When it comes to Home Cinema your movie experience is ONLY as good as your display and your display is only as BIG as your budget?... Or is it
I will try and explain in the easiest way as many people do find it a bit baffling, but it DOESN'T need to be.
Read on and you will get not only a great display that shows your most loved movies in all there glory, but you might just be a little more AV wiser and save some hard earned cash as well.
You ALL know what its like, you get into the shop of your choice and you get dazzled and amazed by the selection of TV's and most of them 'Look Good'. But we/you don't want 'Good' you want 'The Very Best' for your Buck. So where should you start?
'IT LOOKED BETTER IN THE SHOP'
This believe it or not (if your 'New' to the Home Cinema scene) is the easiest question to answer, but a lot of people take for granted or get wrong. I know quite a lot of people who go out and buy a so called HD TV and get sold the wrong thing because it was 'Cheaper'. Now that's all well and good but when you get home your all excited, and you cant wait for the delivery man to drop off your 'New' TV your saw in the shop with that Amazing picture you remember.. You unbox it, wire it up, plug it all in and hmmmm. 'That's not the picture I remember' is the first thing that pops into your head. You flick through the manual and adjust the picture settings, ramp up the' brightness', whack up the 'contrast', turn that 'colour' bar to over 60, along with that nightmare of a button called 'Sharpness', but alas still not that same picture... So what and where did it all go wrong then?.
HD READY Vs FULL HD
Now that's a very good question. Most modern TVs are at least HD Ready, which means they are able to make the most of broadcasted high definition footage. But there's more than one kind of HD. HD-ready in the UK at least means that if you want to squeeze all the extra detail offered by HD pictures, then your TV is capable of showing it. Full HD gives you a higher resolution screen (1080 lines compared to 720 lines on a HD Ready Set), which means it can give you more detail if you plug a Blu Ray player or Games Console, but ANY good TV worth it's salt can Upscale and that is where it takes the Standard Definition picture and process's it to the best of the TV's ability to make it fit and look better on a larger display.
You see the bigger the screen the better the picture needs to be to make it look it's best. Non HD images are only 640 x 480, but get upscaled to 720 or 1080 to make it look better for you eyes. The smaller the screen the little your eyes notice it, the larger the screen the more that image has to be stretched and pulled about and that is where it all goes wrong, (Most of us now have larger TV's than ever before and therefore you are closer to the screen) because an image on a 32" display isn't going to look that bad, but going up to say 40" plus and that is where you WILL notice the difference and the step up to Full HD is the only way to go. Your eyes can't really tell the difference from 4 meters away on a 32" set but from the same distance on a 40" and you will start noticing things called 'Artifacts' and 'Blocking' Full HD is mostly only offered on larger TV's, maybe say 32in and bigger. While most under this size are HD Ready. Full HD sets have a higher resolution so should provide a sharper picture. On a HD picture, this should improve things, and on examples I have seen it does, but beware that SD pictures could look a bit worse than your current HD Ready TV. The extra sharpness shows up even more imperfections in the SD pictures.
For example, it's far less important looking at HD footage on a screen in the shop if you are planning to mainly watch Standard definition stuff on you sofa. You'll find some TV's are better than others at converting a SD feed into something watchable, as the processing chips inside will treat the pictures differently.
SO LCD/LED OR PLASMA?
This seems to be the most asked question still to date, and you know what it can't really be answered. WHY?, because everybody has a different opinion on what's the best type to view there movies on and you know what that's a good thing because it keeps the Home Cinema market alive and controversial. But lets try and shed some light on BOTH technologies.
PLASMA
When plasma 'first came out' (in 1998 to the masses and 2004 to myself), it had a lot of myths surrounding it, Better Cinematic pictures, deeper blacks, gas that needed replacing, weight and screen burn. Now some of that was true and some of it was false-ish (is that even a word). YES you do get much better blacks with a Plasma, but with a compromise the picture isn't as bright as LED/LCD's. The gas issue is no longer really and issue and to be honest NEVER has been, this really is a myth. As technology moves on we get company's making great advances in having to EVER have your TV erm re-gassed. So my answer to that is absolute rubbish and here's why. A modern flat screen plasma TV will be rated with a life span of around 60,000 hours and over (this is the time it takes to reach half the brightness of when they were new - and even then they would still be watchable). At an average use of 10 hours a day this would mean the TV would be good for about 16 years. And I for one would like to of had a few more TV's before then. Pretty much all plasma TVs will have some 'Screen retention', where you may see a ghostly image left on the screen when you switch it off. This 'retention' will fade, but in extreme cases the panel can be damaged permanently and this is called burn-in. So there is a difference. This problem can happen if you leave a static image on the screen for too long such as pausing a movie or if you regularly watch certain TV channels that have static logos on screen all the time, but a lot of channels have learned from this and have faded there logo's, as for pausing, unless you plan on going on holiday with the TV on and the imaged paused for that long that just isn't going to happen, pausing for a few minutes to and hour will leave retention NOT Screen Burn. Retention is fairly common, but isn't much of a problem and will soon disappear. Screen Burn is more serious, and needs to be avoided at all costs. To avoid Screen Burn just try a few things.. Try not to leave your image paused for longer than an hour, Don't use it as a computer monitor and try and keep your brightness and contrast down to say 50-55%. Follow these simple steps and it'll last longer than you think.
