I recently persuaded Sarah to let me buy a High Definition (HD) TV, a 32″ LCD job.
After much research, I decided on a Vistron model from eBuyer – there are over 50 customer reviews on their site and it seems most of them are pretty good.
It was delivered in a couple of days (eBuyer’s delivery has always been top notch) and then sat around the house for about 3 days waiting for me to return from the States.
I have it all installed and working now and I can certainly see it is a great TV – I plugged in my Acer laptop and played some of the free HD WMV clips that Microsoft have available on their website. The screen runs at 1366 * 768 and is real sharp, the HD WMV’s look great.
There are also plenty of inputs on the unit including :
- HDMI (720p with support for HDCP)
- 2 SCART connectors (1 is full IN/OUT, other is IN only)
- Component Video
- Composite Video & Audio (YRL)
- S-Video
- Antenna (for the Analogue and Digital, Freeview, DVB-T signal)
That said, in the UK there is no HD content over DVB-T (Freeview), except the trial stuff for 550 user going on around London. I don’t have a Xbox 360 (yet) nor a Sky HD box nor a HD DVD player so basically I’m stuck with Standard Definition (SD) for the time being…
I knew this would be the case, but I didn’t expect the visual experience of SD on a HD TV to be quite so bad. The artifacting is really noticeable, it’s a real pain trying to get a decent (stretched) picture from 4:3 to fill the whole screen.
OK it’s not too bad with widescreen stuff, DVD’s etc, but it’s just not the experience I was expecting.
The next options are basically to spend another £300 on a Sky HD box (and £10/month subscription) or maybe a Xbox360 for he DVD aspect – there are other less expensive HD DVD options but I like the thought of using the Xbox360 as a media extender and going with Windows MCE 2005 on my PC.
In summary, I’d recommend the HD LCD TV if you have Sky HD or do lots of XBox360 gaming, otherwise I’d skip it.