TV resolutions options

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PromNZ

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#19052 3-Feb-2008 16:22

Whilst in Harvey Norman in Wairau Park today, I was approached by sales folk squabbling like seagulls (Mine ! Mine!) over tv sets, so within 1 minute was offered :

40"plasma with 2 x hdmi but only 852 x480 res. It was playing the 720p instore loop, but when standing 3m away from it, I couldn't pick much diiference between that and the 720 machine next to it. maybe my eyesight is buggered ?! (LG)

42" plasma with 1 x hdmi 1024x768 res. Also at the 3m distance (actually in the next isle looking back as I don't watch tv at home at an arms length) looked nice but again, the difference wasn't that great. $2000 seemed a good deal. (Phillips)

32" lcd - I just laughed at the man and walked away as they were showing Sky Sport channel on it and all I could see was a smudged mess. (Phillips)

So with less than 720p resolution sets that simply upscale, can some kind folk explain in basic language how the set accomplishes this please ? And how come it really didn't look that bad to be honest.

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#108315 3-Feb-2008 16:57

3m is too far away to be watching a 42" TV and is beyond the distance the average person can spot the difference between a SD and HD screen which would be why you couldn't spot any difference.

This chart shows a good comparision between the optimum viewing distances.

I have a 50" Plasma and it's just on 275cm from the screen to the couch, I consider this to be pretty much the perfect distance.

NZtechfreak

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#108328 3-Feb-2008 17:50

Nice chart, when I get back to Auckland I'll have to see about how far away my new 1080P 42incher is from the couch.

Incidentally PromNZ, I'd advise shopping around. My Philips 42" LCD with 2 x hdmi and 1080P was only $2500 at Bond and Bond a few weeks back, came with a free cabinet valued at $600 too and the guy threw in some cabling for me - makes the $2000 one you were looking at a far less attractive deal. Try pricespy.co.nz to get an idea for who has the best prices.

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PromNZ

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#108330 3-Feb-2008 17:59

Thanks folks.

I've just measured the lounge and the couch is 2.4m away from the tv set currently.

No worries about a new set just yet, as every shop is different, depending on salefolks, whether Venus is alignment with Mars

and so on.

cyril7

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#108336 3-Feb-2008 18:27

Personal opinions here, give philips products a wide birth unless you enjoy trotting them back for service or total replacement.

42" 7series Panasonics are hard to beat at this price point, the PV7 and PV70 both have 1076x768 resolution the former with 1HDMI and the latter with 2. For their price they are a hard game to beat and have pretty decent deinterlacers/scalers.

Cyril

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#108339 3-Feb-2008 18:35

I find the Toshiba Regza series to be great! Definitely worth consideration anyway

grant_k

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#108350 3-Feb-2008 19:32

cyril7: 42" 7series Panasonics are hard to beat at this price point, the PV7 and PV70 both have 1076x768 resolution the former with 1HDMI and the latter with 2. For their price they are a hard game to beat and have pretty decent deinterlacers/scalers.

Was in at Bond & Bond today looking at the various Plasmas and LCDs alongside each other, just to see how they stacked up.

Commendably, this retailer was showing live SD 16:9 content (actually TV3's A1GP coverage) on all the TVs, rather than the DVDs which are typically shown.

My impressions were:

1) Panasonic 42" Plasma looked quite washed out and showed visible noise on the picture whereas other sets of a similar size did not have any noise (I can't help wondering if it was set up wrong)
2) Samsung 42" LCD was grossly oversaturated
3) Samsung 42" Plasma to my eye was the pick of the bunch

However:

None of these sets really looked any good showing SD content with graphics overlaid (the race times and other details in each corner of the picture). Instead of the graphics being "clean" as on a CRT, there were visible compression artifacts in among and to the right of each graphic. Some of these artifacts exhibited a crawling pattern of dots and on some sets, the numbers and characters were quite distorted and blurry. The Philips 42" LCD (with full HD spec) was actually the worst in this respect.

In fact, these pictures of the A1GP coverage looked much better on sets in the 20" to 30" range!

It was a real eye-opener to be honest. I plan to repeat this exercise in a few months time, when HD broadcasting has hopefully commenced.

In the meantime, I will stick with my old 30" CRT which still looks far better on SD pictures. We mainly watch off-air broadcasts (which are frequently recorded so as to skip the ads) rather than DVDs, so there seems little point in upgrading at the moment.

sbiddle

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#108355 3-Feb-2008 19:53

The big unknown when you're looking at TV's in a store is how they are configured. If they are plugged in straight out of the box and settings such as MPEG NR left switched on then the picture can be a lot worse than it should be.

You have hit the nail on the head with one point though - you can't beat a good 29" CRT TV when it comes to viewing SD content!

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PromNZ

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#108359 3-Feb-2008 21:10

Was in at Bond & Bond today looking at the various Plasmas and LCDs alongside each other, just to see how they stacked up.

