Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE a nice 37 inch screen to view my movies, everyone I know seems to be chopping in their old TV for a 37-50 inch screen and I have to say after viewing one LCD after another I am left completly dissapointed at the picture quality. I come home to my Toshiba 32ZD26P and go AHHH with a sigh of relief and appreciation for the stunning picture I get! Especially via componant and my Denon 1940.

Nice deep solid blacks, rich realistic colours, sharp detail and a "controlled" classy glossy picture with excellent contrast. LCD with standard definition to me looks cheap, messy, lacking in realism and don't get me started on the blacks lol! Ok sure with HD material they look stunning, no argument there, but what % of viewing material as of now is HD?

There are only 2 flat TV's that iv seen that I am immpressed with, firstly my mates Philips 37PF9830, although blacks aren't perfect its the best LCD Iv seen with a real solid "jump of the screen" stunning picture, although poor SD material looks bad on it (obviously) The other is another friends 50 inch Fujistu plasma, that is a great classy picture even with SD.

So thats 2 sets, am I missing something here, so so many people on the forums seem so happy with their new LCD's and I start to wonder, am i going mad!! Or am I one of the few sane people left that thinks size is no subtitue for quality!? Or perhaps Im just a fussy old git!! But I can't be alone surely?

[meansizzler]

Ditch the LCD if your a CRT guy and want to upgrade then go for a plasma, much deeper blacks, althgouh that 52" sammy with the 500,000:1 contrast ratio looks compelling...
I didn't want to move to LCD, but I did, the picture is very good if you pump HD material through it, but could never rivals CRT's in term of brightness/colour, especially the Blacks it's one area which lets LCD's down, that and the feeding it SD content looks bad..

So go for plasma if you want to upgrade, a 1360*768 screen should do you justice, enough for HD, and low enough to get decent looking SD..

hey thx for the reply, yes I agree LCD can look awesome with HD, its, as you say SD that lets them down, seems they're simply not desiged to cope with SD at these sizes 37 inch +

Think I am going over to the dark side ha ha if you class deep blacks as dark ;-) Plasma is much better and seems to have a more CRT like appearance to them.

So, are you saying that a resolution inbetween that of SD and FULL HD would be more forgiving of SD material? I would had thought it the other way round eg a 1080P panel I would had thought should have a very good scaler built in?

LCD TV is not rubbish, it's just not as good as the last of the CRT's. My Tosh 32ZP48 (last of the picture frame series) is a highly specified model and I have insured it for 5yrs. By then the LCD models might have caught up.

The downside is that it weighs a ton, yet looks like a LCD from the front. I think manufacturers stopped making them to soon, because there is now an active second hand market for these top sets.

Lon.

[andrewfee]

Originally Posted by lonniebach

LCD TV is not rubbish, it's just not as good as the last of the CRT's. My Tosh 32ZP48 (last of the picture frame series) is a highly specified model and I have insured it for 5yrs. By then the LCD models might have caught up.

They really are rubbish. Not worth half the prices they're charging for them, the colour is unnatural, the black reproduction is laughable, anything that moves blurs etc.

I've spent the last couple of years buying and subsequently returning/selling several LCDs (and Plasmas) because, other than size, they're all crap compared to my CRTs.

I really do want to upgrade to something bigger, but it has to be at least as good if not better when it comes to picture quality. The way things are going, I doubt we'll see anything "catch up" to CRT technology any time soon.

[Baseley09]

Im rocking one of the last wave of JVC HD compatible CRT's and much like the Toshiba Picture frames and the last few tube Panasonics, still cant be beaten for some things (SD DVD, TV, Wii etc), just wait till your tv dies, is completely obselete or you find a new set that satisfies.

[Berisford]

I too, like the original poster, fancy a new big screen to replace, in my case a 2001 28" Sony CRT, but just can't find anything with a picture quality that looks as it should.

This lunch time I spent a good half hour looking at various LCD's and Plasma's in a local store. All sets were tuned to a BBC1 cookery programme and indeed looked quite good, especially from a distance. I was quite taken with Plasma's from Philips, Panasonic, LG and Samsung. The Sony LCD's also looked good.

However, when I switched to BBC2 all the sets fell down big time. Faces and skin tones on the characters looked very strange indeed, not pixulated but 'blocky', almost alien in a Dr Who kinda way.

Looks as if I'll be keeping my money in my pocket for some time to come!

[Matt_C]

I have the same problem... I have a 36" CRT, which while it only has a viewable screen of 34", I just don't want to get rid of it! I love it's picture, contrast, colour, blacks, etc etc...

Looks great on Freeview (as much as can be expencted with the awful bit rates on some Freeview channels) and great with SD-DVD's, and also great with computer video's even if they are pumped in via s-vid....

Thing is I would like a plasma/LCD in order to get a VGA connection for the PC, so as to be able to display a bigger resolution in the correct widescreen ratio (stuck on 1024x768 via s-vid) but I don't have any intention to go with any HD source as yet (TV or DVD) so I can't justify it at a sacrifice for SD-TV and SD-DVD viewing....

Shame you can't get a 40" CRT

[onkeh]

You can't have it all, which I think is the most important thing to remember. If you want perfect SD, then you'll be limited to a 34" screen that's a meter thick. If you want perfect HD or 37"+ screen, then you'll have to suffer a loss in SD quality. That's pretty much all there is to it, you have to decide which is more important to you personally. I spend far much more time gaming and watching HD movies than I do watching SD TV, so an LCD makes perfect sense for me, however this won't be the case for everyone.

For what it's worth I'd say the best halfway house is one of those early 1024x1024 plasmas, which will be good but not exceptional at both SD & HD.

