| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.98 |
Should I buy a big plasma telly, just to watch films on and not ordinary telly? I've heard they use a lot of leccy, but to watch the odd film on in the back room might be nice, once in a while. Saw a lovely one for £500 in Fenwicks at the weekend. But...do dvds look shit on them? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
My dad's had nothing but trouble with his, and it wasn't a cheapo. So I'd be wary of cheaper models. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Just sit closer to your own telly. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Forgive my Yorkshireman logic. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.98 |
Ha! Thing is, secretly I think these things are lovely, but also very ugly and naff... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
They can look stunning. Just check to ensure that the one you buy supports high definition to 1080p. Don't take 1080i or 720p for an answer... I still use my old 36" widescreen crt tv, but a few friends have these monsters and they can look very good indeed, both with standard def DVD upscaling and with BluRay. | ||
| Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.220.1.140 |
We bought a 50" plasma for ourselves for Xmas. They can look stunning, however they are limited by the source material - a crappy DVD will still look crappy! But, they do 'upscale' decent material, and most of your old favourites will look fantastic. I do disagree about 1080i vs 1080p - if you view fron a 'normal' distance, I doubt you could tell the difference. The one exception being Bluray video, which is the only 1080p source material available. In other words - go for it! But as Gary said, don't go for a cheapo. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
My comment regarding 1080i vs 1080p was more to ensure Tony gets as future-proof a tv as he can - I've seen several 50" and two 60" tvs and although it was possible to discern 1080p from 1080i, it wasn't anything you'd worry about. Some Freeview channels really look shit on a large screen. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
...and you wouldn't really want to watch VHS (spit) on that big a screen. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
We're slowly turning our houses into Ray Bradbury's vision of the future. How long till the entire wall is a TV screen? (I wonder if they were load-bearing walls... | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.108.76 |
I'm still trying to resist large screens. Winning at the moment. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.98 |
Like I said, part of me hates them, but another part wants to watch the odd movie on a biggy, have a bit of a cinema thing going on in the back room. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.235.87 |
My thought exactly. In a few more years you'll be able to have meaningful conversations with any soap's protagonists. What's that Bradbury story about a man who pours chocolate ice cream in a machine because everybody is talking to wrist radios instead of each other? That one has arrived, hasn't it - except we're not wearing our mobile phones on our wrists? | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
I have a projector and a huge pull-up screen that lives at the foot of the four-poster bed. So watching movies is like being in a tiny little private cinema. It wasn't cheap, but it takes up less room than a big plasma screen would. My system has the capability of TV - that is, there's a box, but I don't know how to turn it on. Never watch TV - only DVDs. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
My telly is square. Luddite, huh? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
I'm just waiting for my TV to go 'pop', so's I can get a plasma/LCD jobbie, although it'll be 46" at most. Think I've mentioned on here before, but a mate who lives in Brizzle has a high-def projection setup with a 92" screen. Looks a bit tasty using BluRay discs, although the six o'clock news is a bit big. | ||
| Michael_kelly (Michael_kelly) Username: Michael_kelly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.188.66.127 |
I've a 40" Samsung LCD and I love it. I have a high-def digital cable package, and the HD channels are quite stunning. I can watch National Geographic and Discovery for hours on end. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
I saw National Geographic on a big HD tv in a shop recently and it looked almost 3D - absolutely beautiful. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
...although the friend who was with me at the time commented "real life isn't that clear"! | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.151.125.7 |
"...and you wouldn't really want to watch VHS (spit) on that big a screen." No Viddy-o?? gcw  | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.244.130.186 |
Since this weekend I have a very very nice 40" Sony lcd tv. One which looks like a photo frame (thin black border and white passe-partout around the screen). Full 1080p. It's truly lovely, and it fits in my interior concept. but... You don't need to buy a blue ray player for excellent results (and frankly which movies are worth the blue ray price compared to normal dvd? not many) but you need to have an hdmi cable connection for really nice results. My older dvd player with a classic scart connection looks crap, as it goes back to analogue and then again to digital. With hdmi you stay all digital from the disc until the screen, and hdmi devices can typically upscale the dvd to the high res screen in a nice way. In my case I have splendid experience with my macbook pro connected to the Sony tv (the mac has a dvi output port which is in essence the same as hdmi, you just need a specific cable). Really, we saw 3:10 to Yuma (so-so ending but great dialogue) and part of Terminator 2 with the mac as dvd player and it was a great experience. Anyway, you are now able to buy cheap dvd players with hdmi output and if you are going for that big screen, better spend 100-150 pound more for a new hdmi-ready dvd player (the entry level Denon should be great for example) that maximises the experience. on projectors: well they can be good if they have a high res, and especially if the room is really dark. Otherwise you have low contrast : a projector can't project black, so the darkest black is how black your white screen or wall looks in the dark, meaning the experience seriously suffers in all but the darkest rooms. A grey screen helps a bit, but still. I prefer the polyvalence of a modern high contrast lcd tv, but I understand if others prefer the image size which only a projector can give. on plasma: except for the largest screens they are going out of fashion. In theory they are still giving the highest contrast but these days good lcds come really close. And, importantly, if you want to connect a computer to the tv then you really want lcd. Even with protective circuits a stable image might "burn" into the plasma screen and that would be so very very sad... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.190.194 |
