I dunno why Samsung is getting the grilling all of a sudden, when they are orders of magnitude more reliable than the junk that comes out of Philips and Thomson these days. Or, for that matter, the garbage produced by Vestel and badged under 301 different manufacturers' names.
In my experience, Bush TVs are not to be touched either. The last one I used (albeit a 22" CRT) started strangely phasing from only showing red, green and blue parts of the picture after a few months. The replacement is holding out... so far...
I dunno why Samsung is getting the grilling all of a sudden, when they are orders of magnitude more reliable than the junk that comes out of Philips and Thomson these days. Or, for that matter, the garbage produced by Vestel and badged under 301 different manufacturers' names.
agreed, my HD picture is superb, sound is good and the menus, well they give me access to the different settings, other than that I don't use them!
I only mentioned the quality of the SD picture because it was something that I had not considered when I bought mine, friends say that the SD picture quality is good when watching Sky Sports and SD DVDs via the Xbox is amazing, it just that
I
notice the difference.
Edit: does help if I press quote rather than just reply!
I dunno why Samsung is getting the grilling all of a sudden, when they are orders of magnitude more reliable than the junk that comes out of Philips and Thomson these days. Or, for that matter, the garbage produced by Vestel and badged under 301 different manufacturers' names.
Interesting point. I was originally going to go for a Samsung when I went LCD in 2006, but when told that they were "out of stock" (as Comet frustratingly are wheneven I shop there) I opted for a Philips.
Less than a year in I have a "ring" screen burn on the left-hand side of the screen and permanent 4:3-in-a-16:9 frame imprints (even though nearly all my viewing is 16:9).
Um, don't buy Sony (and by extension Samsung as both use the same components) as their track record for component longevity is pretty crappy and MTBF is creepily short.
> As you can imagine, it went straight back and I got a Sony instead. I haven't had any trouble from it yet....touch wood!
... which shares most of its components with the Samsung.
They share the same panels, but not the same processing AIUI - and ISTR that even the panel drive electronics are different. They may use the same DSPs for video processing, but not the same algorithms AIUI.
One thing to absolutely confirm if you buy a 100Hz display is whether any extra "Motion Flow" or similar frame interpolation can be switched off.
Many 100Hz sets will attempt to convert 25p video and 25fps film to something closer to 50Hz motion, but make lots of mistakes in doing so. It ends up making movies look like they were shot on video - and when things get busy the guesstimation goes very very wrong.
The Sony D series sets can have some of this turned off - some other manufacturers apparently don't let you... (I couldn't see how to disable it on a Panasonic I was looking at)
If HD-DVD/BluRay movies are something that is important to you then I can't stress enough how much better a display that will accept a 1080/24p signal AND display it at 48/72/96/120Hz is. I believe the Sony 24p True Cinema feature on D3000 series, and the new W3000? supports this - I queried Sony's abysmal website description of this process (they implied it REMOVED PAL speed-up) and got a very decent phone call from one of their development engineers who confirmed it displayed 24p material properly.
Almost all HD-DVD/BluRay discs contain a 24p signal (not a 50i one as DVDs and UK broadcast TV uses) - this means that the "PAL speedup" has gone, but also that if you use a normal 720/60p, 1080/60i or 1080/60p (no 50Hz options are available for the main HD content) you suffer from the terrible 3:2 pulldown that US TV has used for years. Once you see the 3:2 judder it becomes VERY annoying - even the UNIVERSAL logo animation shows it up horrendously.
Um, don't buy Sony (and by extension Samsung as both use the same components) as their track record for component longevity is pretty crappy and MTBF is creepily short.
Isn't it Samsung rather than Sony making the panels though? Not sure you can reverse the "Sony have poor components and thus Samsung are rubbish as well" argument when effectively Sony bought into the Samsung operation when their PALC research fell to bits and they were left with no in-house flat panel technology?
AIUI Samsung and Sony have a joint venture LCD panel plant (effectively Sony joined Samsung on this) but they don't share a huge amount else in TV terms.
Yeah I did rather mess up that post -- serves me right for reciting from memory something I haven't even looked at in a couple of years
Hmm... How much HD material do you watch on a daily basis - and how much of it is 720p, how much 1080i and how much 1080p? What is your viewing distance and screen height?
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I do rather take issue with the 720p vs 1080i being noticeably different though.
They are very noticably different on my TV at home. Very easy to see PS3 games that render at 1080 and the few that render at 720. 720 is noticably softer.
Equally I have some 720/50p SVT HD off-air recordings and lots of BBC HD 1080/50i recordings. The BBC stuff is noticably sharper - some of them are from the same source so allow a valid comparison. Equally when BBC HD switched to 720p for a short period that too was noticably softer. (Yes those were cross conversion from 1080i but the cross conversions were well done, and for some periods the bit rate was also reduced)
I've also experimented with feeding the display 720p, 1080i and 1080p - and 720p was noticably worse - this was from a 1080p source (HD-DVD and BluRay).
I also have the panel in 1:1 pixel mapping for 1080i/p sources which removes any overscan-simulation (few people realise that unless you do this a 1080i signal displayed on a 1920x1080 panel is usually cropped and scaled by around 5% or so to simulate overscan - introducing horrible scaling artefacts)
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Yes, on a very high end screen you may notice the difference, but on a typical consumer-grade TV there are other factors which matter far more than resolution. To get a TV that can differentiate well you need to spend rather more than £600.
