Gadget Show - Funniest Show on TV

[HDCriticalFan]

... bar none !

Last night the contention was that a bedroom TV would be smaller than a lounge one.

Well we have a 42 incher on our bedroom wall and a 42 incher in our lounge. I can see that you would want a smaller one in a kitchen (or bathroom) ... but not in the bedroom, surely

So they decide to review 19 inch TVs (or, modest sized PC monitors to me). They bring in an assistant TV assessor - someone called Dawn who is apparently famous for making mildly sensationalist TV documentaries. She seemed more interested in the colour of the plastic surrounds, but I digress ...

When they talked about "HD Ready" I nearly spat my supper out ... on a 19 inch screen !!! But sure enough they started critcally reviewing a Blu-ray disc. They were sat up in bed with the TV at the foot of the bed - so about six or seven feet away. A quick online check shows that to see 1080 detail a normal human eye need to be about 2.5 feet from a 19 inch screen. They were almost too far away to properly see SD !


I was chortling to myself that nothing surprises me anymore on a show which mangles its (SD only) output so much (with funny colour/contrast, false vignetting and superimposed "filmic" effect) when they gleefully announced that to test the SD performance of the TVs they were going to use ... Gadget Show clips.


You couldn't make it up



On a (slightly) more serious note, I was sadly dissappointed when the apparently intelligent Jon Bentley (who should know better) mentioned in a throw away comment that the Sony was actually 16:10 (rather than 16:9). He dismissed this as if it was a minor trivial irrelevance ... its fundamental. Either this TV (like one at my gym) will squish everything slightly, or it will zoom and crop. You really can't even start to talk about picture quality when the starting off point is either distorted or, in part, completely missing.





Regards

[arthurdentpc]

I was just disappointed they didn't review the Humax LGB-22, which is similarly priced, has a good picture, a hard drive recorder and sound so good it would make grown men weep.

Personally I find the 22" screen perfect for watching at the foot of the bed - I think a 42" screen would look ridiculous.

[welshbrad]

I have gone off the gadget show recently not enough gadgets to much ar***g around, thier tests are totally irrelevant or way to over the top.

As much as I like gadgets I would never buy a automated penguin and don't really care for them 2 minutes would be long enough!

Rant over!

[welshbrad]

I have 32" in the bedroom about 3.4 meters from my viewing position, but it all comes down to the distance you are viewing from.

[tvdavid]

My 42in Toshiba is in my room.
And we have a 37in in the lounge which is my parents one.

[Shaun666]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. I have a 50" in my living room and a 26" in the bedroom and wouldn't want a huge telly in there anyway.

[HDCriticalFan]

Originally Posted by arthurdentpc

Personally I find the 22" screen perfect for watching at the foot of the bed - I think a 42" screen would look ridiculous.

I'm not quite sure where you get "ridiculous" from

Our bedroom is quite narrow, barely two feet wider than the bed is long. This means that a screen mounted on the wall facing the bed is about 8 feet from a viewer sitting up in bed. Co-incidentally this is about the distance I sit from the TV in the lounge. In both cases a 42 inch screen is perfectly sized.

In fact, given that the wall facing the bed is otherwise empty, I think that it could take a 50 inch screen easily.

Rather than observe it as "ridiculous" most visitors go the "ooh" and "ahh" gasp route ... followed by the expression of the wish that they had a similar setup in their bedroom.





Regards

[Lion]

I've got a 44" in the living room and a 52" in the bedroom,
it seems obvious to me that my bedroom needs the larger screen size.

[emthree]

Bed room should be for sleeping, not watching tele, surely. OMG! is that the time? Better go to bed Good night guys

[Shaun666]

Originally Posted by emthree

Bed room should be for sleeping, not watching tele, surely. OMG! is that the time? Better go to bed Good night guys

Agreed. Better things to do in the bedroom than watch tv

[Coffin]

Interesting stuff

Epic GS thread here too

[IAN P]

Funniest mis-information on tonights show was Suzy stating that most films were shot in 21.9 and transfered to DVD and Bluray at 16.9. This was during a showing of the Philips wide tv.

I thought I'd misheard, but alas, rewinding it proved what a ridiculous statement it was. Very poor research.


Don't know why this ended up in the hd section.

[Per156GTA]

I am glad it wasn't just me hearing that! She needs a slap for such misinformation!

Aside from the fact that £4k for a 21:9 TV is daft - what would normal 16:9 transmissions look like on it?

Also for that, you could get a decent PJ, and a 100" screen - OK, not everyone's cup of tea and not as instant to plug in and get using, but I certainly wouldn't spend £4k on that TV, unless I lived in some fancy city loft style apartment where it might actually look like it belonged!

[HDCriticalFan]

Originally Posted by IAN P

Funniest mis-information on tonights show was Suzy stating that most films were shot in 21.9 and transfered to DVD and Bluray at 16.9.

Well, in this one instance, I might defend Suzi (a bit).

Whilst I'm by no means convinced that most movies are filmed in 21:9 (most blockbusters perhaps) I think what she said (or meant) was that movies are transferred to DVD - which has a 16:9 frame. I clearly recall her saying that this was why some movies have black bars above and below.

[Quite why some people find this such "A Big Deal" I fail to understand.]

The USP of this screen is that it can show a 21:9 film without any black bars. So what ? It's only a 52 inch screen. I'm sure that you could get a virtually same sized image on a 50 inch plasma for a lot less than £4,000 !

And if this screen is aimed a Home Cinema-philes why is it an LCD ? Surely any geek worthy of a Home Cinema set up is going to want a plasma (or projector) for a darkened cinema ? And don't get me started on Ambilight !

For once that money saving fella didn't make me wince. He was right. If you could buy 21:9 DVDs/BRs in the same way that we now buy 16:9, then there might be a use for this screen. Although whether it would be worth £4k or not is an open question. In any event the "judges" rightly binned it out of hand !


Personally I think that contenders for daftest moment on last night's show produced a very competitive field.

There is the on-going use of really small on-screen text graphics (which I presume are an attempt to look like an HD sports channel) ... except they are so fuzzy as to be laughable.

The latest "full widescreen" (i.e. 21:9) gadget for watching epic landscape dominated movies was ... a hand held device with a 5 inch screen ! As if that wasn't funny enough in itself (and it is) it was clearly showing 16:9 material s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fill the width of the screen !

And finally ...

I was really let down when Donald Sinden was testing the Internet TVs. Although both he and Kryten rightly dissed all contenders as having rubbish interfaces, they reviewed the "picture quality" of the TVs by watching ... Gadget Show clips ! Laugh ? I could barely contain myself ! And when Robert Llewellyn commented about the accuracy of the colours - I mean, come on ! Even when we were looking at the screens from "our" camera behind the sofa it was clearly evident that the picture contained the usual Gadget Show vignetting !

Would YOU go into an A/V store and assess the true PQ of the lastest TVs by looking at clips of The Gadget Show !





Regards

[Pincho Paxton]

A thread finally dragged me in the HD section!

I don't have HD broadcast, but the thread is funny!