Are big tellies worth buying?

[marinyork]

It's not new news, just confirmation of who's won. And before that I didn't genuinely know whether it'd be film4 or Five. Five makes it simpler for the viewers although shame for film fans.

I think it will be on freesat, it's not like technically at the moment freeview has the space for it. I think either the BBC will relent and make their transponder on astra 2D DVB-S2 and squeeze 3 or 4 HD channels on that they'll share with the others, or this secret testing to share with ITV and C4 will come to something or there'll just generally be some musical chairs to free up the space. There's a great deal of crap that can be kicked off if need be.

 

[stewlewis]

I've just 'upgraded' from a 32" Thomson 100hz CRT to a 42" Panasonic Plasma:

I'm not impressed. In answer to the Thread - No not if 90% of your viewing is SD material via Scart.

Room/Screen size and viewing distance make a big difference. My 42", SD material sit no closer than 13ft away or it looks v grainy. HD material sit no further than 5.5ft away or you lose definition.

SD material via scart/RGB looks poor, the 32" CRT p'ed on it.

Playstation 2 SD, looks awful. Had to buy component cables, brighter image and clear but the resolution is too low, looks like an Amstrad CPC464. Movement is blocky and jerky. Hate it.

HD material, looks very nice. I don't have Blu-Ray yet but I have tried 720p video from my PC to VGA. Crystal clear. Need to buy DVI>HDMI cable to get 1080 resolution.

Image movement/retention is better on LCD than Plasma and better on smaller screen sizes.

Plasma is nice and dark/bright on film.
I can push it right back to the wall, the room looks bigger and my sound system speaker can sit back against the wall too, and sound better.

Sky have the only HD content worth considering. I have Virgin for the broadband and can't justify Sky too.

DVD's. The TV upscales and DVD players don't make much difference. The quality gain is not so much the upscaling it's the newer DVD players are usualy connected digitally via HDMI.

HD-DVDs are down the pan, but that means HD-DVD players will be top quality DVD players on Ebay with digital outputs.

It's all about the source. HD is great but be prepared to upgrade most components, cables and providers for any benefit.

I'd have been better off spending the £400 to knock out the chimney breast and sink the 32" CRT back into the wall.

Oh, and the Simpsons and Family guy look like they were drawn with MS Paint not Flash and ToonBoom.

 

[marinyork]

You've fallen into the apples and oranges trap outlined above I'm afraid stewlewis.