everyone keeps saying about having a big screen is more or less a requirement. Eg, 32/37inch is too small. Please remember that that a lot of us are limited by the space we have in the room. Our friends very recently got a 50inc LCD, but their room is tiny. Looks stupid, and it just shows up too many SD imperfections as they cant sit far enough away from the screen.
We dont all want our rooms dominated by a massive screen.
Viewing distance, screen size and the actual room should all be considered before buying the TV.
reading some of the posts, I wonder how many of these CRT owners will still be using their CRT in 5 years time, due to LCD's and OLEDs not being good enough!
They are going to be stuck when their CRTs breakdown.
another advantage of LCD is that there is no giant box which requires a JCB to lift it. If nothing else, dump the CRT and claim back your living space.
reading some of the posts, I wonder how many of these CRT owners will still be using their CRT in 5 years time
Not many, most are pretty old by now and already getting past it. The only remotely 'modern' CRT's are the junk Supermarket ones, which don't often last long anyway.
I too was very disappointed at first moving from CRT to Plasma, so I know how you feel (still believe CRT gives superior quality)
Not sure if LCDs are the same, but Plasmas take a couple hundred of hours to get up to speed.
I have got my ok now (after the breaking in hours) but a hell of a lot of playing with the settings. There is a section on AVForum which give you various peoples optimum settings for each make and model of plasma and LCD.
Still not sure if the messing around made a difference or I just got used to it.
What these huge supporters of flat panel TVs are missing is they are advocating buying MORE kit to be able to use it. The OP (and myself) are stating that for SD source material the picture is very disappointing and inferior to CRT, and seeing as how I do not wish to line Mr Murdoch's pockets further then SD it is.
I have no idea what sort of money frasera is suggesting should be spent or what size of screen, but I'm talking of 37-42 inch flat screens in the region of £800-£1000. My current 28 inch widescreen RFT CRT cost £250 6 years, so even allowing for inflation then £500 should buy something comparable but it doesn't.
It is very rare that I watch a DVD, probably more than 12 months since I last watched one, I can't see the point in buying a Blueray just for it to sit there idle.
I don't quite see how dumping a CRT for a larger flat screen is going to increase my living space as it will be diagonally across the same corner as the one it's replacing.
26-32 inch LCDs should give a better picture because for the same resolution the individual pixels are smaller. If you think that is nonsense then please explain why when you print the more DPI you use the clearer and less blocky the picture.
I don't agree that the viewing angle problem has gone away on LCDs. If you stand at the end of a row of TVs on display you can spot the plasma screen easily, as it's the only one that still has a bright clear image.
When the day comes that all channels are broadcast in HD then yes the picture will be superior, unless of course you have somewhere in the region of £15,000 to spend on a HD studio CRT monitor.
26-32 inch LCDs should give a better picture because for the same resolution the individual pixels are smaller. If you think that is nonsense then please explain why when you print the more DPI you use the clearer and less blocky the picture.
When you show a SD picture (digital or analogue)on a high res screen, there will generally be at least a bit of a problem because somewhere along the line the image has to be upscaled to be shown on the extra number of lines available. (A heavily compressed picture will look even worse.) Blowing this scaling up to a larger screen or merely sitting closer will simply amplify this issue.
Sharp used to sell the P-series of LCD screens that had 540 lines to closely match the SD resolution of PAL. The was no upscaling involved and the SD picture was easily one of the best you could get on a LCD.
The OP hasn't posted to say yet if they have turned off the 100hz/120hz/whateveritscalled and are happier with the results.
What these huge supporters of flat panel TVs are missing is they are advocating buying MORE kit to be able to use it. The OP (and myself) are stating that for SD source material the picture is very disappointing and inferior to CRT, and seeing as how I do not wish to line Mr Murdoch's pockets further then SD it is.
I have no idea what sort of money frasera is suggesting should be spent or what size of screen, but I'm talking of 37-42 inch flat screens in the region of £800-£1000. My current 28 inch widescreen RFT CRT cost £250 6 years, so even allowing for inflation then £500 should buy something comparable but it doesn't.
It is very rare that I watch a DVD, probably more than 12 months since I last watched one, I can't see the point in buying a Blueray just for it to sit there idle.
