How do people choose a new TV?

2) motion rendition. They can't do it. It's juddery, artefacted,
blured, or all three. The best current TVs aren't a patch on a CRT in
this respect, and the worst are truly abysmal.


Actually, I don't buy that. The bottom line is there's only 25 frames / 50
fields per second whether you're talking about analogue or DTV. And you can
easily see jumping at that speed when the picture is panning, or contains
rapidly moving content.

It seems to be about screen size. You may be interested to know that all
the major CRT TV manufacturers introduced motion smoothing, frame
interpolation, 100Hz scanning, and so forth, as they moved towards bigger
screens. My old 36" Panny had all sorts of stuff to try to sort out the
limitations of 25 frames / 50 fields per second.

Also, I think the definition/focus makes a difference. CRTs almost always
soften the picture as they age (and most even from new) due to the
limitations of dynamic focussing, convergence, and so on. A blurry picture
with softer edges seems "kinder" on the eyes when panning.

Some people claim that CRT phosphor persistence helped smooth out a panning
picture, but I don't think any manufacturer relied on it - slow phosphors
lead to terrible smearing.

However, even though I strongly disagree that a 36" (say) CRT is any
smoother than a 36" LCD/plasma, there are definitely differences between
modern TVs.

They are all stuck with the same jumpy source material, so it's down to the
fancy processing algorithms they use. I shelled out £1100 for a 50" Panny
plasma last year, and deeply regret it because the motion smoothing is
hopeless (and the damn thing flickers in my peripheral vision).

I made the mistake of buying it based on consistently excellent reviews.
They all raved about the colour accuracy and the deep blacks. None
mentioned wide area flicker or disappointing motion smoothing. Now that
I've compared it with others in the shop, it is clearly and noticeably
worse.

In summary, the motion smoothness varies a lot between different TVs, and
you should take into account reviews AND your own experiences viewing them
in the shop.

SteveT

On 24/06/2011 15:49, wrote:

1) audio. The TVs are thin, and the built-in speakers are awful.
2) motion rendition. They can't do it.

Long post alert.

I'm particularly bothered by (2) and only just got rid of my CRT for a
42" Panasonic plasma a couple of weeks ago. The analogue switch-off,
requirement for HDMI support for various reasons, thought of being able
to use iPlayer directly on the TV set and a sudden sharp drop in price
were the deciding factors.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ync7yf

What follows below is just an opinion of the TV based on my own personal
requirements and expectations... Yours may differ, of course.

I'm quite sensitive to colour problems so LCD was out. Plasma has lots of
downsides, but the greater overall colour accuracy won me over.

I first saw the set on display in a local shop that I visit quite often.
Usually, I just marvel at the poor motion processing or colour accuracy
of the sets on offer. This time the motion processing caught my eye for
the right reason - it was doing a good job of it. The frame interpolation
can be completely disabled.

With SD signals, it's got that "flat panel" look. You know - it just
seems soft, bland and uninteresting compared to a CRT. Increasing the
sharpening setting just adds obvious ringing artefacts and contrast or
colour controls don't alleviate the issue. So it's OK, but it's not as
visually appealing as my CRT was (whether it's more accurate or not).

ACAICS it manages deinterlace very well - smooth SD sources remain
completely smooth with the frame interpolator disabled. I've noticed
occasional edge artefacts but nothing too serious for me, though this is
a very personal thing.

There's a confusingly named "Clear Cinema" option. This actually seems to
influence the deinterlacer. When switched on with interlaced material,
some combing artefacts start to show up. With it off, they don't. It
seems to lead to better overall performance for progressive sources
transmitted in an interlaced signal (e.g. 25p films via 576i50 or 1080i50).

HD looks good; that's kind of the whole point these days! iPlayer's HD
feeds, where available, are remarkably good and some of the Freeview HD
content - on the rare occasions when HD is broadcast, rather than just
upscaled SD! - are good too. The built-in media player is surprisingly
competent and high bitrate H.264 source files work well.

Overscan can be disabled. I've used a DVI to HDMI converter to send a
computer display to the set and it does a 1:1 pixel mapping of the
1920x1080 pixel source - no scaling or unexpected offsets.

It's a 2D set. Depressingly, the 3D stuff going out on the BBC HD preview
shows two images side by side in the encoded frame, so whatever the BBC
are doing it isn't compatible with 2D sets. Well, not this one anyway. I
did e-mail asking about this, but I didn't even get a
form or automated response.

So, overall, how did I choose it? By checking it carefully in the shop
(they leave the remote controls next to the TVs and let you fiddle with
them!), looking at reviews and considering the aspects most important to
me. If your sensitivity to motion problems is so severe that a set like
this still falls short of your expectations then don't waste your money!
Stick with a CRT or buy a cheapo HD set to tide you over until motion
processing technology has evolved sufficiently.

