OT: which 26" telly to buy?

[Moonraker]

I have a Panasonic TX42G15B using a Bose sound system and Foxsat HDR, very satisfied. Well I was until yesterday, the sat tuner on the TV has gone tilt. It tells me that there is no signal or need retuning. The strength meter is 100% and quality 80%, however when tuning it finds no channels. I know it is not the dish as the fox sat works perfectly with that LNR and cable. Luckily I only use it when making 2 recordings simultaneously with watching a third programme, which is rare!. The TV ran out of its 1 year guarantee last July, that will teach n=me to be a cheapskate, the next TV will be From John Lewis with a five year guarantee.

[dennis]

I don't know what LCD TVs you have been looking at but they must be cheap cr@p. My LCD TV has a viewing angle of nearly 180 degrees (LE32b652) and I have seen plenty of others that are similar. There is no need to have a poor angle of view on an LCD display.

[dennis]

Good amps are cheap to make. I use the same speakers as I do for stereo, full range and no need to magnetically shield them on an LCD screen. The LFE sub is turned off unless its DD playing. The centre and rears don't need to be HiFi but in my case are.

[Rob]

Yes - I chose my current Panasonic LCD partly on the wide viewing angle performance.

[Skipweasel]

you're five minutes to spare, this is worth watching.

[Ian Jackson]

I was going to chip in earlier and suggest that it's important to choose a set where the brightness, contrast and colour saturation are maintained over a wide angle - both side side-to-side, and up-and-down. Some Panasonics I've see are particularly good (much better than my sets).

I know that the specs often say the angle of viewing is (for example)

170+ degrees, but I feel that that is often the angle where you can actually see a picture. The angle over which the picture quality really remains good is often a lot less. Both of my LCD sets are particular poor, and I must be more choosy next time I buy.

[Steve Firth]

[snip]

OK, the iMac Screen on a 27" imax is 2560x1440 pixels, it has a brightness of 375 cd/m2 and a viewing angle of 178 degrees. The only way that anyone could claim that the image is not superior to that of any TV of a similar size is if they have never seen the display on an iMac.

Is that better?

No, you're wrong, sorry. Even the display on an iPhone which is a mere

3.5 inches benefits from having a 300dpi high contrast display. The 27 in display is not "tiny" it's more than large enough for most sitting rooms and the sharpness of the display is noticeably better than that of big name TV brands, especially when it is used to display HD video downloads.

I'm surprised that you think that a 178 degree viewing angle is "angle of view sensitive". Do you normally try to watch TV from behind the TV set?

[Steve Firth]

They don't get Blu-Ray sources, they are fed from HD media boxes which use full 1080p resolution source material - or at least that is my experience of demo systems in electronic retailers. The acid test with most of these systems is to ask to see the image over a range of source material - broadcast, standard definition DVD and HD sources.

When I did this for the LCD set I currently own (a Toshiba) vs most of the other stuff in the shop, I was initially sold on other makes. The LG sets in particular seemed to have particularly good images. However on Freeview, Sky, DVD and computer images the LG and most of the others produced truly horrible results with jagged pixelation. The Toshiba isn't as good with the best material but it does produce a better image with the majority of sources that I am likely to use.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

The standard settings as they leave the factory are to look garish, in a self-defeating attempt to outdo all the other garish ones in the showroom. First thing I did with my Samsung was hunt down some starting points for adjustment, and what a difference it made. Honestly, if I'd been Joe Numpty and didn't know how to set it up properly, I'd have sent it back, it was so bad.

[dennis]

Having had a phone with ~300 dpi display for a year longer than the iphone has been out i would agree. Shame jobs thinks he was first though.

That I doubt, it would require remapping of the pixels to the display to put HD (1080 x 1080) which results in visible artefacts. Its exactly the same with the cr@p 1366x768 sets sold as HD ready, put the HD stuff on it and you get jaggies.

I notice someone was getting jaggies on a computer displayed on a HD set, this is a symptom of the same problems, not getting the resolution right for the screen.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Skipweasel saying something like:

Fanbloodytastic! Now, see if he can knock up a telly.

[Skipweasel]

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Indeed, 'tho other experiments were going on at the time;)...

[The Natural Philosopher]

In our case its less an issue in some rooms, where the likely viewing angle is pretty small.

What I want is large + cheap + reasonable response times.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I'd make it out of loaded glass fibre tho :-)

[John Stumbles]

Heh! I don't buy Pottertons :-|

[John Stumbles]

I'd have gone for the Panny from JL but it's currently out of stock (as someone else pointed out). Richer Sounds seemed happy to do either set for £250 with 5 year warranty thrown in so I tossed a coin and went for the LG.

In hindsight they seemed so amenable to it I could probably have haggled a better deal out of them but it'll do. Now all I've got to do is get rid of the lurgies so I can go out and earn some money to pay for it :-(

[Ian Jackson]

I've got a feeling that a fast response time is a vastly overrated parameter. Compared with a CRT, moving pictures on a flat-screen TV are pretty jerky and smeary, regardless of response time.

I bought a cheap Linsar (19" I think) and, despite the response time being 8ms instead of the more-typical 5ms, I reckoned it was the best picture quality of the bunch of smaller sets. Unfortunately, the changes of picture quality with viewing angle is nowhere as good as (say) a Panasonic.

[John Stumbles]

And are you typing that on a Diablo or an ASR33? ;-)

BSF if it were my own place I'd go with none too (though not without a peecee). But since SWMBO and the kids insist on having one and, as you say it does rather grab one's attention, something that doesn't feature pink and green venetian blinds on the screen is called for :-/

[Dave Liquorice]

You can always try playing the "reasonable life" card but you will probably have to battle and know your rights well before approaching the shop. They will say "12 month guarantee sir, tough" but that is not what your rights say.