I don't quite see how dumping a CRT for a larger flat screen is going to increase my living space as it will be diagonally across the same corner as the one it's replacing.
26-32 inch LCDs should give a better picture because for the same resolution the individual pixels are smaller. If you think that is nonsense then please explain why when you print the more DPI you use the clearer and less blocky the picture.
I don't agree that the viewing angle problem has gone away on LCDs. If you stand at the end of a row of TVs on display you can spot the plasma screen easily, as it's the only one that still has a bright clear image.
When the day comes that all channels are broadcast in HD then yes the picture will be superior, unless of course you have somewhere in the region of £15,000 to spend on a HD studio CRT monitor.
I understand what you are saying but what is the point in buying a HD capable television if you are not willing to invest in more kit to enable it to reach it's full potential. You may as well stick with your old CRT, watch SD material and save your money.
Not at all, minimum suggested SD viewing distance is 2.5 times screen size - 10ft is well over that for a 37 inch. Much too far away for any benefit from HD though.
10' away is not too far for benefit from HD with a 37" (1080p would not benefit though) - your suggested viewing distance of 2.5 times is a very rough aproximation, the break point for 720/768 for a 37" is around 11.5'. A 37" at that distance is a reasonable compromise though I've gone for a 50" at a similar distance.
10' away is not too far for benefit from HD with a 37" (1080p would not benefit though) - your suggested viewing distance of 2.5 times is a very rough aproximation, the break point for 720/768 for a 37" is around 11.5'. A 37" at that distance is a reasonable compromise though I've gone for a 50" at a similar distance.
Were you born on the Planet Krypton?
At 2.5 times screen size you can't see the fine detail, which is why SD viewing distance is a minimum of that, so you can't see the lines that (used to) make up the picture, or these days see the artifacts from the scaling and the compression used.
With HD at that distance you'll still get a slightly better picture, but it's more a better SD one than HD.
Pin a newspaper to the wall, now read it from 10 feet away, can you read the headlines (hopefully yes) that's SD. Now can you read the small body text? - no?, that's HD - move closer until you can.
at 10 feet a 37" is a postage stamp. 37" is too small for any reasonable seating distance so theres no point quibbling about the right distance, its compromised by default, its not too big unless you try using it as your computer monitor. a wide screen letterboxed film on such a screen is barely more than a foot tall strip on the wall.
What has where I sit at the cinema and your opinion on screen size have to do with SD quality?
Low bitrate SD viewed on a 37" TV sat at 8ft will look awful, move further away and it will improve. The complication comes if HD is also viewed on the same screen.
Not everyone wants their field of vision filled with a TV screen.
I understand what you are saying but what is the point in buying a HD capable television if you are not willing to invest in more kit to enable it to reach it's full potential. You may as well stick with your old CRT, watch SD material and save your money.
That is exactly the point but there isn't a great deal of choice if you need a replacement TV or in the case of the OP logically assuming that the next generation of technology would be superior not inferior. Seeing as most FTA channels are still in SD format then the currently available replacement/new TVs are the Emperors new clothes.
I do already subscribe to Sky (although Freesat from Sky could be imminent) but I don't have or want Movies or Sport so that eliminates a lot of channels. I watch maybe two programs a week from Sky's own channels the rest being made up of BBC1, ITV, ITV2, Ch4, E4, CH5 and occaisonally Zone Horror. So until the majority of the channels I want to watch broadcast in HD then uncle Rupert doesn't get any more of my money.
The TV already has onboard scaling, if it didn't the SD channels would just be a small image in the middle of the screen.
Yes, invest in Sky HD if you want a good selection of HD, I doubt they would see a huge difference in SD quality.
Yes but most of the time the Sky Box upscaler provides better quality as it's dealing with the source rather than the post packed picture from a SCART connection, the earlier you can upscale the picture, the better quality it will be, take Channel 4 HD as an example.
I don't quite see how dumping a CRT for a larger flat screen is going to increase my living space as it will be diagonally across the same corner as the one it's replacing.
.
Because if you get a 32" CRT your screen will be 2-3 feet at least from the wall because of the huge cabinet it comes in.
A flat panel is just that - you can literally hang it on the wall if you want so you can free up a good amount of space.
