually go back to Seoul ) ...oh, one last question/comment: now that I went from a CRT TV to a LCD one, I suddenly noticed alot of my DVD's are in 4:3 format and I don't get the full "widescreen" effect when watching them Most newer stuff is released in 16:9 format, as well as almost all movies, so that's not a problem, but what about some of the older TV shows? I love to watch classic shows like MASH, Columbo, GIlligan's Island, etc. but those were all made for 4:3 TV's. Is there any chance they will ever be released in 16:9 format? Or more specifically, what format did they shoot the original footage in? I think the cameras were still 16:9 then, but then they cropped it doen to 4:3 to fit the TVs? I see original Star Trek episodes were released in BlueRay in 4:3 format, I'm wondering if that was because 16:9 wasn't possible, or becasue Trekkies prefer to see it in the format it was originally aired in? I can't stand Star Trek, but I was using that example as a measuring stick in hopes of a "real" show like Gilligan's Island could be released in 16:9 HD
I am very pleased with it. And I haven't even made any adjustments to it's "out-of-box" state yet. LOL. (btw - it's the VF551XVT - the "M" is the prior series I believe. )
You're right of course thanks for the correction RR, if your new LCD TV is a 16:9 screen, then it most likely has a 4:3 mode with sidebars. There are two types of DVDs. Some are "anamorphically enhanced" and some are not. Of the latter some may have letterboxed material and some may have 4:3 content. What you want is to watch in the OAR (original aspect ratio). You don't want a to watch the center portion of the Ben-Hur frame nor do you want to watch Casablanca with heads and feet chopped off. So you don't want a re-release What you do want is set everything up correctly. First, make sure your DVD player is set for the 16:9 output. Second, if you're watching a non-enhanced disc you'll notice the distortion in the picture cycle through TV zoom modes to find the one that works right. So for Ben Hur the TV should be in the full/16:9 mode, for Casablanca in 4:3 mode and for True Lies US disc in some zoom mode otherwise the movie will have bars on all 4 sides you don't want that
As nice as HDTV is, I have to say I'm quite happy with my 1997 Panasonic 32-inch analog TV set. For an "old-style" set, it still has amazing picture quality. I have two DTV converter boxes and utilize the video inputs for viewing. The picture quality is the best (IMO) outside of HD. Plus it helps that there are over 75 local channels available via antenna. I think I'll stick with it until it breaks. You guys have fun with your HDTV's. I'm going to enjoy my old, 20th century, analog TV.
Roughly 26 full power stations with many sub-channels. A few stations have up to 8 sub-channels in addition to the main channel. When you add them all up it's around 75 channels (+/-). Even in analog days, the L.A. area's always had more OTA channels than any other market in the country (or world, for that matter). Once caveat though, many times there's still nothing to watch...
...they had to pry that old analog phone out of your hands in 2008 didn't they? But yea, I agree, the picture quality of tube TV's/monitors are great. And my tube TV was 7 years old and still running like a champ. I just needed something bigger, my couch is about 10ft from the TV and I was tired of squinting all the time. It's so much nicer to watch a hockey game now and actually see the puck ...plus alot of DVD's/TV broadcasts were in 16:9 mode, and that would mean the picture was reduced even more with the black bars on the top/bottom of the screen Yea, I'm still confused by the aspect ratio thing and need to play around with the settings you mentioned. generally, my cable TV box is set to "Standard" output (or "OAR") and my TV is set at 16:9 by default. But sometimes I still need to cycle thru the TV zoom modes to find the right setting for the DVD or broadcast channel. With old TV shows I can only see it properly in 4:3 mode which means black bars on the sides of the picture. I find it really bizzare that sometimes moves fit properly in 16:9 mode, and other times there are still black bars on top/botttom (and sometimes the sides as well!). I thought moves were all shot in 16:9 Wikipedia gave some explanation about aspect ratios, but I'm still confused :O
I'll second that - as much as I'm loving the HD quality, one of the best "surprise" aspects of the new TV is that I can get things done in the kitchen (about 20 ft. from the TV) and not miss any of the details or have to constantly stop what I'm doing to walk into the living room and rewind a little bit so I can see them. The other thing that has come as quite a shock - I've always been a floor sitter - about 5 ft. from the TV - and I thought I was going to have to give that up with such a large TV; but I'm perfectly happy watching it from my normal spot on the floor as well as the more "reasonable" one on a couch about 10 ft. away. I still have an old tube TV in the bedroom (late 1994/early 1995) and it has a good picture - I'm not in any hurry to replace it - at least not yet anyway. Have I told you how much I love my new TV after watching "Desperate Housewives" on it last night??? But HD makes "B&S" way too much of a soap opera - lol - I may have to watch it on the SD channel from now on. (And "Nature" was fantastic on the new TV! )
Movies are shot in all sorts of aspect ratios, although the Academy ratio (Casablanca was shot in Academy ratio) is not used anymore, if I'm not mistaken. The following mention of black bars assumes the overscan setting on your TV is set to zero otherwise the black bars may get lost in some cases. Some of the early James Bond movies (and a few other European movies) were shot in 1.66:1. When properly formatted on Blu-Ray or DVD this would result in some thin black bars on the sides, and the TV would have to be in 16:9 mode. Some movies and a lot of modern TV shows are shot in 1.78:1 ratio the perfect match to your 16:9 screen. No black bars. Most modern drama/comedyfamily movies are shot in 1.85:1 ratio, which results in tiny black bars on top and bottom. Most modern action movies are shot in 2.35:1 or 2.40:1, resulting in noticeable black bars. This actually kicked off a whole new direction for Home Theater Aficionados the use of 2.35:1 screen and anamorphic lens. Ben-Hur was shot in an extreme ratio of 2.70:1 or so the black bars on top and bottom are very pronounced.
