Posted by masseur
I'm normally very good at deciding which electronics to buy but I'm pulling my hair out (well, whats left of it!) over choosing a cheapish 32" for my kids.
Its amazing the choice out there, nearly as bad as mobile contracts and phones!
I'm looking for a 32" LCD with freeview, HDMI, VGA, SCART, component etc. Something not to big (i.e. not a huge housing around the screen) and under £450. Its going to be used for tv, video and Xbox 360 and PS3 so it must support their HD output (some TVs with HD support don't seem able to cope with 1080 or even 720 HD resolutions and drop back to non-HD 576)
The best I have come up with so far is this viewsonic N3246w for £379.97 which I saw in Currys today (their price is £450). I think its an older model
I'd prefer suggestions from people who actually have what they are suggesting and therefore can give direct feedback, rather than people suggesting stuff because they read it was good somewhere.
what have you all got that meets these needs?
Posted by chrisfirst
Well, to be honest I wouldn't trust these noname brands. I know Viewsonic is a big time computer screen maker, but there LCD's are not very good at all. So, you can imagine the TV's they making. What I always, say, if you want something buy it from people with experence in that product. I guess you wouldn't buy a Ford mobile...
So, the thing is it seems like you have to spend a bit more, but believe me it will well worth it. I found 2 models on the Curry's website and both of them is proper.
http://www.currys.co.uk:80/ma[....]sku=439888&category_oid=-30633
http://www.currys.co.uk:80/ma[....]&tm=0&sku=417065&category_oid=
What you have to know is, the Samsung isn't a new model, but it's well made. Picture quality with SD sources aren't that great, but with HD matterial such as PS3 or SkyHD is just breathtaking. I know because my mum has 2 of them.
The Toshiba is a very strange model and it's only a ouple of weeks old. It has a very, very good, maybe the best picture quality with SD, but not very good with HD.
As you see, it's not so easy to find a best model, but with a bit of time you will find something, which will be OK, for 4-5 years.
Some reviews:
1, Two random Viewsonic review:
http://www.trustedreviews.com[....]iewsonic-n2060w-20in-LCD-TV/p1
http://www.trustedreviews.com[....]iewSonic-N4060w-40in-LCD-TV/p1
2, The Samsung I was talking about. It's almost the same model:
http://www.trustedreviews.com[....]sung-LE32R74BDX-32in-LCD-TV/p1
3, The Toshiba's, big brother, but the screen is a same in the 32'.
http://www.trustedreviews.com[....]-Regza-42C3030D-42in-LCD-TV/p1
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[ This Message was edited by: chrisfirst on 2007-05-13 16:22 ]
Posted by masseur
thanks. yeah I didn't want to get into that sort of money. If I did I would go for the newer version of the Samsung that you mention, that is the LE32R88BD at Dixons which, with voucher codes 25MAYAW and SAM32 can be had for £517 (Hot UK Deals thread)
I must have looked at 50+ different TVs now and Samsung have always stood out above the rest...
but... this is for my kids and I need to get 2, one for each of their rooms, and I don't think they will be as critical as me. They'll just be happy to have a big(ish) lcd
I stood in front of the viewsonic this morning for 15 minutes and I thought it was good. it was only being fed by a coaxial signal too! I also thought currys own brand Orion 32" was not bad but it didn't have freeview.
I also saw a fantastic 52" Samsung plasma for £1200 but thats another story!
So I appreciate the comments and if money was no object I'd get a couple of the 32" samsungs, but I have to keep to a bit of a budget really
any other suggestions for me please?
Posted by london-uk
Recently bought a Panasonic Viera 32" for the study, and I'm happy to recommend it. I't's got buit-in freeview, and HDMI (only one input though). Picture seems quite vibrant and clear. Had it for a month or so, and am happy with it.
Got it from Richer Sounds http://www.richersounds.com/s[....]showproduct&pid=PANA-TX32LXD60 who list it for £499.95, but I got it for £450 from them (London Bridge shop, in case you fancy some haggling).
