High End Tv

[PMK]

Hi,

This may be a bit O.T. but I do not see another forum for this kind of inquiry. I have been tasked with identifying and purchasing a high end TV set for a wealthy friend. The purchase will take place in a few months but I'd like to start researching now.

He'll mostly watch UBC and the occasional DVD. He does not want a projection TV. Unless there are very strong reasons not to he will go with a wall mounted LCD panel.

There will be resistance to anything but SONY brand but if you feel there is really a better product out there please do say so, but price is no object - none, so don't recommend something "just as good as SONY only cheaper". SONY has the Bravia and Wega series which are close in price except the Bravia has a 46" and Wega does not, according to the Sony web site. Any opinions on the difference between Bravia and Wega?

A good sound system unified with the TV would be great, but he is not a music freak and does not need the ultimate in sound. I think there will be two units. One for a large living area and one for the master bedroom.

Your thoughts and opinions on the best choice would be appreciated.

Peter

[bangbuathong]

if money is not object i would opt for the B&O beovision 4

[Firefoxx]

Very conflicting desires here. For one thing, the TVs that are considered *very* high end, with *very* high quality are the LCOS (liquid crytal on silicon) projection TVs (not talking about typical DLP projection TVs). For another, Sony's Bravia LCDs aren't very high-end... they're more in the middling range, and priced accordingly.

Sony doesn't sell very high-end TVs in Thailand, as far as I've seen. Their LCOS projection TVs are very popular in the US, and are fairly cheap as well.

As for using a big high-end TV to watch UBC... don't be surprised if you're underwhelmed. I have a 1920x1080 37" LCD TV, and it's used primarily to watch UBC. It's tolerable, but it seems that many people think that a big TV will enchance the UBC experience, and are usually very very disappointed. It's great for watching 1080i HDTV movies, tho. Oh, and people who've used Sony LCD TVs for UBC say the result is downright nasty.

[solo siam]

In Thailand the best bet at the moment is the Samsung 46" LCD TV, Sony's 46" isn't out here yet I don't think.

Samsung share their LCD technology with Sony, so the actual screens are identical and IMO the Samsung's styling is a lot better.

For watching UBC on it I would recommend putting the signal via an S-Video lead through to an Upconverting Home Cinema Amplifier like the Marantz SR5600 (Budget) or even a high-end amp, then out through the component leads or HDMI if the amp has switching for HDMI. Either that or use on of Crystalios or DVDO's products.

[PMK]

Hi,

Is that available in Thaland?

Peter

if money is not object i would opt for the B&O beovision 4

[thohts]

Sony? Are you serious? Sony has some of the lowest-quality displays I've seen. The only worse I've seen in big-name brands is LG.

The only good thing Sony has (or had) is marketing. I think their products are crap.

[PMK]

Ben and Firefoxx,

Thank you both. I am real glad I asked here (with one exception ). I just came back from Lotus and channel 3 looked not too bad on their 42" especially Samsung but I'd really like to know how much difference the boosters/amplifiers below would make. I know that is hard to quantify but can you give me some idea?

Peter

In Thailand the best bet at the moment is the Samsung 46" LCD TV, Sony's 46" isn't out here yet I don't think.

Samsung share their LCD technology with Sony, so the actual screens are identical and IMO the Samsung's styling is a lot better.

For watching UBC on it I would recommend putting the signal via an S-Video lead through to an Upconverting Home Cinema Amplifier like the Marantz SR5600 (Budget) or even a high-end amp, then out through the component leads or HDMI if the amp has switching for HDMI. Either that or use on of Crystalios or DVDO's products.

[LivinLOS]

If money is no object truly then a custom theater room built around Sonys qualia 4 1080p projector could be done for about 50k USD with the right sound system. Of course 3chip DLP at 1080p is only just coming online for consumer and not ecinema use but would run a couple of multiples of that price.

A Runco PlasmaWall PL61 Plasma can be got for under 20k USD (pre shipping and import duties of course) Personally I am usually underwhealmed at Runcos efforts which are rebranding and customization / tweaking but the buying experience is allegedly very smooth for the really rich.

A Much better set would be something like the LG MG71 which at 71 inch and 1920x1080 panel res is a impressive display. Its 70,000 USD price tag tends to put most buys off a little but for those whom money really doesnt matter its a nice 'tv' !!

You still sure money is no object ??

[PMK]

Maybe I should have added a "within reason" qualifier. Not that this guy could not afford it - he is just not that into TV.

Peter

If money is no object truly then a custom theater room built around Sonys qualia 4 1080p projector could be done for about 50k USD with the right sound system. Of course 3chip DLP at 1080p is only just coming online for consumer and not ecinema use but would run a couple of multiples of that price.