Criticisms: Usual issues with plasma time-domain dithering and occasional
banding; a bit thin on the ground for inputs, e.g. there's no VGA or DVI
input and only one SCART for legacy devices. Three HDMI inputs are
available though, along with 1 x composite and component. The whole
"Viera Cast" internet stuff looks good, but really, only iPlayer is all
that useful - there's no ITV, C4 or C5 catch-up service (yet?).

Overall I'm pretty happy with the set, though when I'm watching SD, I do
still miss my CRT a bit!

--
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
Find some electronic music at: Photos, wallpaper, software and mo
http://pond.org.uk/music.html http://pond.org.uk/

wrote in message
...
I know I'm picky(!), but all modern TVs seem to be really bad in two
respects...

1) audio. The TVs are thin, and the built-in speakers are awful.

True, but pipe out the Dobly by optical cable to an AV amp with decent
speakers and it is great. The only reason my big old CRT set had reasonable
sound was because it was big and had a passable woofer built in - still way
shy of an AV amp though.

2) motion rendition. They can't do it. It's juddery, artefacted,
blured, or all three. The best current TVs aren't a patch on a CRT in
this respect, and the worst are truly abysmal.

Some are poor - get it right though and it is fine. 1080i is better than
any analog set.


The other things that bugged me in the past seem to have improved
greatly - SD upconversion quality, colour rendition, black level,
viewing angle etc. Most of the new programmes I watch are available in
HD anyway. But the audio and motion issues remain.

SD channels vary in their bit rate. The best (like BBC 1) are similar to
good analog, but lower rate ones (e.g. ITV3+1) are worse.


What do other picky people do? How do you choose a decent TV these
days?

1. Select only fropm 1080p sets.
2. View them in the shop in full HD.
3. Use an AV amp and proper speakers for music, films etc..
4. Get one that can receive Freesat / Freeview HD and / or pay a $ky HD
subscription.

get a review mag if you haven't got time.


It's easy enough to check the audio - play music through the TV, and
cringe. Do people give up on the TV sound and connect external
speakers? Fair enough, but another remote control for an AV amp is
going to drive the rest of the people in the house mad.

It's harder to check motion rendition, as most shops carefully pick
content that doesn't show up this problem - the BBC HD Preview Loop's
A/V synch check is sometimes sufficient to reveal the problems: that
fast scrolling white bar at the bottom looks right on a CRT and
nothing else. How to resolve this?

What are you (ex)-BBC types, trained to spot problems at 50ft,
watching these days?

Cheers,
David.

wrote in message
...
I know I'm picky(!), but all modern TVs seem to be really bad in two
respects...

1) audio. The TVs are thin, and the built-in speakers are awful.
2) motion rendition. They can't do it. It's juddery, artefacted,
blured, or all three. The best current TVs aren't a patch on a CRT in
this respect, and the worst are truly abysmal.

The other things that bugged me in the past seem to have improved
greatly - SD upconversion quality, colour rendition, black level,
viewing angle etc. Most of the new programmes I watch are available in
HD anyway. But the audio and motion issues remain.

What do other picky people do? How do you choose a decent TV these
days?

For me, the biggest discriminatory between a good TV and a bad TV (or
between a good one that is set up well and a good one that has been buggered
about with by the shop) is the amount of detail in highlights. When my
parents were choosing a TV and I went with them to give them advice, there
was a cricket match being shown and the difference between some TVs and
others in the amount of detail on the cricketers' white jerseys and trousers
was quite an eye-opener.

For two TVs that seemed to give fairly similar white detail and colour
rendition, that happened to be next to each other, one showed a lot more
motion judder than the other. Now I wonder whether you can guess which was
the LCD and which was the plasma?

In message , Steve Thackery
writes:

2) motion rendition. They can't do it. It's juddery, artefacted,
blured, or all three. The best current TVs aren't a patch on a CRT in
this respect, and the worst are truly abysmal.


Actually, I don't buy that. The bottom line is there's only 25 frames
/ 50 fields per second whether you're talking about analogue or DTV.
And you can easily see jumping at that speed when the picture is
panning, or contains rapidly moving content.

Actually, _I_ feel the worst aspect of motion judder is in the source
material; I'm not sure what the reason is, though I think digital and
thus sharp-edged shuttering is in large part to blame, combined with
general improvement in sensitivity of cameras meaning that ultra-short
shutter speeds are possible (and maybe even obligatory to avoid overload
in many cases).

In short, motion blur seems to be a thing of the past: probably a good
thing in many situations, but where the subject is moving by a
significant proportion of the picture between fields/frames, I find a
string of discretely-perceptible images distracting. (Top Gear being for
me the worst offender, but I imagine it's deliberate in their case.)
[]
Also, I think the definition/focus makes a difference. CRTs almost
always soften the picture as they age (and most even from new) due to
the limitations of dynamic focussing, convergence, and so on. A blurry
picture with softer edges seems "kinder" on the eyes when panning.

Well, it _perhaps_ matches perception better - certainly the eyes don't
strobe.