Posted by masseur
thanks. I should get down to Richer Sounds some time as I've heard good things about them, and someone at work yesterday was giving good comments about Panasonic Viera too.
For now I've gone a for a special deal for this week. Its an AOC L32W551T which is available from Intekx for £325.50
I've had a couple of AOC lcd monitors in the past and they have been very good. Also these have had good reports in a couple of threads, one here on The DVD forums (with live pics) and here on Avforums
you don't get freeview for that price but its the one spec I mentioned that can be added externally and I already have 2 digiboxes, a standard philips one and the fantastic Humax PVR-9200t twin tuner with 160gb hard drive. If anyone is looking for a pvr then this is definitly worth a serious look. Its limited only by freeview capabilities i.e. no link-to-series like sky has but apparantly that is coming to freeview too soon.
anyway, this tv will arrive today so if its as good as the reports suggest I'll order a second and if not I'll go check out that Panasonic
Posted by scottt
I have that very Panasonic.... And gotta say its bloomin fantastic.
My xbox 360 looks awesome on it and the picture quality through normal TV is also very good. Has plenty of connections on the back... Only thing missing really is lack of PC input but i would never want to use it for that anyway
All in all an excellent TV and for £450 a bargain as i paid £600 two months ago!!!! And not so long ago it was £1000!!!!
Posted by masseur
sounds definitly worth checking out for the kids second one then, thanks.
I'm learning my lessons by getting the kids sorted first before spending the big bucks on a 50-52" screen for the living room.
So far Samsung and Sharp have caught my eye but following these comments I will also see what Panasonic have to offer.
Posted by batesie
richer sounds are good as mentioned above, i bought a Phillips 26'' HD lcd from there and its great. they are very competitive on price, and will beat Empire direct, who have rubbish cust service.
Richer have good cust service too. apart from that theres dixons online, and theres usually discount codes on google to make them even cheaper.
from personal experience, Phillips and Sony make the best LCD's and i have spend a lot of time with 2 Phillips, 1 sony 1 LG and 1 Samsung.
hope this helps
EDIT: for the big bucks you must try out one from the Philips Cineos range - i have one in my living room and its awsome, has Pixel Plus 2/3 and Clear LCD, where you cant actually see the surface of the LCD when watching!
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[ This Message was edited by: batesie on 2007-05-15 11:02 ]
Posted by Hlcn Twst
Do they sell Westinghouse LCD TVs where you are? Their 1080p monitors are an amazing value. I have a 42" for 4 months now and could not be happier.
http://www.westinghousedigital.com/
IMO 1080p resolution is a must for computer usage, and also for "future-proofing" should the HDTV standard by upgraded.
Posted by masseur
in Australia Westinghouse make fridges and freezers
mind you so do LG
1080p is good for most things these days but I've read that in Japan you can get upto 4320p now!!
Posted by batesie
i'm sure they'll have Laser TV's soon too lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_TV
Posted by Hlcn Twst
On 2007-05-15 17:15:46, masseur wrote:
1080p is good for most things these days but I've read that in Japan you can get upto 4320p now!!
Which is when physical illness sets in...
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June 3, 2004
WHAT'S NEXT; Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER of the NY Times
HIGH-DEFINITION television may be only just beginning to catch on, but researchers at the Japanese national broadcaster NHK are already working on a successor. The format, called Ultra High Definition Video, or UHDV, has a resolution 16 times greater than plain-old HDTV, and its stated goal is to achieve a level of sensory immersion that approximates actually being there.
At a picture size of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels -- that works out to 32 million pixels -- UHDV's resolution trounces even high-end digital still cameras. HDTV, by comparison, has about two million pixels, and normal TV about 200,000 (and only 480 lines of horizontal resolution versus 4,000 with UHDV).
Add to that UHDV's beefed-up refresh rate of 60 frames per second (twice that of conventional video), projected onto a 450-inch diagonal screen with more than 20 channels of audio, and you've got an impressive home theater on your hands.
