| Thompson 44RW65US RPTV Review
Have just upgraded from a 36" Sony to the Thomson 44" RPTV.
So first impressions.
Very well packaged, no damage or scratches to be found anywhere.
Took two hunky men to lift it in the front room, they had to lift it from the bottom as there were no grab handles anywhere on the set, they had to crouch down to get it through the front door, would have thought they could have made this a bit easier as the set is all in one and weighs a lot more than it's rivals.
Once indoors it is a doddle to move thanks to the castors.
Over all appearance, very smart, it has a silver frame round the screen and a silver grill across the front which hides the 4x midrange speakers and the two tweeters, the cabinet is all in one and is coffee coloured, feels very well build, sturdy and firm.
Installation.
Set up is a piece of cake, auto install picks up all the channels and none of the weaker signals, sorts them out then asks you if you want to view or change them, if not it takes you to the convergence menu, simple but very accurate, 3x crosshairs, i elected to come back to this when the set was fully warmed up.
Then it was just a matter of setting the personal prefrences.
Not overlaiden with features, but what it has are useful, only two things are letting the set down, that's the remote which is a load of bat crap so i have transfered everything over to my Denon remote, much better. The other is only one scart for RGB, when will these manufactures wake up!!
Right, down to the quality of picture,
NTL cable (analouge) was a bit disapointing, so i switched back to the main aerial, pictures improved 10 fold, digital cable was totally different all together, reset the picture from the factory settings and we started to see what this set was capable of.
Sky digital was the same, lowered the brightness and contrast, a bit more colour and the set came to life.
DVD, after careful setting of the brightness and contrast etc the pictures were gobsmacking, put a few different discs in to test for detail and overall picture quality, first was Shrek, very stunning, all the detail was there if not more than on the 36" Sony, in Pitch Black the set shows very good detail on all the dark scenes.
This set shows no sign of colour bleed, the geometry is also spot on and being a 100htz have seen NO artifacts when watching DVD/digital sky.
Colours are very natural and the picture is as steady as a rock.
Have selected RGB for DVD and Sky, have tried S-Video for the DVD but to be honest i couldn't tell the two apart.
Sound
Not bad, the music setting sounded OK, thank god for seperates though.
Why did i go for Thomson, the missus fell in love with it, but before i took the plunge i compaired the picture with other models on the same fed at the showroom, all in all this set to me had the same qualities as the Toshibas and Panasonics etc. I normally go with what i call the top makes like Sony and Panasonic, never thought i'd go for something that i had always put in the same class as Bush and Sharp, just goes to show that sometimes you don't need a big name on the front of your TV.
Picture 9/10
Sound 6/10
Features 7/10
Overall 9/10
Price payed £1530
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