Weight is the next issue. Plasmas are extremely heavy and can way up to 60 kilo's for a 55" TV, so make sure your cabinet or stand can handle the load, the last thing you want is your £2000 Display crashing through the cabinet and on to the floor. Now they DO give brilliant life like pictures there is NO doubting that, but as company's like Pioneer and there Kuro's and now Panasonic apparently pulling out of the plasma market maybe they have had there day and with the prices of plasmas not really going down for the size of screen you get I can't really see them going on to much longer, but as I say that Samsung have just jumped on the Plasma trail and LG are still on the map so who knows.. Lets hope they are around for a little while longer eh!. My first Flat screen was a plasma and apart from the power consumption and heat I couldn't fault it.
VS
LCD/LED
Over the last 4 years the LCD/LED Displays have really taken off, with most, if not ALL the Major and Minor manufacturer's have produced one and you can get them for as little as £300 for a 40" Display, and I'm afraid that in my eyes is what has or is killing off the Plasma market, that and the sheer size for the price you can now get. Technically speaking, an LED TV is also an LCD TV, as the screen on both is a liquid crystal display. An LCD display has two layers of glass that are polarized and joined together, the liquid crystals then pass or block the light to display the television picture.
The crystals do not produce any light as the light comes from a series of lamps at the back of the screen. On an LCD TV, the lamps at the back of the screen are fluorescent lamps, whilst on an LED TV the lights at the back of the screen are Light Emitting Diodes (LED).
The thing is its all about picture quality which is the reason you are reading this isn't it. To get the best picture quality. Now
If you want the best in picture quality among LED TVs, technically it will have to be one that has full-array back lighting with local dimming. The individual zones of LEDs can be dimmed or brightened independently, making it more flexible and suitable to an individual’s taste and preference. Comparing side by side, LED TVs generally have better black levels and contrasts than their LCD counterparts. Colour accuracy is also slightly better on an LED TV. While LCD TVs are no slouch on colour accuracy, compared to an LED TV, to me a LED has the advantage. Viewing angles are a little bit of a problem for most LED's or LCD's as the further you move off centre you do lose a little contrast and brightness, but unless your looking straight down the screen then it shouldn't be a problem in most Home Cinema set-ups. Put that with the likes of LG and Samsung making ground breaking advances in screen technology and the fact you ARE able to dim the screen with the BACKLIGHT you can now get superb blacks, nearly matching that of plasma's and if you can get it calibrated or use one of the THX set-up's on most of the Lucas Film's or on the Disney Blu rays you will get colours second to none and black that are actually black. But for me it has to be the sheer size of the screen you can get for the small amount of money you would have to outlay. With prices starting at around £800 for a 47" display you would be hard to find a Plasma screen for that at 40 inches. Bias maybe.. But if you own one then you know what I mean. After all it's the Home Cinema Experience at home we are all after isn't it?.
MY TOP COMPANY'S AND DISPLAY'S
IN NO SPECIFIC ORDER
46-47"
Panasonic TX-L47ET5 £800 approx.
Sony KDL-46HX753 £900 approx.
Samsung UED467000 £1,600 approx.
Samsung UE46ES6800 £1,200 approx.
LG 47LM760T £1,100 approx.
Sony KDL-46HX853 £1,200 approx.
Panasonic TX-L47WT50 £1,300 approx.
40-42"
Panasonic TX-P42X50 £400 approx.
Toshiba 40TL963 £500 approx.
Sony KDL-40HX753 £700 approx.
Samsung UE40ES6800 £700 approx.
LG 42LM660T £750 approx.
So there you have it my little contribution to Home Cinema Displays or TV's. You will discover better and bigger, cheaper and more expensive out there, and of course opinions WILL differ and that is what Home Cinema is ALL about. It's your choice and your money after all. Just don't take it from the man in the shop. See if you can get a Proper Demo or home trial before you buy. As it is a big outlay and you want to get it right.
Good Luck and Please let me know how you do.
Let Me Know What You Think. Do You Own A New TV?, Do you want to own or Get anew TV?, If Not Are You Going To Get One?
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