I've seen enough, SD on LCD is scandalous!

wow.. is that Samsung.
looks like HD quality

Tbh my Sony can not achieve that sharp and bright on SD.


_
 
What I have noticed is that SD images up close on a 1080p look almost HD quality, but when viewed from a distance can show a degree of pixelation.

A great looking pic non the less, but you can never judge how good a TV handles SD material based on a pic.
 
wow.. is that Samsung.
looks like HD quality

Tbh my Sony can not achieve that sharp and bright on SD.


_

That's the Sharp XD1E ..... but unfortunately many of them seem to suffer from banding, buzzing etc hence why I'm going for the Samsung M87.

Haven't seen too many SD photos from them yet though.
 
I wish everyone would stop all this about LCDs having to scale more cause they are a higher res!! It makes no difference, in fact if you are going to scale at all it is better to do it to as high a resolution as possible, the higher the res the easier it is to hide scaling artificts.

If what you say is true then why there are tons of cheap upscalling DVD players that can go up to 720p out there and only a few and much more expensive that can upscale to 1080p?
 
i used to have a wega 32 100 hrtz and loved it but it was'nt perfect, there were digital artifacts and some smearing and a light greenish patch in the top left corner.
worst of all was geometry, a very bendy picture all trinitron's have this.

i now have an s series bravia and yes lcd's have some drawbacks but in many ways its superior to the wega,better contrast and a more detailed sharper picture with better colours.

the wega was far more forgiving of low quality broadcast's and i would have prefered to have run it for another year or 2, but alas its dead.


No they do not! You must have had a dodgy one because my Sony Wega was a damn near perfect picture and still is to this day.

To the OP, yes there is a noticeable difference in SD picture quality between a CRT and an LCD, I wouldnt like to bring Plasmas into the favourable side of the arguement though because of all the Plasma sets Ive seen the picture quality has been actually worse than that of the LCD's Ive seen and owned.

My first impression when we got our first LCD (Samsung 32R73) was that the SD quality was crap, and bad enough to make me regret the purchase. But since taking it back to the store (I had the CMO panel) and swapping it for the 40" S-PVA version, and slightly adjusting the picture (took me all of 5 minutes) I think the picture now is far better than that of my Sony Wega. Last week we had the Virgin+ box installed and the picture quality now is absolutely spot on.

It all depends on what you want and what your use is, I think you've already made your mind up that you dont want an LCD judging by your posts (or could it be you cant afford one and are trying to convince yourself that LCD's are crap to soften the blow? ;) lets face it, if you have been to numerous stores and looked at, and I quote, "hundreds of LCD's" it makes you sound like a kid who wants something they cant afford. Sorry if thats not the case but your initial post makes you sound like a right tool and is hardly going to attract constructive replies in an LCD enthusiasts forum
 
No, I have no problem affording, it's spending on something that isn't going to do the job that it says it does, to a an acceptable degree.

Coming across as a tool is my speciality btw, I excel at that. My anger/annoyance at the situation was directed at the whole searching experience, the crappy standards that I am now led to believe I should accept, and the silly excuses for said standards that I've been fed all along which to anyone with even half a brain, are mainly nonsense.

I didn't realise people would be so protective of a perticular technology, like a fan club or something - I actually believed I might get some people agreeing! But like anything, I'm sure there will be people getting all uppity because I've hit a nail on the head and they don't like it and will go balls out to back their purchase up < let's not get into that one, I don't mean all of you.

The fact is I'm unsure about Plasma too now, green trails specifically - the rest hardly bother me. But I don't want my other half to put up with god-aweful pictures akin to what I have experienced (yes on lots of screens, that I have chosen to view to try and find an acceptable one, of which most I can afford thank-you-very-much. But I'll tell you something for nothing, I've seen some pretty expensive kit that I can afford, that I simply will not buy whilst they are showing Freeview pictures the way they do, or the way I have been shown them at least, I think the term is 'fit for purpose'.)

