Lg Lcd Tv 42lc2r And Why Buy An Lcd Tv?

[Jingthing]

Thinking about buying an LCD tv but still not sure if its worth the money. I would use it mainly for watching regular broadcast tv through cable and also watching DVDs of various qualities. Would the picture quality for regular broadcast tv be better with an LCD tv vs. a standard tv, or even worse?

Also, the LG LCD TV 42LC2R appears to be a popular model in Asia, and decently priced. Any comments on this model?

[solo siam]

Personally for UBC and DVD sources I would recommend a plasma rather than an LCD, if thats what you will be watching throughout the Tv's lifetime. The higher resolution of LCD TV's (and some plasmas) doesn't help with teh UBC image and often makes it worse.

The resolution you should look for is 854x480 or similar.

[Phil Conners]

LCD has higher resolution and lower power consumption (=less heat) than Plasma screens. They also less susceptible to burn-in. You can often use a LCD screen with your PC with good result.

Plasma screens have higher contrast than LCD and are considerable cheaper for similar range TV's.

Try getting a size that fit's your viewing distance. A 100" screen at 2 meters distance is actually too big for comfort. Check out this site for calculating the optimal screen size for a given viewing distance: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-7608_7-1016109-2.html

[nikster]

Thinking about buying an LCD tv but still not sure if its worth the money. I would use it mainly for watching regular broadcast tv through cable and also watching DVDs of various qualities. Would the picture quality for regular broadcast tv be better with an LCD tv vs. a standard tv, or even worse?

Also, the LG LCD TV 42LC2R appears to be a popular model in Asia, and decently priced. Any comments on this model?

i am also contemplating an LCD TV as the price/value is getting better and better.

for broadcasts, the quality will be bad - best you can hope for is equal to a normal TV, but it will probably stick out more since DVDs look a lot better.

proper DVDs will look a lot better than standard TV, and it's wide-screen too. this is the time you will find out which DVDs you have are real DVD9 (dual layer) and which are DVD 5 (single layer) and/or ripped off in a cinema with a handycam. I watch DVDs mainly on the computer and the difference it pretty drastic. DVD9 can be pretty good quality.

I don't buy LG anymore - they always seem to the price leader - in whatever category - but at the expense of quality and i want to have my TV for a while.

I would also recommend not to buy plasma unless you want it to double as a small room heater - it's a dead technology IMHO. new LCD TVs have contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1 so the contrast advantage plasmas still seem to enjoy will be gone. they get very hot and have burn-in problems too.

the LCD TVs I saw yesterday were still with contrast ratio around 6000 or 7000 : 1 but I found the picture much better than the plama screens sitting next to them. definitely buy them in the mall where you can see the picture, the quality difference between different models and brands is huge. and you don't neccessarily pay a lot more for a way better picture. I liked Samsung and Sony the best in terms of quality. LG looked good too but I have too many bad experiences with this brand to trust it with 40K Baht+

1366x something is the standard resolution these days, and there's more and more true HD screens with 1920x1080. However, true HD will only be interesting once HD content is available, HD DVD and Blue Ray and it seems like that will still take a few years.

[Jookster]

Personally for UBC and DVD sources I would recommend a plasma rather than an LCD, if thats what you will be watching throughout the Tv's lifetime. The higher resolution of LCD TV's (and some plasmas) doesn't help with teh UBC image and often makes it worse.

The resolution you should look for is 854x480 or similar.

Ben are you suggesting that its better to buy a low res Plasma for SD viewing, instead of a HD plasma which would then have to upscale more?

Cheers

[solo siam]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Another things would be to never make a purchase on what you see in the store, Some of the TV's are fed non-compressed High Definition streaming from a Hard Drive for a fantastic picture whilst others are not, also they don't set them up very well - Best to do some research of the net before making a purchase.

[Jingthing]

Thinking about this some more, I am really leaning towards a high res LCD tv because mostly what I watch on broadcast is news shows so who really cares how wonderful those pictures are, and what I really want a flat screen widescreen tv for is for higher quality DVD movies. So, to maximize that, it seems LCD is the way to go.

Edited March 7, 2007 by Jingthing

[solo siam]

The high res won't make your DVD movies look better, they look better on plasma (SD).

[Jingthing]

The high res won't make your DVD movies look better, they look better on plasma (SD).

Well, you made me think about that some more.

Do others agree with that?

[solo siam]

If it was me I would get a 42" plasma (840x480) at under 50k baht, and upgrade to a HD TV later when HD DVD's and HD Broadcasts are more common.

[Jookster]

What SD plasma would you suggest Ben? I think Thailand mainly SD - LG,Samsung and Panasonic models amongst some other 'non' brands.

Cheers

[george]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

[Jookster]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

Svideo will always be better than composite, by some margin. However what I would like to ask is the difference between Svideo and and Svideo 'upconverted' to component. What does that even mean exactly?

