So I Just Got A New Tv...

[Komag]

My wife and I bought a new TV:

 

- 32" LCD

- "Olevia" brand (which I think is just the in-store Circuit City brand, but not sure)

- 720p (1366x768, why is that 720p???)

- 1600-to-1 contrast ratio

- 8ms resonse time (IIRC, not totally sure on that one)

- HDMI, Component, VGA, SVideo, Composite

 

It was on sale for just $600 (we had a tight budget), and since it's a cheaper brand I went ahead and bought the 3-year extended guarantee just to cover my butt.

 

I brought my laptop (with a male-to-male VGA cable) and my gamecube (with SVideo cable) into the store and just hooked them up to check out the picture, it's quite good! No one bothered my when I was hooking up the cables and stuff - I figure if they are serious about me buying a TV they'll let me test it out first.

 

With the laptop, I could only set the screen resolution to 1360x768, instead of hte TV's native 1366x768, so it had to morph the width to make up for those 6 little pixels. But then I discovered the "1-to-1" aspect ratio setting, which made it perfect. (When I used the "1-to-1" with the Gamecube I got a little screen in the middle of the screen, the little 640x480 signal I guess).

 

There are a few good screen settings: Widescreen (stretches anything to fit the whole screen), Aspect ratio (if the signal is 3/4, it will show it 3/4, not stretch wide), "1-to-1" (exact resolution of incoming signal, or if it's larger than the screen it will do Aspect), Panoramic (weirdly stretches only the sides of the picture, maybe useful for certain DVD setups?), and a couple of zoom settings.

 

I knew nothing about HDTVs before last week, and although I still don't know much, I know that it's important to have a lot of good screen settings. Some models we looked at only had two, Widescreen and Aspect ratio. Also, this one has decent sound, although I still hooked it up to my PC speakers because they are decent.

 

Now I just need to upgrade our cable subscription to get a bunch of HDTV channels, and then go out and get an Xbox 360, and I'll be all set! My wife said that watching the HD channels in the store was like seeing the people and things for real. She said she never realized how crappy and fake regular TV looks. If a woman says that sort of thing you know you're in luck, because she's about to give the green light for a big purchase, hehe!

[Unstoppable]

Sounds like a sweet deal. Definately wait for the price cut coming later this year on the Xbox 360. You rule dude!

[Komag]

Yeah, maybe they'll do a price cut in the fall for the shopping season

[SplaTtzZ]

Just a word of advice, though you propably already know, component is better for real high-def output, though at lower levels vga is basically the same. The two are both better than composite or s-video really. If you buy a 360 make sure you use component cables, it should come with them. I'm pretty happy with my 360, more so than the PS3 which i bought and then returned; theres no good games out for it yet, and in Aus you have to pay an extra 400 dollars over the price of the 360. It's such a ripoff.

 

Your 360 won't be able to play high-def dvds though unless you buy that add-on DVD player. So don't expect any DVD's played on your normal 360 to be better than any other DVD player around the place. If you want true high definition DVD's you'll need to get a Blu-ray DVD player from Sony or the Toshiba/Samsung HD-DVD players, which is what the 360 is working with. I've seen true high-definition at stores and it really does look amazing; like looking out a window or something. They're too expensive for me at the moment though.

Edited April 10, 2007 by SplaTtzZ

[Domarius]

That sounds awesome. There are so many little things you don't think about till you've bought it and tried different things, this thread is pretty informative.

[sparhawk]

If you are looking for HDTV, then check if this really works. Lately I read some news, that all these HDTV components are scams, because there essentially is no HDTV anywhere properly implemented. That's why people who bought HDTV harddiscs, drive, etcs, for use with Windows Vista are severly dissapointed. Also you have to be aware that HDTV means complete DRM. And with complete I realy mean COMPLETE. If one component of the HDTV chain is NOT HDTV, the whole chain is broken and should not work. This is part of the specification IMO. So if you payed a lot of bucks for your TV set, and your audio card or DVD player doesn't support it, then you will not be able to use it. Windows Vista already implements this IMO.

 

I'm not 100% sure on the details, because I didn't bother with that crap, but I read some articles about it, so better check it before you expect to much.

[OrbWeaver]

I think the problem is with older "HDTV" equipment that doesn't implement the copy protection, which means that people who have "HDTV" televisions buy a Blu-ray player and think they are watching HD content, but actually it is reduced to standard DVD quality.

 

New equipment should all support the copy protection so the HD content should be displayed, but you have to make sure you are using the correct connections, i.e. HDMI all the way, rather than any of the analog outputs which will only display standard definition video.

 

Not that I'm going to touch any of it anyway, DVD is perfectly good enough for me and I have no intention of re-purchasing all my DVDs in a "better" format which allows the content company to dictate which equipment I can and can't use.

[Maximius]

Fuck buying a new tv, im getting a digital projector and making my TV/Monitor anywhere I want.

[demagogue]

I found instructions for a homemade digital projector and was thinking about trying it just to see if I could do it: http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/13/sup...e_your_tv_for_/

 

It looked like a fun project, and could be fun for some types of movies/games without having to go full-out for an expensive projector when my regular tv is fine for most things.

[oDDity]

Now that's cool. A 6 ft wall projection for the price of your average CRT monitor.

[Maximius]

I found instructions for a homemade digital projector and was thinking about trying it just to see if I could do it: http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/13/sup...e_your_tv_for_/

 

It looked like a fun project, and could be fun for some types of movies/games without having to go full-out for an expensive projector when my regular tv is fine for most things.

 

 

If you can successfully build one, Ill buy it from you for good $$$. Keep us informed.

[oDDity]

You can build it yourself, all you need is an old CRT monitor and a projector.

[Komag]

I just went from a projector to the LCD. The projector was cool and all, being huge on the wall, and we had a quality screen and a pretty good setup, but it had drawbacks.

 

- You couldn't really see it well enough in a bright daytime room, even with the brightness turned up pretty high. I would almost always keep all the curtains closed and the lights all off and then it was good in the day.

- I couldn't get the video controls to do what I wanted enough. Something was odd about the brightness/contrast/gamma controls, such that whites were often washed out super-bright, whereas darks were way too dark at the same time! So I'd be playing Far Cry Instincts on Xbox and barely be able to see anything in the swamp level, and then be blinded by the sunlit sandy areas. It was often frustrating.

- It was only an 800x600 resolution, but that actually wasn't too bad because it scaled very well and actually created an extra layer of "antialiasing" effect for games.

 

I'm very glad with the change. The LCD is sooooo much sharper and better looking, it has tons of great features and controls, and even though it's much smaller, I'm over wanting a huge giantamungus "wall-of-video" I had with the projector.

[Hewer]

The plans call for an LCD monitor, not a CRT.

 

I have three friends who got together and tried to build one of these and didn't like the outcome. From what I saw of the plans, it wasn't nearly as good as the ones in demagogue's link, though- it didn't use the old fashioned overhead projector. Everything was from scratch.

 

They didn't like the picture quality- it was hard to focus and was blown out in the middle, then too dark in the corners, and the lamps were really expensive. Those things I think should be solved pretty well by using the projector as in the link.

 

The other things they didn't like about it was that it was big, ungainly and really bright. They couldn't just tuck it into a closet or something. Every time you'd want to watch a movie you'd have to have this big, hot, bright contraption in the middle of the room.

 

It sure seemed really cool for a while there, but in the end, I'm glad that I didn't join the experiment.