But once again I have to say it, it is annoying as hell to have to choose my brand new flat panel based on which bad things I am willing to accept most. To me this is a new thing, I've never known this sort of "you have to put up with X,Y,Z" with for example my home cinema amps or speakers, or DVD players even. And at the very mention to some people of "maybe the technology isn't settled yet" you get uproar, nerdish bashing and defensive behaviour, akin to what you would see between console owners.

My original post may have been harsh, and you may have taken it personally (dunno why, did you make 'em?), but when you're looking for a new TV to replace your bulky CRT and nothing in the technology you want (LCD believe it or not!) for months and you keep coming to dead ends and then you look at plasma in spite of what everybody has been telling you and every one of them looks a million times better than LCD with the internal tuner then you are likely to vent a little.

As a result of everything not being quite the way I want it I decided to downscale to a 37" for the living room and then when something else comes out maybe later this year/next year I have a set I can mounted on the bedroom wall and I won't have wasted too much cash on something I'm not entirely satisfied with.

What would you do? How can I get Freeview for my misses that is anything like plasma quality? Is it that I have to go for a 1080 set? Do 720 sets distort freeview?
 
The newer panels seem to be getting a lot more favourable reviews when it comes to SD, and I'm more than happy with the performance of my 32LXD70. There are channels that look bad I freely admit, and the one failing is that the old CRT managed to 'polish' or cover up the artifacts better than the LCD does - however for channels that output at a decent bitrate (I'm thinking BBC1, Channel 5) the LCD shines better than the (Sony) CRT ever did. Watching the premiere of Spiderman 2 over easter, I could have been persuaded it was in HD, it looked that nice.
Plus, my CRT can't do HD at all, and was a lot more difficult to spin round to avoid sunlight/reflections :D
If all you're ever going to do is watch SD, then don't bother, stick with your CRT - the fact is that these new LCD's and plasmas are designed to look their best with an HD signal. They can still look good with an SD signal, as I'm said I'm more than happy with mine, but effectively its a legacy technology that they're supporting.
 
How many people actually saw one of the 40" Sony CRT's??
They weren't actually that good, they also showed up nasties and looked a little blurry too from convergance issues, even the 36" crts were getting a bit big.

I would take one of the new LCDs over any crt of the same size.
 
Oh I'd agree, any CRT over 32" was too big to get away with SD and began to look poop, still this doesn't explain...oh let's not get into it.

They can still look good with an SD signal, as I'm said I'm more than happy with mine, but effectively its a legacy technology that they're supporting.

I know which is better, HD, and I know these screens just so happen to be perfect for HD - but would nobody agree that to commit SD Freeview Digital now to the 'legacy' pile, when the switch over to it is just about to happen and HD material is so thin on the ground and expensive for a handful of chanels is a bit annoying for anyone wanting to by a new bloody TV? Come on! lol

Any pointers toward a model showing decent Freeview - 37" LCD then?
 
How far exactly have you been standing away from these screens when "testing" ? I ask this because if you stand / sit too close to any LCD its going to look pixelated etc. Somebody on here posted another thread on recommended viewing distances based on size of panel.

Trust me, I think your over reacting with this. Yes an SD transmission looks worse than a good CRT but at the correct distance, and with a bit of tweaking (which is a pre-requisite of LCD's) your looking at a much more acurately reproduced picture, my only critisism now would be of the football on SD which still looks crap.
 
Perhaps legacy was the wrong word, but HD broadcasts are what these TV's were designed to handle primarily.
I also go along with Panasonic, in that LCD's are best for up to 32", with plasma for anything larger. I also think that trying to spread a 480p signal over anything bigger than 32" and expecting it to look crisp is asking for the moon on a stick :D
 
I would say on average about 5ft away.

The effects I have so far been seeing are thus:

An under-watery texture to the picture.
Washed out colours.
Very soft, out of focus, lack of any fine detail clarity.
Massive blocking, large area blocking obscuring fine detail (like hairs) that is present in Freeview, and seems not to be obscured on (the P word) sets.

I wonder why a 720p set could not do a sort of letterbox mode to show standard def!? Intresting thought, to pixel (or line) match with black border all around?
 