A Runco PlasmaWall PL61 Plasma can be got for under 20k USD (pre shipping and import duties of course) Personally I am usually underwhealmed at Runcos efforts which are rebranding and customization / tweaking but the buying experience is allegedly very smooth for the really rich.

A Much better set would be something like the LG MG71 which at 71 inch and 1920x1080 panel res is a impressive display. Its 70,000 USD price tag tends to put most buys off a little but for those whom money really doesnt matter its a nice 'tv' !!

You still sure money is no object ??

[LivinLOS]

I was involved slightly with home theater and actually know guys who go this far.. A Guy with a twin stack G90 CRT projection theater etc (40k in projectors).. Serious money pits but seriously nice if thats your thing.

At what price point is he comfortable ??

Is screen size an important driver / motivation ?? Would a sub 40 inch be unwanted at any quality and a 50 inch more desirable than a better 42 etc..

Whats his viewing habits ?? Is it just a TV or does he enjoy movies more ??

Does he have light control ?? Could projection be part of his choice ??

Personally I have 2 viewing habits.. Theres a boggo TV for the missus to watch Thai soaps and leave on all day and theres a projector for enjoying cinema or if the rugby is on etc.. I hardly watch 'TV' but hope to always keep a nice projector setup, so much easier on the eyes with a 120 inch screen. My housemate just put a very respectable projection setup in his area of the villa for 110k for everything including audio, less than a plasma and bigger and IMHO better.

I do think in Thailand the Bravia line is a good image with an easy to purchase and not too painful price point.. Then if the guy is just watching UBC and only wants a 'TV' he really doesnt care about image fidelity and theres sub 100k plasmas now that look ok.. We just gave a buddy a 42 inch Panasonic as a wedding present and it makes a good enough image for his family room and set us back 80k.

[solo siam]

Agree with LivinLos here especially if the purchaser is a Sony fanboy, get him the higher end 40" Bravia (the one with HDMI) and a nice HDMI DVD player from Denon or Marantz and he will be happy.

Not too sure what you mean by 'booster' but be aware that the image in the shop is normally a high definition image from a specialised computer running from hard disk, it won't look like that with standard DVD's so test it out first.

[PMK]

I shouldn't have used the term booster - I was referring to the amplifiers you mentioned before. I assumed their purpose would be to generate a better picture from an inferior input signal, in other words, improve the UBC viewing experience - or was I wrong? If not, then realizing it is hard to quantify can you give me an idea how much of an improvement it would result in? Barely noticeable? Very noticable?

Peter

Agree with LivinLos here especially if the purchaser is a Sony fanboy, get him the higher end 40" Bravia (the one with HDMI) and a nice HDMI DVD player from Denon or Marantz and he will be happy.

Not too sure what you mean by 'booster' but be aware that the image in the shop is normally a high definition image from a specialised computer running from hard disk, it won't look like that with standard DVD's so test it out first.

Edited June 28, 2006 by PMK

[LivinLOS]

Really garbage in, garbage out, is a pretty hard and fast rule.. Yes with some pretty high end gear or a PC you can do some things to clean the signal a little but usually its only a marginal improvement and only worth it in a pretty advanced setup.

However that said in the cheaper non name (soken etc) brand plasmas the scaler (the curcuits that scale the signal from PAL to the native panel resolution) can sometimes be pretty poor.. In that case feeding the panel a HiDef signal, or even better a native panel resolution, can improve the image.. Eg at least not letting the TV molest the 'garbage'.. To be honest I think that unless he is really image concious the scaler in a name brand TV should be enough for a 'normal' user..

The UBC feed is bad and IMO getting worse.. The ghosting / smearing on some channels is now so bad as to really effect my viewing, AXN is probably the worst but it seems to be spreading to others (the Thai ones are much sharper) and some of the stuff shown on AXN and Ch 18 they have done the NTSC / PAL conversions with the colors turned to 'cartoon'.. For a month or more Discovery had a greenish cast (gone recently) and when you channel surf the volumes are all over the place.. I honestly believe that even a keen amature like myself could dramatically improve UBC's broadcast quality just be tuning thier channels to a common standard and getting color balance and levels correct, this is such a basic level of professionalism that the fact they cant be bothered does wind me up.

Its not like UBC is cheap either really.. Astro is a far better package and at a little over 1/2 the price if your in Malaysia..

Roll on HiDef !!