[Firefoxx]

UBC sat and digital cable boxes have s-video. S-video *can* be better than composite. It depends on the quality of the comb filter in your TV. Composite=color+light info mixed and sent on the same cable, and separated by the comb filter. S-video (separate video)= color and light info sent on separate cables, so no comb filter needed. Some TVs have lousy comb filters, others have extremely good ones making the two indistinguishable. Upconversion is when a lower quality video is processed through some DSP into higher quality video. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't.

LCDs, even though they've come a long way are still not comparable to plasmas in the contrast and color department. Yes, there are the million to one contrast LCDs, but those are prototypes (they use area lit LEDs to achieve that) and I have no doubt they will cost a pretty penny when they start becoming available. Plasmas are more comparable to CRTs, but of course they do have their bad points, mainly the resolution and burn-in, not to mention the life of the screen itself (it's based on tech similar to a fluorescent bulb).

Really depends on a lot of things. Do you want future proofing? HD-DVD and blu-ray are here, although not widespread, but with the available copying of the content, you can expect it to be widespread soon enough (look at how DVD turned out). Do you want to be stuck with a TV that can't do the picture justice? How much are you willing to pay? Is this going to be a short-term TV? Etc. etc.

Personally, I got a Benq, for MUCH MUCH less than a Sony, yet the specs were much better (think about it, I got 1920x1080 resolution when Sony didn't even have a model that supported that... and I got it for less than what Sony's selling them for now, more than a year later). It's still working well. I really don't like the idea of blindly praising OR condemning a brand, because the BRAND is not equal to the PRODUCTS. There have been many examples of leading brands producing lousy products, and the other way around. Sony does *usually* make good products, but I personally feel that they're way overpriced for what they do. Yes, I do own some Sony products, but I don't make my decisions based on the brand. My friend owns a few Sony notebooks, and although he likes the style, the actual *function* leaves a lot to be desired.

Edited March 7, 2007 by Firefoxx

[george]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

Svideo will always be better than composite, by some margin. However what I would like to ask is the difference between Svideo and and Svideo 'upconverted' to component. What does that even mean exactly?

My TV has three ports, HDMI, S-Video and Component. Which one gives me best picture with UBC?

[Jookster]

UBC sat and digital cable boxes have s-video. S-video *can* be better than composite. It depends on the quality of the comb filter in your TV. Composite=color+light info mixed and sent on the same cable, and separated by the comb filter. S-video (separate video)= color and light info sent on separate cables, so no comb filter needed. Some TVs have lousy comb filters, others have extremely good ones making the two indistinguishable. Upconversion is when a lower quality video is processed through some DSP into higher quality video. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't.

LCDs, even though they've come a long way are still not comparable to plasmas in the contrast and color department. Yes, there are the million to one contrast LCDs, but those are prototypes (they use area lit LEDs to achieve that) and I have no doubt they will cost a pretty penny when they start becoming available. Plasmas are more comparable to CRTs, but of course they do have their bad points, mainly the resolution and burn-in, not to mention the life of the screen itself (it's based on tech similar to a fluorescent bulb).

Really depends on a lot of things. Do you want future proofing? HD-DVD and blu-ray are here, although not widespread, but with the available copying of the content, you can expect it to be widespread soon enough (look at how DVD turned out). Do you want to be stuck with a TV that can't do the picture justice? How much are you willing to pay? Is this going to be a short-term TV? Etc. etc.

Personally, I got a Benq, for MUCH MUCH less than a Sony, yet the specs were much better (think about it, I got 1920x1080 resolution when Sony didn't even have a model that supported that... and I got it for less than what Sony's selling them for now, more than a year later). It's still working well. I really don't like the idea of blindly praising OR condemning a brand, because the BRAND is not equal to the PRODUCTS. There have been many examples of leading brands producing lousy products, and the other way around. Sony does *usually* make good products, but I personally feel that they're way overpriced for what they do. Yes, I do own some Sony products, but I don't make my decisions based on the brand. My friend owns a few Sony notebooks, and although he likes the style, the actual *function* leaves a lot to be desired.

What do you mean by processed into higher quality video? Exactly!?

Cheers

[solo siam]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

Yes the picture will be noticably sharper and the whites will not bleed.

[Tywais]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

Yes the picture will be noticably sharper and the whites will not bleed.

Are the up-converters available as a separate component addon?

I have a 42" Panasonic plasma TV for going on 18 month now and am very happy with the picture quality. However it has one feature that makes for really good quality images and it has a native mode VGA input to it. So I have a media center PC dedicated to the TV and the video playback colors, resolution are excellent.

[Jookster]

Yes that is my experience, the best UBC picture I have seen yet has been through my SD Projector 840x480 via S-Video upconverted to component.

HDTV's seem to struggle with making UBC presentable.

Are you saying that using a S-video cable between the UBC consumer box and the TV will result in much better picture?

Does the newer UBC consumer boxes have S-Video?

Yes the picture will be noticably sharper and the whites will not bleed.

Are the up-converters available as a separate component addon?

I have a 42" Panasonic plasma TV for going on 18 month now and am very happy with the picture quality. However it has one feature that makes for really good quality images and it has a native mode VGA input to it. So I have a media center PC dedicated to the TV and the video playback colors, resolution are excellent.

So what model tv is it?

Cheers