I had a 28" CRT up until just over 2 years ago and the back of the tv took so much room and my current 37" LCD is a couple of inches thick - if that.
Having said that - I would never have got one simply to reduce the box size like some people did 4 or more years ago when the picture quality was a complete joke .
Back then some still claimed their pictures were "excellent" when even a one eyed man could tell they were shit.
I waited until HD equipment was available and technology had moved on to allow for good upscaling of sd material.
Of course much digital tv still looks rubbish but at normal viewing distance you can cope with it
Because if you get a 32" CRT your screen will be 2-3 feet at least from the wall because of the huge cabinet it comes in.
A flat panel is just that - you can literally hang it on the wall if you want so you can free up a good amount of space.
Not only have I got to buy more equipment to get the best out of my new flat screen TV but now I've got to invest in a new house so that I have a wall to put it on. :eek:
look the thing is, SD PQ is rubbish in digital TV. Your CRT is covering up a lot of the problems because it has phosphors and persistence. It is smoothing over the imperfections of the MPEG2 compression.
LCDs have to upscale SD to much larger resolutions, and these problems your CRT is smoothing over, are actually magnified because an LCD is extremely unforgiving. If you feed it from RGB scart it is also doing another analogue>digital conversion. A sky HD box or V+ box with HDMI will make SD far more palatable on an LCD, and of course HD will look very good indeed.
If you don't want HD, then keep your CRT until it blows up.
Yes but most of the time the Sky Box upscaler provides better quality as it's dealing with the source rather than the post packed picture from a SCART connection, the earlier you can upscale the picture, the better quality it will be, take Channel 4 HD as an example.
The reason Channel 4 HD upscaling is better is because they use a better quality upscaler than is present in home equipment and also because the actual transmission is less compressed which is where most of the picture degradation comes from. It is not the case that the earlier you upscale the better but is a case of the minimum degradation of the picture anywhere in the chain.
Ideally you would upscale in the TV because that "knows" the resolution of the TV itself, also that saves a de-interlace/interlace stage. However if the TV doesn't have a decent upscaler than the Sky+HD will do a better job.
Not only have I got to buy more equipment to get the best out of my new flat screen TV but now I've got to invest in a new house so that I have a wall to put it on. :eek:
Yet another admission of poor SD PQ.
Does your current house have no walls then?:rolleyes:
You don't have to put it on the wall - I don't.
I used that as an example of what you could not do with CRT.
Poor sd pictures are the fault of digital tv broadcasts not your tv.
DVD's look much better than digital tv
Yes it does have walls, but none that would be suitable
I'm also a traditionalist so I like my TV across a corner of the room, hence my original comment that the thinner TV wouldn't make any difference to my living space.
Having fought my corner that CRTs are still the best medium for showing SD I will admit that I was sorely tempted by the Panasonic 42 inch G15 plasma but decided to hang fire until the Freeview HD tuner is included, so it could well be the G25 later in the year when its price drops as I refuse to pay a premium to be an early adopter.
Yes you are quite right John, it's the persistence of LCD that gives the perception of motion blur and harsh outlines that all of the companies are trying hard to solve.
everyone keeps saying about having a big screen is more or less a requirement. Eg, 32/37inch is too small. Please remember that that a lot of us are limited by the space we have in the room. Our friends very recently got a 50inc LCD, but their room is tiny. Looks stupid, and it just shows up too many SD imperfections as they cant sit far enough away from the screen.
We dont all want our rooms dominated by a massive screen.
as said, it depends on the scaler how well sd looks on a tv, even a big one. how small is your room, these things aren't like small cars like crts were in the larger sizes. they are picture frames, not room boulders. Unless you live in a small hut a wall mounted panel takes almost no space at all in reality. you need a good size to get a good amount of your visual field to be filled, even 50" at 6 feet doesn't fill your visual field in the slightest. and when you consider how much of the screen becomes black bars with 2.35 films it becomes even more important. on a 50" a 2.35 ratio film is only an 18" tall strip of image. Not big at all. Worrying about sd material is worrying about yesterdays material, when anything actually worth concentrating on is filmed in hd these days. older stuff which is worth a rewatch is being remastered for Hd from the original film prints whether its star trek the original series or seinfeld. a 50" tv dominates the room far less than a 27 or even 32" crt of a past era did. those things were huge in all 3 dimensions. you had to literally hide them in large cabinet furniture enclosures much of the time to minimize their dominance.
