currys comet hd

[carlymart]

i have been to my currys and comet at the local retail park
and both shop have hds set up running
in curry it was 4 LG screens running 1080i component from a hd player under the stand and it looked very good mind you the brightness and contrast were high but clarity and detail were great
at comet again running off a hd pc player through hdmi and a dvi splitter to about 15 screens but not as impresive as currys
if i did not know any better i would buy one from them

 

[Dave911]

So you obviously live in Darlo as I was there yesterday, I personally thought that the Comet display was better as the LG in currys looked poor particulary the plasma. Comets was good as it gave a broad range of plasmas and LCD's, however they had nothing bigger than a 42" which I thought was a shame. Currys however have a vast range of plasmas and quite a few 50" all showing there crappy in store video which does them no justice at all.
TBH currys could win it if they linked all of there tv's up to HD, but as yet they are still in the dark ages.
BTW saw the pio 436 in comet and was not that impressed - but it did look better then the samsung - then again anything does

 

[carlymart]

i am in newcastle and it was at the silverlink park
comet had more sets set up but i do think currys demo was better

 

[No-One]

The Currys setup in Stamford sounds identical to what you describe.

 

[ebony]

I wouldn't base any opinions on picture quality on what you see in store. It is not a realistic viewing environment because of lighting, seating, viewing and distance to TV. Also they would not have sat down and modified each and every tv to get the best out of it.

I've got the 435xde and unless you modify most of the settings the picture is garbage, but once done it is near on CRT quality.

I always go to a smaller independent reseller and use their facilities ( and yes I do buy other stuff from them - so I don't feel so guilty ) and if they will not price match once I have made my choice go to Currys. ( never comet as they sell reboxed second hand goods or manufacturer seconds ),

 

[carlymart]

I wouldn't base any opinions on picture quality on what you see in store. It is not a realistic viewing environment because of lighting, seating, viewing and distance to TV. Also they would not have sat down and modified each and every tv to get the best out of it.

I've got the 435xde and unless you modify most of the settings the picture is garbage, but once done it is near on CRT quality.

I always go to a smaller independent reseller and use their facilities ( and yes I do buy other stuff from them - so I don't feel so guilty ) and if they will not price match once I have made my choice go to Currys. ( never comet as they sell reboxed second hand goods or manufacturer seconds ),

i agree but to the avrage man in the street it does look good also i was in dixons in the metrocenter to day and again they have a lg running 1080I and i had a look at the setting and it was on dynamic just to look good and if i did not know better i wouldbe impressed dve is the min you need to get a good picture and isf to get the best

 

[ebony]

Honestly unless you seriously modify the settings on the 435xde you will get a garbage picture. Using any of the presets is a waste of time.

I'm not saying my settings will suit everyone, but my point is that you must be able to sit down, modify the settings for a good hour, in a comfortable viewing environment before you can make any opinion.

I would say the 435xde is rubbish out of the box; but with modifictaion to settings I am completely happy.

 

[Steve D Green]

I just got back from Comet in Croydon which had a similar setup, showing clips from Sky HD using HDMI.

One thing I noticed, there was bad deinterlacing on some of the footage, (presumably this is a mixture of 720p and 1080i source)

All the sets were affected, so it looked like a problem at source, has anyone else seen this, and is the cause just a bad installation or can 1080i cause problems on panels that are lower than that res?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[richard plumb]

steve

the footage is a mixed bag to be honest. There is some that isn't very smooth, some with obvious artifacts, some is very noisy (eg battlestar galactica), and some with bad solarisation (the skydiver). But it is at source, as its replicated across all screens.

I don't think this is any indication of the quality of Sky HD, but it is a little concerning, as the footage should have no bandwidth limitations, being streamed straight from a nice simple PC.

 

[Steve D Green]

Hi,

thanks - I did notice some pretty severe mpeg blocking on some clips, I can only guess that maybe the original clip was lower bitrate. I guess that the clips have a different mixture of frame-rates resulting in frames skipping.

Maybe they just resized the interlaced footage to 720p without doing a good job of deinterlacing it.

Like you say it is a bit of a concern, considering they are going to be at the forefront of HD in the UK.

Cheers

Steve