Gadget Show - Funniest Show on TV

HDCriticalFan · 18-08-2009, 12:21 PM

... 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 · 18-08-2009, 12:37 PM

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 · 18-08-2009, 12:43 PM

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 · 18-08-2009, 12:45 PM

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 · 18-08-2009, 5:35 PM

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

Shaun666 · 18-08-2009, 7:01 PM

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 · 18-08-2009, 8:26 PM

Quote:

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 · 18-08-2009, 10:14 PM

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 · 19-08-2009, 2:53 AM

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

Good night guys

Shaun666 · 19-08-2009, 10:14 AM

Quote:

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 · 19-08-2009, 11:06 AM

Interesting stuff

Epic GS thread here too

IAN P · 07-12-2009, 9:31 PM

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 · 08-12-2009, 5:33 PM

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 · 08-12-2009, 5:44 PM

Quote:

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 · 08-12-2009, 5:47 PM

A thread finally dragged me in the HD section!

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

mike7 · 08-12-2009, 7:15 PM

I think the producers of this show have set themselves up as being a sort of 'Gadget Top Gear'. The trouble is their research team is obviously rubbish and their stunts and presenters are well short of the mark for any real entertainment value. The show fails on all counts.

Scapegoat · 08-12-2009, 8:54 PM

I think most people watch the majority of the TV in the lounge, and the occassion bit in the bedroom. Also with the HD multi-room costs, many people don't have HD in the second rooms.

On that basis, I think people don't find a large TV value for money for the time they use it and therefore compromise in the bedroom (esp as SD looks poor on large TVs).

We have a 40" TV in th lounge with HD and 5.1 system, and we sit fairly close as well. This is were we relax on the sofa and watch films / football etc.

The TV in the kitchen and bedroom are both 32" and viewed from a far greater distance. But the kitchen is for keeping an eye on things generally, and the bedroom is the occasional programme in bed at night or Soccer AM in the morning.

I don't think its unreasonable to review smaller TVs and state that they would be suitable for bedrooms.

Gadget show though in general - watchable, but generally incorrect on some things. Never take anything as gospel

HDCriticalFan · 09-12-2009, 12:57 PM

And perhaps I'm getting old, but what was the deal with that power charger plate thingy ?

TGS: Hey, you know the problem with those power chargers ?

Me: What, those plug size and shaped things that you get with each gadget ? What's wrong with them ?

TGS: Well now you can buy this [pulls out a thing the size of a tea tray which plugs into the mains - with a cable] and attach a thingy [pulls out an adapter for an iPod and a Blackberry] so that you can now charge them ... without needing any more cables !

Given that many things now charge via a standard USB socket, I would have thought that the need for another standard charger was redundant ... especially one so big ... and especially one which does so few gadgets.

But I guess, with an hour two fill 26 weeks of the year, they have to talk about something ! But wouldn't an anti-gadget show be interesting ? A show where they show new gadgets and point out the shortcomings, saying "What idiot would waste money on this !"

Regards

Scapegoat · 09-12-2009, 1:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCriticalFan

But wouldn't an anti-gadget show be interesting ? A show where they show new gadgets and point out the shortcomings, saying "What idiot would waste money on this !"

They could get my girlfriend and my Dad to host it - as they do a great job of it with my actual or potential purchases....

soupdragon · 09-12-2009, 6:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCriticalFan

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 !

Ok - so i have a 19" at the end of my bed and can clearly see the extra definition from 480p to 720p - does this mean that I have eyes like Wolverine

?

tvdavid · 09-12-2009, 10:34 PM

I have a 42in Toshiba in my bedroom

Pincho Paxton · 10-12-2009, 12:00 AM

I have a huge projector in the toilet!

featherhall · 10-12-2009, 12:13 AM

A telly in the bedroom ???? Nae wonder there's a population crisis lol. Seriously, my other half won't allow it. ;-)

HDCriticalFan · 10-12-2009, 4:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by soupdragon

Ok - so i have a 19" at the end of my bed and can clearly see the extra definition from 480p to 720p - does this mean that I have eyes like Wolverine

?

No, it sounds like you have 20:20 vision

You can more than fully resolve 480 lines from about six feet.

I was saying that to fully resolve 1080 lines you would need to be closer than three feet.

As 1080 is about double 480 and three feet is about half of three feet - I would say that we are in full agreement

Regards