Plasma is OK... but the red corpuscles add flavour and nutritional value. | ||
| Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.220.1.140 |
"Some Freeview channels really look shit on a large screen" They certainly do, Mick! Very little is broadcast, here in Aus, in HD. But when it is, the picture quality is stunning. | ||
| Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.220.1.140 |
I think you'll find that the 'image burn' problem has been sorted by the major plasma brands - Pioneer, Panasonic etc. Tom - is it worth trying to connect a PC to a plasma? I have a lot of torrents on my hard drive, and I always burn them to DVD. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.206.53 |
I don't think plasma or LCD has yet reached the quality of the old CRTs, Tony. I'm not even waiting for them to. My 32" CRT and DVD player are excellent. I find that although you can get a good picture on one of the new ones, you end up having to fiddle with the remote for every time you change the DVD to do so. I've been thinking about getting a HD projector and screen though. What sense of occaision the ritual of pulling that screen down evokes. And that cone of light stabbing out from the darkness, dust motes floating in it like deep sea fish. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.206.53 |
Fahrenheit 451 had a giant television on every wall of the room, bar one, as I remember. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
Proto - my 36" crt telly has a lovely picture. The only thing that standard def LCD/plasma tvs have that my crt doesn't is good geometry, but I believe that's nigh on impossible for crt tellies anyhow. I'd love a biggun (oo-er) but I'm happy with the crt 'til it dies (and now I've said I want it to as I want a newer, bigger one, it will last for bloody years). | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.88.98 |
Sigh - now I dunno what to do! My only fear with the projectors is the price of the bulbs... aren't they pricey? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.223.67 |
Not sure -- you can read some web reviews on them. Projectors are certainly coming down in price a lot. I think you get a couple of thousand hours from a bulb. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.223.67 |
I really don't like LCDs and plasmas, at least as they are now. The picture can be razor sharp but now know what David Lynch was talking about when he said that the picture is too clear. In standard definition, there's room to dream. For me, there's just no magic in HD, or at least the HD displays I've seen so far. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.244.130.186 |
> I think you'll find that the 'image burn' problem has been sorted by the major plasma brands - Pioneer, Panasonic etc. I know how they do it, and even so, I do think that lcds are the better choice if you want to use your pc for long times on a plasma. I mean, if for example the windows start button or the mac icon bar will be visible for a long time. Anyway, it's not an important discussion anymore as plasma is being used less and less except for the biggest screens. > Tom - is it worth trying to connect a PC to a plasma? I have a lot of torrents on my hard drive, and I always burn them to DVD. It will look pretty good if the downloaded movie is in a good quality, and if you have a dvi screen connector on your pc (if it's not a fossil, there is a good chance that your pc will have dvi), because then you can stay completely in the digital domain. An old style VGA connector is analogue however. Yesterday I saw the new Galactica episode straight from the Mac. I had downloaded it in a higher res 720p version. It looked really nice. > My only fear with the projectors is the price of the bulbs... aren't they pricey? Depending on the brand some 250 pounds. Typically 2000-3000 hours usage (but don't switch them off and on too quickly). And watch your electricity bill! 1200 watts will make a noticeable difference. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.78.3 |
"Just sit closer to your own telly." Yes, about eight to ten inches is perfect. Bathe in the glow of the cathode god. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
Plus you can do away with your remote control unit. Save a fortune on batteries. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
Forgive my Yorkshireman logic Part 2. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
What's that Bradbury story about a man who pours chocolate ice cream in a machine because everybody is talking to wrist radios instead of each other? That one has arrived, hasn't it - except we're not wearing our mobile phones on our wrists? I think it might be called the Murderer. But I'm going to have to check. And yes F451 does have 3 walls of every room working as TV screens. That means at least one must have been load bearing. I wonder if plasma screens are designed that way yet. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.221.107 |
http://technabob.com/blog/2009/01/19/philips-cinema-21-9-ultra-widescreen/ | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.23.154 |
My bet is that 3 or 4 wall screens are definitely coming our way, with the added bonus (if you pay for it, that goes without saying) of interaction. Even today some people talk about their 'families' as if they were real people . . . Scary. Bradbury may be the least technical sf writer, he was prescient about a lot of things. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.4.36 |
I like my asthma screen TV, but it keeps breaking down during intense action sequences.... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 79.187.206.46 |
 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.6.73 |
Uh-oh, look - Frank is having an asthma attack himself - he's positively wheezing - BREATHE, FRANK!!!! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.23.30 |
I recommend Ventolin. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.6.73 |
That or Ventaneck. |