Okay, so 5 hours ago the TV arrived here. I spent about an hour figuring out what to do with it.
The executive summary: It looks damn nice, even on standard def sources, once you figure out what some assorted options do. Still no HD sources yet.
I've watched two movies now: Star Trek: First Contact, and Spirited Away. They were what was easy to get to in storage, where ALL my DVDs reside currently.
I played Star Trek first for no reason other than it has real people with real skin-tone. Playing a low-resolution DVD thru a high-resolution TV showed everything bad about DVDs. Video noise, in the form of odd grain patterns in the solid colors. There were all sorts of really obvious MPEG compression artifacts. The scene in the first warp ship where everything is shaking looked particularly, uh, "wobbly" in a bad makes-you-sick-to-your-stomach way.
The TV doesn't claim to do any upsampling, tho it does state it displays everything at 1920x1080 resolution, which is not the same thing.
On Spirited Away, I had read some of the manual, and had discovered assorted processing options, like one for MPEG sources. I discovered "Theater Mode", that lowers the contrast and brightness to conform to the standard that DVD's are built around. That standard more closely matches the way movies are shown on projectors in movie theaters than TV. It is also designed for dark rooms.
Anyway, with those changes made to the DVD player input, Spirited Away looked pretty damn good.
I wiped my Tivo when I packed it, seems like. When i finally found a power cable for it and turned it on it started up at the initial setup. It has no TV shows on it. With no cable cards, it isn't hugely useful, though I did at least get it talking to Tivo so when I do get cable cards it will have a guide and all it's updates.
For now, the TV is standing on the stereo stand. Those of you who know what I've been keeping my stereo on will know that this is maybe not the best choice, but it was either that or the floor. I must say though, it is more stable than I expected it to be. Just not as stable as I'd really like.
Posted by Wookie at April 10, 2008 08:02 PM