Best Lcd Tv For Ubc/true Vision

[vegas]

We are buying a new LCD TV for our house and I was planning to buy the 100 HTZ JVC 42" TV as the sales person at Central said it will give the best reception/clarity for UBC.

However, several other people at Central/The Mall/Emporium say that Philips has the best pic for UBC. They did plug in Thai TV for a comparison (not UBC) and the picture did look better on Philips. Any experts out there with any thoughts? We will use it for DVDs etc but not very often.

Cheer

Merry Xmas

[nidge]

I'm sorry but i fail to see the relevance of whether you are going to be watching DVD's, VCD's, UBC or a Camcorder. TV's are not selective.

I have just bought a Samsung LCD Tv from Tesco Lotus and it's lovely. There is an new model so the older model, (the one i bought), is now cheaper.

[rgs2001uk]

vegas,

suggest you take a look in the internet/computer/technology forum.

this has been discussed in detail by people far more technically minded than me.

its on page 3 of the said forum, look for lcdtv/plasmatv.

nidge you are of course correct, the problems with larger screen tvs with a higher technical spec is they show up and magnify the faults of ubc, crap signal in poor picture out.

mods maybe you might want to move this to the relevant forum.

cheers.

[vegas]

Nidge, the relevance is that some models claim to pipck up a TV tuner better than other models i.e. UBD capisci? 100 htz is supposed by have a clearer picture than 50htz.

rgs I actually did a quick search but couldn't find the thread you referred to, but now I have cheers.

[dekka007]

Any large LCD/Plasma makes UBC look like about the same quality of a VCD perhaps less. No Component out from UBC box / HDMI so best output is Svideo. Secondly they broadcast at such a low quality anyway so even if it did have those outputs wouldn't make any difference.

How I miss Sky from the UK (Never thought I would say that)

[nikster]

I thought UBC would be crap on my new-ish Samsung LCD TV. But when I hooked it up it looked just fine.

I think the whole debate goes back to an earlier time when LCD TVs had some issues displaying low resolution analog content - I remember seeing some fairly bad digital artifacting in some. Horrible pixelation. At that time, plasma was better because lower resolution and blurrier pixels.

But I think this has been resolved in the new generation LCD TVs - my Samsung 32" 720p picture looks just like a larger ordinary CRT TV, that is, as good as it can be given the UBC signal.

I set it to wide-zoom which looks the best. There's also 4:3 with black bars on the side, Zoom where the top and bottom of the UBC signal are missing, and 16:9 where everything gets stretched sideways. I think wide-zoom is some sort of compromise that just in the end makes for the best picture with a 4:3 TV signal on a 16:9 screen.

Word of advice: Look at the picture quality with a high end source (at least DVD component) and judge the TV on that basis. There still are major differences in image quality between different brands and models. Back when I bought the Samsung, its picture looked way better than any other set except high end Sonys that cost 2x as much and one LG model. All the others looked far worse. This was 6 months ago so the situation might have changed - but that's what I would look out for.

Edited December 24, 2007 by nikster

[dsys]

I agree with previous poster - if your not watching loads of good quality DVD's then you dont need a full HDTV in thailand. I use a sony bravia D series, quite cheap and does the business. UBC looks OK on it.

[Firefoxx]

Actually, what LCD TV you buy does affect the quality of what you see. Each is made differently and most importantly has different internal processing. One may have superior component input, another may have superior TV input. I can say that the quality of my UBC signal is way better on my Benq LCD TV than on my friend's Sony Bravia LCD TV, even though they're very close in size. The high end Philips TVs (the one with the fancy processing) are the best suited for many types of signals (unless you don't like the "look"), but they're also the most expensive.

If buying one LCD TV gives the same results as buying another, then we wouldn't really have any competition, and no reason for the more expensive models.

I don't really know if you should really put 1080i/p as insignificant. The content is not yet widely available in Thailand except for consoles and computers, but next year it certainly will be. UBC is supposedly planning it, and the availability of HD-DVD/blu-ray discs has increased significantly. Next year players should come down in price to a manageable level, too. Buying a TV without 1080i/p capability right now is being a bit shortsighted, and you will probably regret it.

[Upcountry]

You shouldn't buy a TV today (that you will keep for a few years) based on how well it handles this year's crappy UBC.

UBC may indeed improve their picture quality in the next year or so, and IPTV may be part of that - or an alternative to UBC.

If I was buying an LCD today, I'd either go for the most expensive and compatible I could afford (in terms of inputs and signal handling of all types*) or get the cheapest one and plan on replacing it in a couple of years. LCD technology is improving rapidly.

* I regret not doing this with my sound system and TV a few years ago. I have more inputs for both now than I expected.

[vegas]

So far Samsung is the brand name that keeps popping up re quality. The only problem is that they have about 20 different models.

[cm-happy]

Not to get too technical but with UBC Garbage signal in = garbage picture quality. I'm a Phillips fan and replaced ALL my Sony stuff with Phillips brand