Some people claim that CRT phosphor persistence helped smooth out a
panning picture, but I don't think any manufacturer relied on it - slow
phosphors lead to terrible smearing.

(Indeed.)

However, even though I strongly disagree that a 36" (say) CRT is any
smoother than a 36" LCD/plasma, there are definitely differences
between modern TVs.

They are all stuck with the same jumpy source material, so it's down to
the fancy processing algorithms they use. I shelled out £1100 for a
50" Panny plasma last year, and deeply regret it because the motion
smoothing is hopeless (and the damn thing flickers in my peripheral
vision).

(I guess that's Plasma for you: LCD backlights are steady. Presumably a
50" CRT - were it even possible [what _was_ the biggest single-tube
made?]! - would flicker in peripheral vision too.)
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... more doomed than a busload of ... enthusiasts on their way to a Private
Frazer convention on a bus whose brakes have just failed as it heads towards a
cliff. - Eddie Mair, Radio Times 20-26 November 2010

In message , Andrew Hodgkinson
writes:
[]
Overscan can be disabled. I've used a DVI to HDMI converter to send a
computer display to the set and it does a 1:1 pixel mapping of the
1920x1080 pixel source - no scaling or unexpected offsets.
[]
Assuming you mean the same by overscan as I do, I thought the advent of
the pixel display (whether LCD or plasma) had finally dispelled this
evil. Do people still set their LCD/plasmas to overscan? (I mean for
pictures of the correct aspect ratio - I know people set to overscan,
and/or distort, when viewing 4:3 material on a 16:9 set.)

IMNSHO, overscanning should have gone years ago - at least with the
advent of rectangular (FST, Trinitron, etc.) tubes, and I never
understood why it remained the default, at least by the proportion it
did (I could understand a _slight_ amount to allow for drift in the scan
circuits).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... more doomed than a busload of ... enthusiasts on their way to a Private
Frazer convention on a bus whose brakes have just failed as it heads towards a
cliff. - Eddie Mair, Radio Times 20-26 November 2010

wrote:
1) audio. The TVs are thin, and the built-in speakers are awful.
Connect the set to a decent stereo (see below).
Yes.

Well, yes, but another remote control? Another (or just a different)
source to switch?
You're going to tell me to get a programmable remote control to make
it all easy, aren't you?

I was surprised to find that the volume of the digital audio output from
my satellite box is controlled by the remote for the satellite box, so
there's no need to use a second remote for the hi-fi. It needs to be
turned on though.

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Assuming you mean the same by overscan as I do, I thought the advent of
the pixel display (whether LCD or plasma) had finally dispelled this
evil. Do people still set their LCD/plasmas to overscan?

No, I have my TV on "exact mode" 1920x1080, the only down side to this
is the occasional sight of a VITC scan line at the top of the picture,
or (even less frequently) a solid green scan line, or a scan line of
video poking out from behind a caption at the bottom of the picture.

Oh, and wishing F1TV would move their graphics far closer to the edge of
the 16:9 frame ...

In article , hwh
writes
Take a disc (Bluray/DVD) you know well to the shop and have the sales
guy play that on the sets you are interested in.

Heck no.

DVDs and Bluray are coded non-realtime, and heavily optimized. If the
action sequences don't look good, they're tweaked until they do.

Poor run-of-the-mill DTV shows up receivers (and separates the out) far
more than high quality stuff. The display itself is usually fine, but
the DVB section is the weak link.

If you go into, say John Lewis and ask for the sets to be switched to
DVB, you'll see much greater variation in quality than with DVD or HD.
We did that, and ended up with a 40" Toshiba LCD. It has the 'poor
blacks' issue common to that technology, but for its age (3-4 years), it
has a surprisingly good picture on DVB-T and splendid on HD (we still
have a matching HD-DVD player and quite a few disks - very nice image).

Sound-wise, the digital output goes into a remotely adjustable delay,
then a decent Dobly surround decoder (Cambridge), then a separate amp,
to stereo speakers. I can't be bothered with 5.1.

Getting the delay right, to re-sync drama especially, makes a big
difference.
--
SimonM

"Andrew Hodgkinson" wrote in message
...


Stick with a CRT or buy a cheapo HD set to tide you over until motion
processing technology has evolved sufficiently.


To be honest, I think you'll be waiting a helluva long time. Motion
processing technology goes back donkey's years to when we were buying 36"
CRT tellies.

It never worked that well to my eyes back then, and frankly my
almost-brand-new Panny is little better. Furthermore, the pin-sharp
resolution makes it even less agreeable.

Surely it can't be that hard to "fill in" three (say) intermediate frames,
to give 100 frames per second? Can it? I mean, it's even easier than MPEG
decoding, because you know in advance what the next "real" frame looks like.
Just a matter of "tweening", isn't it?

Of course, I realise it can't be that simple or they'd have done it by now.
Also, of course, they'll always shave the costs to a cent wherever they can.

Any comments on why we haven't got fluid-smooth motion by now?

SteveT