Because if you get a 32" CRT your screen will be 2-3 feet at least from the wall because of the huge cabinet it comes in.
A flat panel is just that - you can literally hang it on the wall if you want so you can free up a good amount of space.
bingo, even a 27" was a room boulder. furniture of the era was built to hide this fact. or you simply lived with it if it sat exposed. people also fail to consider this extra 2-3 foot of closer distance of their previous screen when judging how big to get the flat panel.
What has where I sit at the cinema and your opinion on screen size have to do with SD quality?
Low bitrate SD viewed on a 37" TV sat at 8ft will look awful, move further away and it will improve. The complication comes if HD is also viewed on the same screen.
Not everyone wants their field of vision filled with a TV screen.
FYI - I sit middle/middle if I go to the cinema.
at 8 feet its so small that any claim of seeing artifacts or problematic picture is questionable by default. its so small its inherently uncinematic, making judgement of picture quality rather pointless to begin with. at 8 feet it becomes background tv, aka ironing laundry tv. you have already made it clear you don't care by default. so it doesn't matter. its just a cr@p experience.
Yes it does have walls, but none that would be suitable
I'm also a traditionalist so I like my TV across a corner of the room, hence my original comment that the thinner TV wouldn't make any difference to my living space.
Even in the corner , a flat panel makes access to the spaghetti of cables behind the set far simpler than with a gigantic CRT in the way - assuming you have speakers and multiple devices and resulting cable hell
If you have a regular shaped living room putting the screen in a corner would make placement of the surround sound speakers a bit difficult if you wanted them spaced and positioned correctly.
I know that most people have the tv in a corner but I was very pleased when I moved into my current house in 1999 that the living room layout allowed me to have the tv in front of a wall and have all the regular speakers positioned correctly although my centre rear is too close
yea corner arrangement was mainly due to the awful size of crt, to minimize the impact of having a boulder in your room and hide its huge rear end. it doesn't really work for flat panels. you are just wasting space if you do that.
yea corner arrangement was mainly due to the awful size of crt, to minimize the impact of having a boulder in your room and hide its huge rear end. it doesn't really work for flat panels. you are just wasting space if you do that.
You're right it was/is a convenient way of losing it.
For me in my current house it wouldn't make any difference it would still go across the corner as the chimney breast is exactly where it should be which is in the middle of a long wall and there is no way I would hang the TV on the chimney breast above the fire.
Captain, that would be a big plus being able to get at the cables. Although once all the kit is in place and working the cables are pretty much left alone.
John, not sure if that was over my previous reply so my apologies if it wasn't. Yes lag is not persistence but an LCD by virtue of how it works is, an LCD pixel is fully on until it is 'switched' off again whereas phosors start to decay the instant the photon stream is removed. That is why TV manufacturers are working hard on 'Motionflow' technology with increased frame rates, flashing LEDs etc. There are some good articles on 50Hz V 100Hz, some saying yes it works and some saying no it doesn't. The bottom line, if I remember correctly, is motion blur doesn't physically exist on an LCD TV but the brain creates it because of the length of time the static image is on screen.
Comments
Viewing distance, screen size and the actual room should all be considered before buying the TV.
But tiny room, big TV, and HD looks great
(pity not everything is HD
They are going to be stuck when their CRTs breakdown.
another advantage of LCD is that there is no giant box which requires a JCB to lift it. If nothing else, dump the CRT and claim back your living space.
Not many, most are pretty old by now and already getting past it. The only remotely 'modern' CRT's are the junk Supermarket ones, which don't often last long anyway.
Not sure if LCDs are the same, but Plasmas take a couple hundred of hours to get up to speed.
I have got my ok now (after the breaking in hours) but a hell of a lot of playing with the settings. There is a section on AVForum which give you various peoples optimum settings for each make and model of plasma and LCD.
Still not sure if the messing around made a difference or I just got used to it.
Good luck.
I have no idea what sort of money frasera is suggesting should be spent or what size of screen, but I'm talking of 37-42 inch flat screens in the region of £800-£1000. My current 28 inch widescreen RFT CRT cost £250 6 years, so even allowing for inflation then £500 should buy something comparable but it doesn't.