If you are going to be only 5ft away from your set then I would definitely forget any flat panel for now.
You need to be at least 6/7ft away, the difference between 5ft and 6ft is the difference between having a watchable set and an unwatchable one.

I think you would probably be quite impressed by some of these flat panels, either the plasmas or the latest LCDs. The people who say sd looks terrible, or these screens highlight the poor quality of SD have crap screens, simple as that.
I have had loads of people look at my set up and they have all been blown away with the images.

Get a good'un and they are very good, don't get a good'un and they are laughable!!
 
My home viewing is around 6ft to 7ft minimum, I thought you were referring to my auditioning in stores!

Tell me, as I am airing on the side of caution and prepared to comit a so-so screen to the bedroom if I can't stand it, I am trying to spend less and go for a 37" that the bedroom will accomodate if I don't like - hence i've been looking at the new, albeit 720p, R88 from Samsung - but demonstrations of the R87 have been, as you say, laughable.

Is this because the set is poor?
 
I would say on average about 5ft away.

The effects I have so far been seeing are thus:

An under-watery texture to the picture.
Washed out colours.
Very soft, out of focus, lack of any fine detail clarity.
Massive blocking, large area blocking obscuring fine detail (like hairs) that is present in Freeview, and seems not to be obscured on (the P word) sets.

I wonder why a 720p set could not do a sort of letterbox mode to show standard def!? Intresting thought, to pixel (or line) match with black border all around?

Could do, but it'd be a pretty small box on the screen (on a 1366*768 display it'd have circa 148 pixel border right and left and 96 pixel border top and bottom for a widescreen pic). The Sony DVD recorders play divX files like this and it is frustrating.

Interestingly, Sharp did do a range of "PAL optimised" SD LCDs for a while (p50, p55 and p70 series) up to a 37" size. They were very well regarded on this board for their SD performance and had a resolution of 940*540, exactly 1/4 of the pixels on a full 1080p display.
 
Intresting.

Oh just to clarify, I meant laughable in terms of what freeview I have been shown, not HD.

I love the look of these beasts. I'm thinking I might order one anyway and use my online ordering 7Day/28Day return rights if I'm not happy.
 
There is a solution here, dont buy one and stop bleating on about it.

I have a Sony KDL40W2000 and I watch my SD Stuff via my Virgin v+ box and it offers great pictures. Some stuff on BBC apart from the news looks excellent. Channel 5 looks almost HD quality. Some of the smaller channels look poorer, however SD football on sky sports looks great and is a big improvement on my old 28 inch JVC CRT.
 
and footy on skyHD is like being there - it's f'ing superb compared to my old tele.
 
There is a solution here, dont buy one and stop bleating on about it

Would it be ok with you if I didn't buy one but carried on bleating on about it anyway?

If you read on we've moved away from bleating on and now onto - is there a a good set or solution, as people have refuted my suggestion that they are all pap, I'm now all ears and open to which sets I might look at.

You know it's funny, I don't recall rattling your cage, yet - here you are!

Since you are here make yourself usefull - what's your internal freeview like in comparison to your V+ box?
 
Would it be ok with you if I didn't buy one but carried on bleating on about it anyway?

Actually that would probably be your best bet. Think about, you've looked at 'hundreds' of LCD's and hated the PQ and as they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, maybe you just will never find one you like. So why not stick to CRT where you can be certain of getting better PQ than LCD or Plasma?
 
Hold on everyone, I agree with what he says completely, in stores they do all look shocking, and it is only when you get it home that you see whether it is good or not, anyone whos set looks like it did in the store must be easily pleased, if mine looked like that I would cry.
 
A panasonic 42PHD8 commercial screen for everyday and main viewing and a Panasonic LXD60 for the conservatory, which I was going to upgrade to 37PX70 as I need something bigger, but may try a Samsung M86 after all the rave reviews. ;)


I took this yesterday to show someone how the colours look on mine, if your pc monitor is calibrated it is very accurate, if it isn't really no point in looking. :)
colour&
 

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