26" S- Series Bravia or 26" Sammy M Series?

[owner]

http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...w_en_GB&pageType=Overview&category=TVP+LCD+TV

or

http://audiovisual.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/ps_14917628/100311823.html

I'm planning on getting an hd set for use with the xbox 360 which is why the 8ms response time on both these sets attracted me. However, the bravia doesn't support 1080i whereas I'm pretty sure the samsung does.

Is the lack of 1080i support going to prove significant in terms of gaming or tv in the near future?
Is the bravia generally a better set (better picture quality?) due to its higher price?

Any advice on what you reckon is the better set is appreciated.
Cheers

 

[owner]

*bump*

 

[Shozuki]

i've gone for the sammy seems to better rated.... yet to recieve mine though

 

[owner]

yeah the sammy is also cheaper which is a plus side, any idea why the bravia is more expensive when it doesn't support 1080i?

 

[David Mackenzie]

Both of these TVs accept a 1080i signal.

But the panels are only 768 pixels high so they can't show all of the detail from it.

The Bravias are way better at handling 1080i (should you ever use it) than the Samsung LCDs (I'm going off an LE32R41B - they could have changed it for this new M series). The Bravias scale the image down whereas the Samsung LCDs look like they're just slicing out every second line of the 1080i picture to get it to 540p and then scaling it up to the panel.

That means that 1080i on the Bravias has a very slight jitter visible if you look very carefully up close (because advanced deinterlacing routines for 1080i aren't built into the TV, I'd imagine) but the Samsungs produce a pixellated look.

That said, any hardware should be able to output 720p to the screen which is a far better option for a 768-line panel anyway.

 

[owner]

Cheers for the help. When I called Sony for the specs on the KDL-S26A12U Bravia the guy on the other end made a whole point about how it wouldn't support 1080i. That being said, I reckon you guys probably know more than they do about their own tv anyways

Reckon I'll go for the bravia. The sets native resolution is 720p anyway so 1080i would only decrease the picture quality.

 

[David Mackenzie]

Cheers for the help. When I called Sony for the specs on the KDL-S26A12U Bravia the guy on the other end made a whole point about how it wouldn't support 1080i.

Interesting, before the V-Series was released I called Sony and they told me it would in fact support 1080p

The guy probably means that the TV won't resolve a full 1080 lines because of the panel (like almost all LCDs).