Edited June 28, 2006 by LivinLOS

[Firefoxx]

My LCD TV has a Faroudja processor in it... and I really don't see how it makes UBC any more enjoyable. UBC's signal is very bad, and a big screen will just make it all the more obvious. It's *tolerable*, but don't expect miracles. People in the Thai AV forums say that Sony's video processing on their LCD TVs do weird things to the UBC signal.

If you're going to get an LCD TV now, you might as well get one that has 1080p resolution. Current Bravias only have slightly better than 720p resolution, which is typical of nearly all the LCD TVs sold in Thailand. It won't break the bank to get a high-res LCD TV now... but it just might be hard to find a *Sony* with that resolution.

I agree, UBC's volumes are all over the place. Output the feed to an AVR, and you've got a headache on your hands. Chaning the volume in UBC does nothing in this case... it only changes the phase (making Dolby processing act strange). The quality of video also is not consistant.

Edited June 28, 2006 by Firefoxx

[King Dong]

Sony? Are you serious? Sony has some of the lowest-quality displays I've seen. The only worse I've seen in big-name brands is LG.

The only good thing Sony has (or had) is marketing. I think their products are crap.

Sony Thailand is sh1t, 7 out of 7 Sony products I have brought here have all broken within the 1st 2 years, half of them within the first 2 months.

Im officially never buying another Sony product.

[Plus]

We are not going to buy a high end TV, but have been looking at about 40'' plazmas and LCDs, and they are all widescreen, of course. What does UBC look like on a widescreen TV?

I once asked a bunch of morons selling UBC subscriptions who had plazmas hung all around their shop to demonstrate. They told me the guy with a remote is on a lunch break and they can't change channels for me. When they found the remote they showed me widefaced HBO movie and thinly spread motorcyclists on motor GP circuit.

Nowhere on their website could I find techinical specifications of their broadcast signal, only that it's "laser disk" quality.

[The Coder]

Nowhere on their website could I find techinical specifications of their broadcast signal, only that it's "laser disk" quality.

To be blunt, the UBC signal is absolute crap. I find it distracting to watch TV with UBC because you get shimmering, pixelation, and things happening out of step. Football fields turn into green mushy swamps when the camera moves. You get a fuzzy garbage surrounding objects. Their compression algorithm is clearly not getting the job done. The remote control functionality for seeing what's coming up and so forth belongs in a museum; you can only see one thing ahead. And don't forget they imprint their stupid watermark that also has to mention "true" on every channel 24/7. Of course the thing dies every time it rains. Wide screen format? No chance. I can only think how ridiculous the picture would look on a really nice quality system.

[Firefoxx]

UBC with widescreen TVs is OK. You have choices.

1. Full screen. Expanded horizontally to fill the whole screen, so peole look a bit fat. You get used to it.

2. Letterbox. Expanded both vertically and horizontally, so picture aspect ratio is correct, but you lose some picture on the top and bottom. For certain channels, like Discovery, which have black bars on the top and bottom, it's nearly perfect. For others, you lose a lot of picture.

3. Anamorphic. The picture is stretched at the left and right portions, but the middle is not. So people in the middle look normal, but on the sides they look fat. Mildly disturbing.

4. 4:3. You get black bars on the sides. Annoying.

[solo siam]

My UBC picture is quite good, The wife even stated that it was pretty similar to DVD's.

I have yet to see any shimmering, artifacts or even MPEG compression on my current setup and frankly it amazes me why I haven't. I've not seen any Macroblocking either which I would expect to be able to pick out quite easily at 80".

UBC for me is thoroughly watchable, It's better on my Projector than it was on the 42" plasma, I can only put it down to one of a few things. Either the upconverting marantz is doing some wonderful things, the 480P projector is or I have a good box/signal somehow. I'm watching at 576i scaled to 480p so people are marginally fat but I'm used to that.

I'm wondering if the UBC box maybe does ad-hoc (down) processing of the signal depending on its strength.

[simcity]

We are not going to buy a high end TV, but have been looking at about 40'' plazmas and LCDs, and they are all widescreen, of course. What does UBC look like on a widescreen TV?

I once asked a bunch of morons selling UBC subscriptions who had plazmas hung all around their shop to demonstrate. They told me the guy with a remote is on a lunch break and they can't change channels for me. When they found the remote they showed me widefaced HBO movie and thinly spread motorcyclists on motor GP circuit.

Nowhere on their website could I find techinical specifications of their broadcast signal, only that it's "laser disk" quality.

I have a high end plasma samsung 42 inch PS42p4h, i have no problem with it ! cost under 300000 bahts few year ago ! i am sure now cheaper and better !

I look at all brand at this time , was only interested with panasonic and samsung .