It is very rare that I watch a DVD, probably more than 12 months since I last watched one, I can't see the point in buying a Blueray just for it to sit there idle.
I don't quite see how dumping a CRT for a larger flat screen is going to increase my living space as it will be diagonally across the same corner as the one it's replacing.
26-32 inch LCDs should give a better picture because for the same resolution the individual pixels are smaller. If you think that is nonsense then please explain why when you print the more DPI you use the clearer and less blocky the picture.
I don't agree that the viewing angle problem has gone away on LCDs. If you stand at the end of a row of TVs on display you can spot the plasma screen easily, as it's the only one that still has a bright clear image.
When the day comes that all channels are broadcast in HD then yes the picture will be superior, unless of course you have somewhere in the region of £15,000 to spend on a HD studio CRT monitor.
When you show a SD picture (digital or analogue)on a high res screen, there will generally be at least a bit of a problem because somewhere along the line the image has to be upscaled to be shown on the extra number of lines available. (A heavily compressed picture will look even worse.) Blowing this scaling up to a larger screen or merely sitting closer will simply amplify this issue.
Sharp used to sell the P-series of LCD screens that had 540 lines to closely match the SD resolution of PAL. The was no upscaling involved and the SD picture was easily one of the best you could get on a LCD.
The OP hasn't posted to say yet if they have turned off the 100hz/120hz/whateveritscalled and are happier with the results.
I understand what you are saying but what is the point in buying a HD capable television if you are not willing to invest in more kit to enable it to reach it's full potential. You may as well stick with your old CRT, watch SD material and save your money.
Were you born on the Planet Krypton?
At 2.5 times screen size you can't see the fine detail, which is why SD viewing distance is a minimum of that, so you can't see the lines that (used to) make up the picture, or these days see the artifacts from the scaling and the compression used.
With HD at that distance you'll still get a slightly better picture, but it's more a better SD one than HD.
Pin a newspaper to the wall, now read it from 10 feet away, can you read the headlines (hopefully yes) that's SD. Now can you read the small body text? - no?, that's HD - move closer until you can.
Low bitrate SD viewed on a 37" TV sat at 8ft will look awful, move further away and it will improve. The complication comes if HD is also viewed on the same screen.
Not everyone wants their field of vision filled with a TV screen.
FYI - I sit middle/middle if I go to the cinema.
That is exactly the point but there isn't a great deal of choice if you need a replacement TV or in the case of the OP logically assuming that the next generation of technology would be superior not inferior. Seeing as most FTA channels are still in SD format then the currently available replacement/new TVs are the Emperors new clothes.
I do already subscribe to Sky (although Freesat from Sky could be imminent) but I don't have or want Movies or Sport so that eliminates a lot of channels. I watch maybe two programs a week from Sky's own channels the rest being made up of BBC1, ITV, ITV2, Ch4, E4, CH5 and occaisonally Zone Horror. So until the majority of the channels I want to watch broadcast in HD then uncle Rupert doesn't get any more of my money.
Yes but most of the time the Sky Box upscaler provides better quality as it's dealing with the source rather than the post packed picture from a SCART connection, the earlier you can upscale the picture, the better quality it will be, take Channel 4 HD as an example.
Because if you get a 32" CRT your screen will be 2-3 feet at least from the wall because of the huge cabinet it comes in.
A flat panel is just that - you can literally hang it on the wall if you want so you can free up a good amount of space.
I had a 28" CRT up until just over 2 years ago and the back of the tv took so much room and my current 37" LCD is a couple of inches thick - if that.
Having said that - I would never have got one simply to reduce the box size like some people did 4 or more years ago when the picture quality was a complete joke .
Back then some still claimed their pictures were "excellent" when even a one eyed man could tell they were shit.
I waited until HD equipment was available and technology had moved on to allow for good upscaling of sd material.
Of course much digital tv still looks rubbish but at normal viewing distance you can cope with it
Not only have I got to buy more equipment to get the best out of my new flat screen TV but now I've got to invest in a new house so that I have a wall to put it on. :eek:
Yet another admission of poor SD PQ.