Commendably, this retailer was showing live SD 16:9 content (actually TV3's A1GP coverage) on all the TVs, rather than the DVDs which are typically shown.

None of these sets really looked any good showing SD content with graphics overlaid (the race times and other details in each corner of the picture). Instead of the graphics being "clean" as on a CRT, there were visible compression artifacts in among and to the right of each graphic. Some of these artifacts exhibited a crawling pattern of dots and on some sets, the numbers and characters were quite distorted and blurry. The Philips 42" LCD (with full HD spec) was actually the worst in this respect.

In fact, these pictures of the A1GP coverage looked much better on sets in the 20" to 30" range!

Well there's a very good chance, like most retailers, they would be using a feed of TV3 from Sky Digital. If that was the case, that's the cause of the poor quality pic. Even a good old fashioned roof aerial would only be a touch better, but then you wouldn't be seeing the pic in 16x9, only 4x3.

Interesting comments folks, keep it up

grant_k

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#108377 3-Feb-2008 23:22

PromNZ: Well there's a very good chance, like most retailers, they would be using a feed of TV3 from Sky Digital. If that was the case, that's the cause of the poor quality pic.

Yes, indeed they were

However, it's wrong to point the finger at Sky Digital because I'm watching the edited highlights -- again via Sky Digital -- but this time on my old fashioned 29" CRT.

Crawling right up to the front of the set and can I see any compression artifacts around the numbers on the race graphics?

Not on your life. There isn't so much as a misplaced dot to be seen!

This just goes to show how much degradation is introduced by all the Upscaling that goes on in these LCD/Plasma screens with 768 or more vertical lines.

Do any of them have the option to disable Upscaling and just watch the picture at reduced size with a 1:1 pixel mapping? It would be a useful improvement in my view.

PromNZ: Even a good old fashioned roof aerial would only be a touch better, but then you wouldn't be seeing the pic in 16x9, only 4x3.

Sorry, I don't agree with you there.

We have an excellent VHF signal from TV3 Waiatarua with no visible ghosting. However, if you look closely, the lack of Chroma bandwidth on the VHF signal compared to the Sky Digital signal is easily noticeable. This is only to be expected due to the composite encoding process which is part of the VHF transmission chain.

richms

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#108382 4-Feb-2008 00:06

You cant see the artifacts on a small CRT because of the interlacing making it so you cant see it. Look on a 100Hz or progressive CRT and it looks just as bad as on an LCD - nothing to do with the scaling of the image.

VHF looks much better then sky digital ever did on 1/2/3/4 on my 29" CRT - no artifacts at all mostly, other then whats clearly in the source material on C4 often..

edit: and a crap 29"tube will bave a dot pitch bigger then the mosquito noise that sky has around all the graphics.

Richard rich.ms

grant_k

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#108384 4-Feb-2008 00:31

richms: VHF looks much better then sky digital ever did on 1/2/3/4 on my 29" CRT - no artifacts at all mostly, other then whats clearly in the source material on C4 often..

When did you last look at TV3 via Sky Digital?

Since they changed to Widescreen?

richms

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#108395 4-Feb-2008 03:35

Yes, but being that my tv was not wide I had it on center cut to avoid postage stamping all the time.

Plainly visable mpeg blocks that simply were not there on VHF.

Richard rich.ms

PromNZ

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#108719 5-Feb-2008 16:06

On a scale of 1 -> 10, how does thia rate ?

Screen Size:	Plasma 42inch
Resolution:	1024 x 768
Aspect Ratio:	16:9
Peak Brightness	1500 cd/m2
Contrast	10000:1
Pixel Pitch	1.182mm(H/V)
Displayable Colours	16.7 million
Viewing Angle (H/V)	160 degrees
Response Time	<16m

Is the response time a little slow, resulting in some blurring on fast scene stuff ?

manhinli

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#108724 5-Feb-2008 16:18

PromNZ:
Screen Size: Plasma 42inch

Resolution: 1024 x 768

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Peak Brightness 1500 cd/m2

Contrast 10000:1

Pixel Pitch 1.182mm(H/V)

Displayable Colours 16.7 million

Viewing Angle (H/V) 160 degrees

Response Time <16m

Are you buying one of those Panasonic Viera Plasmas? Look at what you might be buying - some are and aren't HD capable.

It's resolution is crap as well. 1024x768 is way less than the 1366 x 768 I'm getting on my 32".

I'll give it a 6.

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cyril7

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#108728 5-Feb-2008 16:33

Manhinli, have you looked at the availablity/price of Plasma displays with resolutions above that of the Panasonics?

Even though its got a lower resolution than most LCD's it still rates as an HD display and can handle all commonly available HD formats. Add to that the fact both LCD and Plasma have major image issues, some folk find LCD unwatchable, but Plasma acceptable, and some folk vice versa, in the end a 42" display in a typical NZ dwelling with a resolution of 1024x768 with either SD or HD material will provide more resolution than most folk are able to determine the difference, and at a reasonable price.

Cyril

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