Yes - a decent Full 1080 panel will be more than £600, but increasingly not hugely more. Any current 40" LCD on sale at £600 is going to be a lower end model anyway so you are correct about other issues mattering more.
However I think it is fair to describe a number of the current 37 - 40" Full 1080 displays - most of which are around the £800-1200 mark as "Consumer TVs" - they aren't that high-end. The Sony W series Bravias are certainly nearer mid-range than high-end.
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I apologise for the confusion over US TV -- I knew that some broadcasters were 720p, but didn't realise that others were 1080i.
Yep - though the point is that most drama and comedy is not produced in 1080i or 720p - it is produced in 1080/24p these days irrespective of the network broadcast format... 1080/24p has effectively become (along - sort of - with 1080/25p) a defacto industry universal HD standard for these genres of programming - and some documentary production.
1080/24p can be converted to 480/60i, 1080/60i and 720/60p using 3:2, and sped up to 1080/25p for 50Hz territories using 576/50i, 1080/50i and 720/50p for broadcast, with no standards conversion required and no quality issues... If they used 720/60p or 1080/60i they'd need to use interpolating converters for 50Hz which have quality issues)
1080/24p is also the native format used on most HD-DVD and BluRay releases as well, and with an HDMI connection even modest players like the PS3, the Toshiba E30 etc. can output 1080p.
720/60p and 1080/60i native production is really the domain of live and as-live production - news, entertainment, sport and some soap.
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Point being though that 1080i is still nothing to 1080p, and buying a 1080p TV (with at least 1920x1080 resolution) simply to watch Sky Sports is something of a waste of money IMO.
I disagree - Sky Sports is a poor example to chose, as their live HD sports is most likely to exploit the full resolution of 1080i as it won't have been massively compressed on servers and VTRs.
Sky Sports is noticably cleaner and sharper on a 1920x1080 panel than a 1366x768 one of the same screen size at close viewing distances.
(Sky One HD is probably a better choice - though Sky will use HDCam SR where possible which is a full 4:2:2 1920x1080 format - unlike HDCam which is 3:1:1 1440x1080)
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At the end of the day though it's up to the buyer to decide. My advice would still be to buy the best 720p-capable screen (with a resolution around or slightly more than 720 pixels high) than go for the latest technology and skimp on quality, unless you can afford to spend £1500. The ongoing reliability questions regarding panel-based TVs are still a major concern IMO.
I agree about reliability - and I would never buy a TV without a 5 year guarantee (Either buy at John Lewis - with a price match if need be - or wait for a decent special offer at other dealers where they chuck a decent guarantee in)
If I were spending £600 on a display I'd probably be looking at 32" (where 1920x1080 isn't really feasible on a TV yet) or possibly 37" panels - not stretching to 40".
However if BluRay/HD-DVD and UK HD broadcasts are your main viewing AND you are going for a large panel to replace a smaller display and watching at the same distance (i.e. your viewing distance/screen height ratio is reduced) then resolution IS important. If you are an XBox 360 gamer then a 720p display will suit you fine - as most 360 games render at 720p internally. If you are a PS3 gamer then many PS3 games render at 1080 - and the resolution increase is noticable on a 1080 panel.
A LOT of research about 1080 vs 720 resolution implies a fixed viewing distance/screen height ratio - but a lot of people are replacing 28-32" CRTs with 37-50" flat panel displays in the same location and thus are much more likely to see resolution differences)
> They share the same panels, but not the same processing AIUI
Yes, but I was looking at things from a reliability perspective -- Samsung/Sony are one of the better performers in this regard, despite some individual experiences.
It's usually either the panels or PSUs that cause trouble on LCD/Plasmas, right? PSUs are a relatively easy thing to get right if you aren't cutting things back to the bone cost-wise, which only really leaves the panel.
If you want to criticise one major, it is LG-Philips -- which is a pity as I used to rate both companies.
If you want to criticise one major, it is LG-Philips -- which is a pity as I used to rate both companies.
Yes - very sad. In the days of 50Hz CRTs Philips made some of the best TVs. However it was pretty much downhill from when they embraced 100Hz processing (the early versions of which were truly awful - and even the later versions were only borderline watchable)
I haven't seen a Philips TV I could watch for well over 10 years.
Isn't it Samsung rather than Sony making the panels though? Not sure you can reverse the "Sony have poor components and thus Samsung are rubbish as well" argument when effectively Sony bought into the Samsung operation when their PALC research fell to bits and they were left with no in-house flat panel technology?
AIUI Samsung and Sony have a joint venture LCD panel plant (effectively Sony joined Samsung on this) but they don't share a huge amount else in TV terms.
Yeah, wasn't doing my research fully again and assumed a "curse of Sony" logic. I know Samsung isn't the weak link but Sony, I'd like to say that most of their stuff lasts a good while but it's been some time a consumer product of theirs hasn't developed a defect or just went tits up at some point on me. My trust in most of Sony isn't too dissimilar to how many feel for LG-Philips for LCD/Plasma panels but the major hole in my logic is that I haven't used a Sony panel for any length of time.