Of course, UHDV's current dimensions make it impractical for most homes. The NHK researchers are investigating how to squeeze all those pixels onto smaller screens.
But the project aims to do more than just make home entertainment more realistic. The UHDV standard may someday find applications in museums, hospitals, shopping malls or other places where a keener representation of detail might be desirable.
All of that is a long way off, however, because the standard is still in the early stages of development. UHDV ''will take many years,'' said Fumio Okano, a researcher with the network. But NHK is familiar with long-term projects: it began developing the HDTV standard in 1964, and the first high-definition content arrived only in 1982.
The pixel count of UHDV may be impressive, but as anyone who has tried to watch TV on a sunny beach knows, pixels are not the whole picture. ''Resolution is only one of the key measurements,'' said John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images, a company in Burbank, Calif., that digitizes films at the highest possible quality for archival purposes. Perhaps even more important than pixels, he said, is the dynamic range of an image, which is measured in terms of contrast ratio. The eye can perceive contrasts between the brightest white and the darkest black of roughly 100,000 to one, whereas today's best projectors can only muster levels of about 4,000 to one.
To achieve truly realistic images, Mr. Lowry said, ''the blacks have to be really black, while still seeing the glint off a diamond.''
So while current projection technology cannot meet the demands of UHDV, the standard excels in other crucial areas, for example breadth of view. While both UHDV and HDTV use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (standard TV uses 4:3), HDTV offers only a 30-degree field of view horizontally, whereas UHDV's massive screen size expands this to about 100 degrees, said Mr. Okano, who said his research indicates that this angle is where ''immersive sensation'' peaks.
In developing UHDV, NHK has also focused on sound. The standard calls for 22.2 sound: 10 speakers at ear level, 9 above and 3 below, with another 2 for low frequency effects. It is a setup that is well beyond the level of the multichannel systems currently in vogue, like the 5.1 surround system.
All those sound channels and all those image pixels add up to a lot of data. In test, an 18-minute UHDV video gobbled up 3.5 terabytes of storage (equivalent to about 750 DVD's). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a total rate of 24 gigabits per second, thousands of times faster than a typical D.S.L. connection.
The realism creates other complications. The NHK is studying the physical and psychological effects of UHDV on audiences. One concern is a kind of motion sickness, which researchers attribute to a combination of the wide viewing angle, the massive image and the on-screen motion.
There are other reasons to shy away from maximum reality, some of them aesthetic. ''There is a very common practice,'' Mr. Lowry said, ''of putting a filter on a camera just to soften the image, to reduce the resolution.'' Movie stars are now learning the hard way that high-definition is hard on human imperfections: blemishes and bad makeup invisible to conventional TV suddenly jump to the fore when filmed in high-definition format; how will aging celebrities fare with UHDV?
But UHDV's developers do not intend the standard exclusively as a vehicle for Hollywood, or even for sports or news, where HDTV has flourished. They point to potentially useful applications in medicine, education, or art appreciation. The new format has also been designed to be compatible with other standards -- unlike, for example, IMAX, a 70-millimeter film format that has unsurpassed quality but a unique infrastructure that limits its mass-market potential.
Are audiences even warming up to high-definition television? While sales of HDTV sets are gradually increasing, the growth remains less than spectacular. With only 15 million to 18 million HDTV sets currently in the United States, ''we haven't even scraped the tip of the iceberg yet,'' said Vamsi Sistla, an analyst with the research firm Allied Business Intelligence.
Navigating the jungle of standards and terminology remains confusing, and a complete high-definition set (including tuner) costs several thousand dollars. Consumers, Mr. Sistla said, ''are not too keen on the nitty-gritty. They're looking at the price point, at sexy flat screens.''
The NHK is still years from having to worry about how to sell UHDV to consumers. Perhaps the format will always be out of reach for most consumers. However, while it took 40 years, HDTV eventually gained a foothold.
''I applaud them,'' Mr. Lowry said of the NHK. ''They are reaching off into what a lot of people might call never-never land at the moment. But why not?''