Originally Posted by onkeh

You can't have it all, which I think is the most important thing to remember. If you want perfect SD, then you'll be limited to a 34" screen that's a meter thick. If you want perfect HD or 37"+ screen, then you'll have to suffer a loss in SD quality. That's pretty much all there is to it, you have to decide which is more important to you personally. I spend far much more time gaming and watching HD movies than I do watching SD TV, so an LCD makes perfect sense for me, however this won't be the case for everyone.

For what it's worth I'd say the best halfway house is one of those early 1024x1024 plasmas, which will be good but not exceptional at both SD & HD.

Or the new Panasonic TH-37PX70 with a resolution of 1,024 x 720

[per-Sony-fied]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

Thing is I would like a plasma/LCD in order to get a VGA connection for the PC, so as to be able to display a bigger resolution in the correct widescreen ratio (stuck on 1024x768 via s-vid) but I don't have any intention to go with any HD source as yet (TV or DVD) so I can't justify it at a sacrifice for SD-TV and SD-DVD viewing....

Your wish in CRT is a Loewe model. Not sure if they ever did a 36 incher tho'.

[onkeh]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

Thing is I would like a plasma/LCD in order to get a VGA connection for the PC, so as to be able to display a bigger resolution in the correct widescreen ratio (stuck on 1024x768 via s-vid) but I don't have any intention to go with any HD source as yet (TV or DVD) so I can't justify it at a sacrifice for SD-TV and SD-DVD viewing....

BTW you cannot get anything over 480i via s-video, your PC input is simply being interlaced and scaled down.

[BYF]

Originally Posted by andrewfee

They really are rubbish. Not worth half the prices they're charging for them, the colour is unnatural, the black reproduction is laughable, anything that moves blurs etc.

I've spent the last couple of years buying and subsequently returning/selling several LCDs (and Plasmas) because, other than size, they're all crap compared to my CRTs.

I really do want to upgrade to something bigger, but it has to be at least as good if not better when it comes to picture quality. The way things are going, I doubt we'll see anything "catch up" to CRT technology any time soon.

I agree....

I was searching for ages, in the end my CRT TV went pop during a thunderstorm and i had to get a TV fast with a £700 budget.

I went for a 37inch panasonic px70 plasma about 8 months and even got a stand with it, compared to all other Flat TV's up to around £1000 this was the best of the bunch for the money, all the LCD's were nowhere near for me.

Its not perfect though, even though its a plasma there is still some motion resolution loss during motion, but it doesn't blur as bad as the LCDs ive had, but its still there.

Also i get fizzing pixels in bright white scenes, and the brightest areas of contrast seem to glare more than i'd like obscuring bright area detail. Also the blacks although good for a flat panel are not ink blank but the plus side is that the dark area detail seems very good.

On paper the contrast ratios of flat screens impresses, but its what happens within the contrast range that doesn't seem quite right to me.

On the plus side the SD picture quality is decent, theres no viewing angle problems, decent blacks, accurate colours and HD looks very very nice with games consoles and blur-ray, and as an all-rounder im very pleased with it.

But to be really honest, the current flat screen technologies are not really up to displaying HD at the best it can look, especially when you consider how close you have to sit to resolve all the extra detail of HD, but at these close viewing distances you can see all the imperfections, processing noise, and fizzing pixels. And then when anything moves, wave goodbye to that lovely 1080p resolution, your be luckly to see 1/2 or even a 1/3 of it.

[richarddel]

Thats proberly just MPEG artifacts and DCT blocking which will be apparant on larger displays. The bitrates used for some channels really isn't up to being viewed on such big displays and short viewing distances.

Sit further back and it may loook good.

Originally Posted by Berisford

All sets were tuned to a BBC1 cookery programme and indeed looked quite good, especially from a distance. I was quite taken with Plasma's from Philips, Panasonic, LG and Samsung. The Sony LCD's also looked good.

However, when I switched to BBC2 all the sets fell down big time. Faces and skin tones on the characters looked very strange indeed, not pixulated but 'blocky', almost alien in a Dr Who kinda way.

[bonzobanana]

Originally Posted by onkeh

BTW you cannot get anything over 480i via s-video, your PC input is simply being interlaced and scaled down.

I've never really looked into it but can't pc's give out a 576i pal image via s-video? Or are they restricted to ntsc output only?

[onkeh]

Originally Posted by bonzobanana

I've never really looked into it but can't pc's give out a 576i pal image via s-video? Or are they restricted to ntsc output only?

I think it can be done with a bit of fiddling but as standard it's 480i.

[@llan]

Originally Posted by per-Sony-fied

Your wish in CRT is a Loewe model. Not sure if they ever did a 36 incher tho'.

They sure did, I remember looking at one in Harrods a couple of years ago, pretty good from what I can remember.

I'm sticking with my loewe 32" for as long as It's practical to keep patching it up.

Allan

[per-Sony-fied]

Originally Posted by bonzobanana

I've never really looked into it but can't pc's give out a 576i pal image via s-video? Or are they restricted to ntsc output only?

Yep they can. If you use a hardware accelerated card such as Sigma's X-card they will output 576i.

[hamish99]

I've spent a whole day looking at LCD Tvs today, blah blah, came home put my Sopranos DVD on my 5 year old Phillips and BAM that's the picture I've been looking for all day . However, the options are so limited in this country for a replacement CRT, an array of JVCs, Beko, Goodmans et al ...

What do you do? Buy secondhand ?

[per-Sony-fied]

Originally Posted by hamish99

However, the options are so limited in this country for a replacement CRT, an array of JVCs, Beko, Goodmans et al ...

What do you do? Buy secondhand ?

If your happy with the one you have....... keep it! Otherwise the only other choice is S/H if you want something decent. There is just not the demand now for justifying production of new high quality sets.

Plasma is the next best bet. Pioneers new flat panel has some astonshing blacks.