Sony was more expensive and did not find it so good !

UBC is ok but not laser disc quality, looking at dvd movies is better .

I am watching UBC on 4:3 , movies dvd on full screen .

many said LCD is better , some said plasma is better ?

I think sony for LCD is the way to go .

you need to have a digital box from ubc , not the analogue !

over all , happy with it !

Edited June 28, 2006 by simcity

[The Skipper]

OK, here's the scoop.

The UBC looks terrible on the large flat screens and they will never, ever show you the local cable signal at the store. NEVER.

The best picture still is on the CRTs, like the Sony 34".

That's the best picture available out there right now.

The Pioneer and Panasonic Plasmas are by far the most popular Flat Panels selling.

The Plasmas have much better contrast than the LCD TVs and do better with action scenes.

The screen is highly reflective so placement is critical.

Some may experience an annoying burn in of the screen too.

Those TV logos are the culprit.

The Sony or Sharp are the most popular LCD TVs although they lag behing the Plasma performance a bit.

I did notice Sony just dropped the price on the 40"LCD TV from 149,000bt down to 119,000bt recently.

I think the next generation Sony LCD TV is the one to get.

Wait a month or two.

I'm looking foward to the High Def 46" Sony LCD that should be coming soon.

Look at the Denon 3910 DVD player if you want high end playback of video and audio.

[The Coder]

My UBC picture is quite good, The wife even stated that it was pretty similar to DVD's.

LOL, well why don't we take a look at a few screen shots to remove the subjectiveness aspect.

This is a snooker table. You can see all the green balls...but wait, snooker has just ONE green ball on the table! Small objects like snooker balls are given the wrong color!!! They become the right color when the shot is tighter and the balls are larger.

Here is a football pitch. How many players can you count that are missing their heads?

I could go on all day long. The quality is absolutely horrendous, you be the judge.

[LivinLOS]

The coder.. Thats MUCH MUCH worse than my issues.. I see nothing of that severity..

Are you outputting the signal via S-Video ?? What TV / Display device are you using ??

I have complaints but thats rediculous..

[The Coder]

The coder.. Thats MUCH MUCH worse than my issues.. I see nothing of that severity..

Are you outputting the signal via S-Video ?? What TV / Display device are you using ??

I have complaints but thats rediculous..

I have your basic 19" mono TV fed off the standard RCA jacks of the cable box (no s-video on the TV). Admittedly it's a cheap TV, but the thing is I don't have these issues for VHF or driving it from a laptop. I only get issues like this when feeding the signal from UBC DSTV. My cable box was replaced once already because one went out, but still the picture quality fails to impress me to put it mildly.

[LivinLOS]

Well my UBC picture is no where near that bad.. Consider new cables / TV or Satellite STB..

[solo siam]

The Coder, You don't have speakers or anything else magnetic sitting next to your Tv do you? That is probably the worst picture I have ever seen from a TV, here is my 80" Screen (well actually projected onto the wall at the moment) displaying typical Thai TV from UBC (and please take into consideration how hard it is to photograph projected images).

Edit - The Coder I just read about your TV, its worth about 500 baht and has to be a fair age - thats where your problems are, you can get a very reasonable brand name 25" TV for around 6-7k baht nowadays.

Edited June 29, 2006 by Ben@H3-Digital

[LivinLOS]

Ben as I am sure your following this thread..

Any sources for cheap screen materials to custom make my own ?? DaLite would be nice as the hipower 2.8 can be used cieling mounted (even though thats not its spec).. I cant get the screen size down to fit that vutex due to thow etc and am a bit fed up of the cream wall dulling down the image..

[solo siam]

Hi Los,

Tensioning would probably be the biggest headache if you were to get some screen material, what size screen is needed, I could take a look around and see what's available.

The other option would be to frame the wall and find a reflective white paint, paint just inside the frame.

[Firefoxx]

There's a hifi show going on right now at the Emerald Hotel on Ratchada Road (near IT Mall and the national cultural center). It's got a lot of high-end stuff, including the JVC LCOS projection TV (take a look and see why LCOS is considered nearly the best, if not the best).

[LivinLOS]

I had LCOS in the past.. Shadow detail was good but the lack of contrast made the black level a bit higher than was really good.. I hear its got a fair bit better..

I will have to measure Ben but last time I looked the smallest image I could get was a bit bigger than those vutex screens..

For tensioning last time I went to a art / painting store and had thier frame maker make a frame to my sizes and tensioned it myself.. Start by working the short middle and then long middle and work to the corners.. Made an ok screen out of curtain backing using the vinyl side but dont have any the size I now need. Would prefer higher gain also..