Reply to: Cost of LCD tv's

[jenever]

Hauppauge 500 PVr, Xen shuttle box and BeyondTV.

High maintenance, unreliable, hours of setup, lots of lovely features ... but since cars have become so impossible to maintain oneself, it fills a need .

[Mailman]

For my 2p - This time last year

About sums it up really...LAST YEAR!

This year you can get a 32incher for the same price and same, if not better, quality.

Mailman

[Ardesco]

Excuse me for being a little thick, but if HD means 1080 width and xxx down, what's the point of a HDTV with > 1080 width and xxx down?

1080 and 720 are the height, not the width. Width is 1920 and 1280.

[BoredBloke]

For my 2p - This time last year our trusty old 28in CRT died. I figured with the Jan sales that I would get a LCD telly. I went round a few places and most places were pushing the flat screen jobbies for all they were worth - placing them in the best lit sites in the shops to make the image look that bit betterShowing demos with very little action going on to reduce the shadowing. I admit this may have changed since, but at the time I was not prepared to pay £1000 for something which I was not 100% happy with. So I opted for the £300 32inch CRT telly and it has been fine.

The same goes for my 20in Phillips monitor - for a big screen crt it is not that bulky. The desk it sits on is an L shape with a curve instead of an angle. As a result there is a lot of space between the rounded edge of the desk and the corner of the room. The monitor seems to fit this space. A flat monitor would look odd there.

I will be upgrading both soonish as I admit that the flat screen tech has closed the gap a lot and the prices have dropped - but at this moment I don't see the need to dump the trusty kit just yet.

[VectraMan]

To get HD on Freeview, first replace every Freeview box in the country...

Exactly.

On the resolution front, how many LCDs really are 1920x1080? Lots say they support HD but when you look at the specs they're actually a lower resolution, so will be reducing the quality. On top of that, your SD picture is going to look worse because of having to be stretched to the native resolution of the monitor. So you can't even claim that you're not losing anything by going to LCD.

[VectraMan]

Excuse me for being a little thick, but if HD means 1080 width and xxx down, what's the point of a HDTV with > 1080 width and xxx down?

HD = 1280x720 or 1920x1080, although strictly speaking anything with a higher resolution than SD is HD.

[Mailman]

I'd grab a second hand CRT for £30 right now and hang on for the good stuff

What if a second hand LCD was the same price?

Mailman

[Shaggydabbydo]

Excuse me for being a little thick, but if HD means 1080 width and xxx down, what's the point of a HDTV with > 1080 width and xxx down?

[Ardesco]

So whaddiya gonna do if you are on the hunt for a new TV?

Go with last years technology OR get this years technology for the same price?

Mailman

I'd grab a second hand CRT for £30 right now and hang on for the good stuff

[Mailman]

So whaddiya gonna do if you are on the hunt for a new TV?

Go with last years technology OR get this years technology for the same price?

Mailman

[AlfredJPruffock]

I disagree. If you have a perfectly servicable CRT why buy now? Wait for HDTV to settle down and the 1080p TV's to come down in price. There is little point in me buying a swanky new plasma right now because I won't get any HDTV source to play on it.

Wait until they are broadcasting HDTV over freeview, or until sky/ntl/telewest/etc are broadcasting everything in true HDTV rather than one or two programs that are not an HDTV source being thrown accross the airwaves as HDTV.

As for the monitors, the only one I have seen so far that has made me want to get rid of my good old Iiyama 19" CRT is the new Benq 24" 1920 resolution LCD. The vast majority of LCD monitors have stupidly low resolutions maxing out at 1280*1024 with a 19" screen. I currently run my CRT at 1600*1200 and don't really want to drop the resolutions just so I can have a flat panel.

The stupid thing is that laptops have some very nice screens that can handle high resolutions, my laptop does 1920 * (whatever it is).

Anyway my advice would be wait for the content, and while you are waiting the technology will get better and prices will drop.

Very sensible advice.

I take the approach that there is no point in buying the latest new fangled toy on the grounds that next year it will be half the price - and by that time I find that I have completely lost interest in that damned thing in the first place.

[Shaggydabbydo]

and with Freeview aimed at the poor and/or ignorant

x-squeeze me?

Please explain that comment.

Regs, Shaggy

[Mailman]

Well then that means you have no vision

Mailman

[VectraMan]

I thought the BBC had a trial for HD over freeview recently???

I believe so. I wasn't saying it isn't technically possible, just that with limited bandwidth on DTT and with Freeview aimed at the poor and/or ignorant, I can't see it happening.

[Mailman]

BBC is going to be showing HD content and so are a couple of other players like NTL or what ever their name is?

Mailman