LCDs have to upscale SD to much larger resolutions, and these problems your CRT is smoothing over, are actually magnified because an LCD is extremely unforgiving. If you feed it from RGB scart it is also doing another analogue>digital conversion. A sky HD box or V+ box with HDMI will make SD far more palatable on an LCD, and of course HD will look very good indeed.
If you don't want HD, then keep your CRT until it blows up.
Ideally you would upscale in the TV because that "knows" the resolution of the TV itself, also that saves a de-interlace/interlace stage. However if the TV doesn't have a decent upscaler than the Sky+HD will do a better job.
Does your current house have no walls then?:rolleyes:
You don't have to put it on the wall - I don't.
I used that as an example of what you could not do with CRT.
Poor sd pictures are the fault of digital tv broadcasts not your tv.
DVD's look much better than digital tv
I'm also a traditionalist so I like my TV across a corner of the room, hence my original comment that the thinner TV wouldn't make any difference to my living space.
Having fought my corner that CRTs are still the best medium for showing SD I will admit that I was sorely tempted by the Panasonic 42 inch G15 plasma but decided to hang fire until the Freeview HD tuner is included, so it could well be the G25 later in the year when its price drops as I refuse to pay a premium to be an early adopter.
Yes you are quite right John, it's the persistence of LCD that gives the perception of motion blur and harsh outlines that all of the companies are trying hard to solve.
as said, it depends on the scaler how well sd looks on a tv, even a big one. how small is your room, these things aren't like small cars like crts were in the larger sizes. they are picture frames, not room boulders. Unless you live in a small hut a wall mounted panel takes almost no space at all in reality. you need a good size to get a good amount of your visual field to be filled, even 50" at 6 feet doesn't fill your visual field in the slightest. and when you consider how much of the screen becomes black bars with 2.35 films it becomes even more important. on a 50" a 2.35 ratio film is only an 18" tall strip of image. Not big at all. Worrying about sd material is worrying about yesterdays material, when anything actually worth concentrating on is filmed in hd these days. older stuff which is worth a rewatch is being remastered for Hd from the original film prints whether its star trek the original series or seinfeld. a 50" tv dominates the room far less than a 27 or even 32" crt of a past era did. those things were huge in all 3 dimensions. you had to literally hide them in large cabinet furniture enclosures much of the time to minimize their dominance.
bingo, even a 27" was a room boulder. furniture of the era was built to hide this fact. or you simply lived with it if it sat exposed. people also fail to consider this extra 2-3 foot of closer distance of their previous screen when judging how big to get the flat panel.
at 8 feet its so small that any claim of seeing artifacts or problematic picture is questionable by default. its so small its inherently uncinematic, making judgement of picture quality rather pointless to begin with. at 8 feet it becomes background tv, aka ironing laundry tv. you have already made it clear you don't care by default. so it doesn't matter. its just a cr@p experience.
Even in the corner , a flat panel makes access to the spaghetti of cables behind the set far simpler than with a gigantic CRT in the way - assuming you have speakers and multiple devices and resulting cable hell
If you have a regular shaped living room putting the screen in a corner would make placement of the surround sound speakers a bit difficult if you wanted them spaced and positioned correctly.
I know that most people have the tv in a corner but I was very pleased when I moved into my current house in 1999 that the living room layout allowed me to have the tv in front of a wall and have all the regular speakers positioned correctly although my centre rear is too close
You're right it was/is a convenient way of losing it.
For me in my current house it wouldn't make any difference it would still go across the corner as the chimney breast is exactly where it should be which is in the middle of a long wall and there is no way I would hang the TV on the chimney breast above the fire.
Captain, that would be a big plus being able to get at the cables. Although once all the kit is in place and working the cables are pretty much left alone.
John, not sure if that was over my previous reply so my apologies if it wasn't. Yes lag is not persistence but an LCD by virtue of how it works is, an LCD pixel is fully on until it is 'switched' off again whereas phosors start to decay the instant the photon stream is removed. That is why TV manufacturers are working hard on 'Motionflow' technology with increased frame rates, flashing LEDs etc. There are some good articles on 50Hz V 100Hz, some saying yes it works and some saying no it doesn't. The bottom line, if I remember correctly, is motion blur doesn't physically exist on an LCD TV but the brain creates it because of the length of time the static image is on screen.