There's an elephant in the room! (Freeview picture performance on flat panel TVs)
I'm probably the last person I know who hasn't yet upgraded to a flat panel TV. And I would love to, but...
No one seems to mention it in these forums or in your excellent magazine but whenever I go to friends houses or to hotels the flat panels look great but I've never yet seen one with a picture to challenge a CRT telly. Go to Curry's and sure many of the displays look fantastic - I can only assume they are playing HD DVDs or similar - but every regular LCD TV I've seen viewing say a regular Freeview channel is, to my eyes at least, heavily pixiliated with lots of smearing whenever there is action or movement.
With the price of flat panels as they are (even though they've dropped dramatically) I don't have the funds for expensive home cinema set ups and HD DVDs or Sky HD. So what's the inside story on the best picture from Freeview on a flat panel TV? Is a clear picture possible? Would plasma be better than the rubbish LCD pictures I see every week in hotels?
Comments / recommendations gratefully appreciated.
I'd agree that many flatscreens in shops and hotels look truly woeful with standard-def TV. What they'd look like
a) properly calibrated; b) with a dedicated aerial feed rather than a poor shop/hotel shared system and c) if they're a leading screen is a different story.
As you'll regularly see in our TV tests - where we thoroughly test the performance of a set's analogue tuner as well as its Freeview one, ( plus its DVD, broadcast HD and Blu-ray/HD performance) - there is still incredibly variance in the quality of TV tuners in today's flatscreens. We always comment on it, and it regularly loses TVs star-ratings.
But the fact remains, as Dean points out, that standard TV is being stretched to its limits - even with in-set scaling - on a larger-screen set, especially if it's higher resolution. Add that so many digital TV channels are such low-quality broadcasts (in technical terms, not content. Though....) and even the best sets can struggle.
This link may help explain why you see pixelation on so called HD ready flat panels. Basically, if you buy a 42" + flat panel screen you have to do it justice and upgrade to sky HD, or wait a number of years until digital HD broadcasts are the standard. HD boxes are available on ebay new for £175 which aint bad considering its a sky+ too. monthly fee to switch on HD from Sky is extra £10 a month, but check for deals if you are a new customer.
http://www.hdtvorg.co.uk/focus/resolution.htm