Why bother going TFT HD?

dannyjo22 · 16 Feb 2006 at 09:02

I'm just curious as to why so many who try to get the next 1% performance from gfx cards and cpu's can put up with such poor pictures with a standard signal on tft's?

The reason i ask is my wife is bugging me to change our perfectly good 28 inch panny CRT Tv for a Tft in the 32-40 inch bracket. The TV will sit in the same place.

Now ive seen HD signals played through TV's and they are stunning but how are so many early adopters putting up with the poor standard signal. After all 90% of our tv watching or using is standard video, so why adopt and HD tft so early?

I just cannot bear the signal that you get watching Standard source, why pay £1200 or more for something that clearly doesnt beat my panny.

What am I missing, to me it's like launching the xbox 360 3 years before there are any games for it.

XD-3 · 16 Feb 2006 at 10:32

The standard signal is poor I must admit. I my self have a 40" Sammy I run sky though it down coax from the box downstairs and the picture isn’t great but its watchable and that isn’t really the LCD's fault its the fact that sky is compressed and not really designed for large screens.

The reason I got one tbh is the 360 which looks absolutely amazing with the HD cables and also for watching DVD's as I am a heavy anime fan and most of the DVD's are anamorphic widescreen 16:9 so look stunning.

It’s all really what you wont it for tbh. And also sky HD will be out soon and on the channels that are HD the picture will be picture perfect as they say

I see you have a 360 I guess you play through your CRT? I didn’t have the HD cables at first so I was also just using my mams CRT but I have just got the cables and the difference IMO is amazing the HDR looks better the light looks better no jages on menu's or games need I go on

Thanks
XD-3

Ugley_Matt · 16 Feb 2006 at 11:28

Your wife is telling you to upgrade your TV?

Where can i get one of these women that activly encourage the upgrading of equipment?
Getting things to pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor) is one of the hardest things in AV. "I can't see/hear the difference", "But eastenders looks fine on this TV"

Tesla · 16 Feb 2006 at 11:41

XD-3, why are you feeding the LCD vix coax?

I watched Bad Boys 2 round my friend house on Tuesday.

My company set up her equipment, 32" Samsung LCD. The film was playing from Telewest.

I must say that the image was incredible. I am usually on here bashing LCD and "biggin'-up" CRT for current use (as most things are SD at the moment). But this LCD had a much clearer picture than my 28" Panny CRT. Just a shame it had some blur issues.

I am sure that TV with great scalers will come along soon enough, failing that I am waiting until HD content is more readily available.

davetherave2 · 16 Feb 2006 at 13:52

I decided to upgrade to hd for one simple reason. My main tv was a 14" portable and I wanted something that will last a long time. I admit some programs on SD tv do look pap but when I watch the potential that is available via hd content on BBC's imp system and WMV HD content I think in a year or so's time will hit the big time. As with the advent of blu-ray and HD DVD I think this year and the start of the next will be an exciting time I think for home cinema enthusiasts. Possibly not as big a jump from vhs to dvd but still a massive improvement on what is available.

dannyjo22 · 16 Feb 2006 at 13:54

Ugley_Matt said:
Your wife is telling you to upgrade your TV?

Where can i get one of these women that activly encourage the upgrading of equipment?
Getting things to pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor) is one of the hardest things in AV. "I can't see/hear the difference", "But eastenders looks fine on this TV"

Yeah she wants a 40 inch Sammy, I want to keep the Crt or 32 inch max sammy. I watch about 2 hours of TV per week and thats all SD. She has sky plus which she records what seems like everything. I'm trying to tell her that until there is more HD content its not worth it.

So when HD sky comes out that will mean the sky plus boxes will need changing too?

XD 3 I play my 360 off the main tv, so there are clashes of interest shall we say

I play it upstairs on my dell 2405. Which isnt as good as a HD tv but its not bad. I know its a glimpse of how good the 360 picture would be on a HD TV but I dont see why people rushed out to buy when we dont havve the signal yet.

One of my mates rushed out and brought the new 32 inch panasonic XD500 or something like that. About £1700 worth. He only watches normal TV, has the 5 channels only and rarely watches a DVD. Doesnt play games. I really didnt see the point.

So when are the HD sky plus systems out?

pinkaardvark · 16 Feb 2006 at 14:08

I have a 40" milano 2 sammy and I think Sd is actually pretty good. I don't believe the scalar is the biggest issue with these, it's the crappy compression used by Sky digital. In fact some channels and broadcast look perfect and it tends to be some of the lesser channels like some of the discovery channels that seem to suffer. And if I pause live TV on my 32" crt samsung I can still see the blockiness and artifacts produced by the cack output from sky.

Valleyman · 16 Feb 2006 at 14:16

If you just watch SD tranmissions I can definatly see the issue with a HDTV. Quality looks worse than a CRT in a lot of cases.

Personally I watch a grand total of 0 hours entertainment TV a week, and maybe a couple of hours of news programs here and there, so quality isn't important to me over SD. Not to say I don't use my HDTV, but I watch DVDs most days. Films and TV series. I personally don't have the time, or flexibility to be able to watch a show at a set time, so tend to buy all tv series i'm interested in on DVD, and then sell them on quickly on ebay to recoup the costs (works out pretty cheap overall).

For me HDTV is PERFECT.

soundwave · 16 Feb 2006 at 14:45

You could have the best of both...

Have a new 28" or 32" CRT which is fine for SD boradcasts & also 1080i capable via component for upscaled DVD & possibly Sky HD (If the early boxes come with component connections as is currently rumoured) like I did when I bought my JVC HV32P37S and I cant fault it.

Excellent set all round...great picture with normal TV feeds, fantastic RGB quality, great sound (Although I feed mine to an AV amp so cant comment too much) & best of all it only cost £380 delivered which is far better than the £1500 I thought I was going to have to spend to get a good Plasma which will be wholly useless in a couple of years when we all move over to 1080p HD feeds anyway.

So I just chose to buy a CRT use it as a stop gap & then when the dust settles around HD & when there will be something other then flaming football to watch in HD & the LCD/Plasma price's stabalise at reasonable levels I'll make the proper jump over then.

Neil

Shimmyhill · 16 Feb 2006 at 15:49

Very few SD images look worse on my 42" Plasma than they did on my 32" CRT. Most look far better. HD on CRT is the pinacle and SD on crt tends to look very soft so it hides flaws. However text and menus on my plasma are so much sharper than on the crt - the softness hurts crt's here.

The Scaler in Cheap LCD's and the fact LCD's can not do blacks, have low contrast, smear + tear makes SD look worse than it should. Top end LCD's look very good, not Plasma good but far better than the cheaper LCD screens.

Add an external scaler to any HD screen (plasma, LCD, DLP) and it will make the SD look far better. Only a few stations are such low bandwidth that nothing can be done about them. Lost on C4 scaled to my screen was stunning - almost as good as the DVD boxset that i have.

Its generally down to cost - a 2.5k 42" plasma will look far better than a 1200 Lcd - but then you would expect it to for the price difference.