New TV is here...

Well I finally got some time to write a little about it.

I have been searching for a perfect "Full HD" TV for about 2 years now. Naturally CRTs are out since they normally don't provide higher resolution than 1024x768 (and thats the highest I have found so far) normally the resolution is 640x480. Also the length of the tube in CRTs is against them - a 40'' has a depth of around 40..80cm and they are damn expensive also.

The next step was to research into Plasma technology. Its promising with its high contrast ratio, but it also has some major drawbacks. First is the resolution - normally its 1024x1024 or 1024x768 - considering that the "FULL HD" is 1920x1080 the plasma has to interlease to picture down to its native resolution. Some picture engines do it nicely by compensating it with contrast, the picture still isn't the same. Second major drawback is that when you get a "dead pixel" in plasma it usually means you get a dead stripe - this isn't a problem when its stripe next to a frame but if its in the middle of the screen it really annoying and really degrades the picture. The third drawback is that plasmas lifetime around 1..2 years. after that time the picture starts to get foggy and burnt in artifacts start to show. For example we have a TV channel called TV3 witch has a bright silver symbol that I have seen burned in on several plasmas. The forth and a neglectful one is that sometimes plasmas explode leaving behind a totally repainted room - its rare but it happens, so...

Naturally the next step is LCD TV-s. Lately the prices have dropped a lot on big screens - also the amount of models and manufacturers has risen a lot. So i started researching into them - the first thing to look at is if its "Full HD" or "HD Ready". HD Ready usually means panel with resolution 1280x768 or 1366x768. There are also some TV's that have panel resolution of 1024x640 and claim to have resolution of 1366x768 - this is achieved by interleaseing the input resolution down to the panel resolution - I cant comment on this much more as I have read it in forums by people claiming to be professionals, so... As I have been looking for Full HD, I wont comment on the normal panels much.

There are 2 types of Full HD: First is 1080p, witch is the real 1920x1080 resolution and second is 1080i which can mean 2 things. 1. the input is 1080p and the panel resolution is 720p - heres more info about HD resolutions. At the beginning I was fascinated about Acer's AT3705-MGW, for the sole purpose it was running Linux. Well it was a big surprise for me that Acer has a export policy - it only sells some products by a region ( no big deal most big dealers have it), but the thing that blew me away was that that policy gets violated by splitting the areas to countries and splitting the products by country also. Wellllll... this means Estonia ins in West Europe are with Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania. The TV is only sold in Sweden and Latvia. After some talks with the Acer direct contact in Estonia I could forget the Acer TV, so FU Acer you lost my respect for your products and I'm not recommending your products any more! Next came Phillips 37PF9731D - it has a Full HD panel, but has low contrast of 800:1. Its not that big of a problem, but when you compare it to a tv with hight contrast the picture looks kind of pale. After few weeks of digging in different models documentations I found a interesting fact. Phillips HD tv's support computer resolution of 1280x768. BLING BLING BLING. Well now I was confused. You can buy a Full HD tv with a hefty price tag and you cant use the panel in its native resolution??? Crazy.... So now I'm just surfing around searching all kinds of so called "Full HD " TVs, reading heir specs and looking at theirs manuals. Most of the have limitations similar to this. What it means is that 1080p is only available with HDMI. Good that I dint jump the gun, huh... So after some searching I found my baby. Samsung LE40F71BX - it isn't perfect, but contrast of 6000 just blew me away... It isn't perfect but I had to compromise - it does not have digital audio out, but thats not really a problem. Most devices that have HDMI also support digital audio output also so I can split the video and audio signals. A friend of mine also commented that running digital audio through hes TV deteriorated the audio signal, so he also connects devices directly to receiver. I cant see many minuses to give to this TV maybe that the built in speakers are kinda weak, but a nice receiver will compensate for it :)

Next step - buy a receiver :)

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