My cousin has bought a samsung 32 1080 hd lcd tv- and when i went round i thought the picture looked funny.

As the background of the picture was as much in view as the foreground - it appeared that when the people in the picture moved theylooked what i can only think to describe as "elastic"- The movement didnt look natural.

Is this true of hd? (he was watching throush sky + sd)

it was the first time id seen a 1080 lcd tv.

Also, it was bad for blacks and dark colours.

im sure it was this model
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...UNG+LCD+32.htm

check what the screen is set to , wide etc , plus the poor blacks could be down to the settings , i would like to bet it is set to 100 % backlight

Sounds like it's set up terribly!

Firstly the strech-O-vision is probably due to watching a non wide program in the stretch mode (a way to make a regular program look widescreen , albeit terribly and I think a waste of time)

So a properly setup widescreen LCD should give fairly good standard definition pictures and very good High definition pictures with no bendy stetchy pictures.

Also the picture settings are probably all wrong, such as too much colour, contrast, sharpness, picture enhancements (usually makes things much worse) and backlighting.

the apect ratio settings were correct and i did fiddle with the backlight and contrast.

it was when the camrea would pan around or a character would move - it looked too smooth and unnatural.

I've got a Sony 26" LCD and have what I consider a good picture set-up (backlight and other settings have been changed from the defaults). The picture is usually excellent, but you occasionally get the odd programme (usually a film), where you get a sort of elastic/smearing effect. I've found this happen on Channel Five and Film Four on occasion (again, not all the time, just occasionally), and if I change channel to another channel, the picture is fine, but go back to the affected channel, and the picture will be smeary (which will end once the film has ended and another starts... or will end during the commercials and come back when the film restarts). I'm sure it's something on their end and not mine. Odd.

i know what you mean, i went round to a mates a few weeks ago and started watching dr who on his plasma. It was pretty bad, you could just tell it was all filmed on a set. none of the colours nor movements were as natural as they are on my crt.

The one good thing about a CRT was that every ones was more or less the same.
LCD screens ( with their scalers etc behind them) are all different and so the viewing experience can be very different.

Some have very slow pixels so they smear ... some have worse contrast ratio so they look flat, none track gamma accurately so they will not grey scale, and they have a wide range of colorimetry so any colour goes and that is before the wide/ narrow smooth/ sharp etc user controls.

Thus two Lcd can look very very different on different material and which is "the best" may not be consistent....

It is getting better ... Hence read up and look before you buy ...

On the movement thing - this sounds like motion detection compensation in the scaler .... which is not good thing on Consumer equipment... technically - but the marketing team will trumpet the new feature .

Mean Girls was on Filmfour or E4 at the time - but looked more like and episode of Morph!