Really high resolution monitor brands

[FMod]

Of course you see it for yourself, you take the stores lighting into account, if the lighting in store is so bad you can't see then you go elsewhere. What's better? seeing for yourself or taking the word of a stranger? Good TVs are expensive, if I'm going to spend £1000+ on one I want to see it first. The AV forum link is good, it underlines what I said.

Depends on what you are looking for. If I have to pick a car, I want to drive it for myself. If I have to pick a particle collision detector, I'll trust the word of an experienced scientist any time of the day.

 

Modern TVs over 30" are all, speaking in absolute terms, very high quality. It's not 1960s where some had color and others didn't. They don't even use TN panels, it's all xVA vs IPS now. There's no noise, all have wide viewing angles, all are perfectly sharp, all... tell me if I missed something. I don't think I could even point out a modern flatscreen TV from a known brand that isn't overkill for traditional use as a TV (i.e. a family viewing news and the occasional episode of I Love Lucy in a dining room).

 

It's a contest between home theater grade equipment. And for home theater use, most modern TVs are woefully inadequate. They're too small; viewed in the dark, LCD units fail to display anything resembling black; and with the proliferation of glass screens (which look great in the store), it's not like you can see anything on them other than in the dark.

 

There's also the issue of calibration. All TV sets in a store are uncalibrated. To a trained eye, it just looks bad. To an untrained eye (i.e. 99% of customers), the brightest and most saturated image that isn't yet obnoxiously oversaturated will look best. Most makers will try to catch that "sweet" spot (sweet in a store, not at home) and come up with different spots.

 

So, you should definitely go to a store if you want to check out how the chassis looks, if the screen is too glossy or OK, how convenient the remote is. To check image quality? Well, if you have a store dedicated enough to customer service that they'll let you calibrate the TV, provide a BD player to use your own reference video material, turn the lights off for you, or, better, move the TV in a viewing room - then yes.

Hi-Fi showrooms do provide such services for customers picking their audio equipment, complete with private listening rooms. If they also carry HT TV sets, they may or may not also provide described service. You have to know which image flaws to look for, because they aren't obvious at first.

 

But if one was just going to waltz into Best Buy and watch a looped video clip or a TV channel on 50 sets lined up on the shelves - you might as well <insert analogy of choice here>.

[JimboUK]

Of course you see it for yourself, you take the stores lighting into account, if the lighting in store is so bad you can't see then you go elsewhere. What's better? seeing for yourself or taking the word of a stranger? Good TVs are expensive, if I'm going to spend £1000+ on one I want to see it first. The AV forum link is good, it underlines what I said.

Depends on what you are looking for. If I have to pick a car, I want to drive it for myself. If I have to pick a particle collision detector, I'll trust the word of an experienced scientist any time of the day.

 

Modern TVs over 30" are all, speaking in absolute terms, very high quality. It's not 1960s where some had color and others didn't. They don't even use TN panels, it's all xVA vs IPS now. There's no noise, all have wide viewing angles, all are perfectly sharp, all... tell me if I missed something. I don't think I could even point out a modern flatscreen TV from a known brand that isn't overkill for traditional use as a TV (i.e. a family viewing news and the occasional episode of I Love Lucy in a dining room).

 

It's a contest between home theater grade equipment. And for home theater use, most modern TVs are woefully inadequate. They're too small; viewed in the dark, LCD units fail to display anything resembling black; and with the proliferation of glass screens (which look great in the store), it's not like you can see anything on them other than in the dark.

 

There's also the issue of calibration. All TV sets in a store are uncalibrated. To a trained eye, it just looks bad. To an untrained eye (i.e. 99% of customers), the brightest and most saturated image that isn't yet obnoxiously oversaturated will look best. Most makers will try to catch that "sweet" spot (sweet in a store, not at home) and come up with different spots.

 

So, you should definitely go to a store if you want to check out how the chassis looks, if the screen is too glossy or OK, how convenient the remote is. To check image quality? Well, if you have a store dedicated enough to customer service that they'll let you calibrate the TV, provide a BD player to use your own reference video material, turn the lights off for you, or, better, move the TV in a viewing room - then yes.

Hi-Fi showrooms do provide such services for customers picking their audio equipment, complete with private listening rooms. If they also carry HT TV sets, they may or may not also provide described service. You have to know which image flaws to look for, because they aren't obvious at first.

 

But if one was just going to waltz into Best Buy and watch a looped video clip or a TV channel on 50 sets lined up on the shelves - you might as well <insert analogy of choice here>.

 

There are plenty of TVs over 30" that are awful, take a look in the local supermarket, their shelves are full of them. You don't need a viewing room if you go to a retailer that knows what they're doing, I can think of four stores around here where the lighting is dimmed in the TV section, it makes sense, the TVs stand out more. You just ask them to turn down the brightness, saturation and turn off any post processing, they won't mind you doing it yourself if they think they'll get a sale out of it. You go to look at them because quality is largely subjective past a certain point and not everyone sees things in the same way, everyones eyes are different. Average Joe may read a review where the reviewer says a TV is garbage, without seeing it for himself his dismisses that and buys a more expensive model when maybe he would have been happy with the cheaper one if he'd have seen it. Anyway these days you can read the online reviews and see the set for yourself at the same time, being surrounded by electronics doesn't make for a great 3G signal but I've yet to lose the internet completely in a store. The LG we have a the moment looked great in store, I done a quick check online to see if there were any issues with it and also to see if it was cheaper elsewhere, there where no known issues and it wasn't cheaper elsewhere so we bought it. I had a look at the reviews when I got home and I don't think they were reviewing the same set, some even got the features wrong. We've got a great TV in the living room now, had I gone on reviews alone I wouldn't have bought it.

[FMod]

There are plenty of TVs over 30" that are awful, take a look in the local supermarket, their shelves are full of them.

I'm not sure which specifically, from major makers (LG and better). Any model name?

 

A lot don't fit HT standards, but there's hardly anything that doesn't look good in the store.

Unless, of course, they forgot to crank brightness and contrast up to the max, so the picture looks bleak and gray compared to cartoonishly bright sets next to it.

 

 

You don't need a viewing room if you go to a retailer that knows what they're doing, I can think of four stores around here where the lighting is dimmed in the TV section, it makes sense, the TVs stand out more. You just ask them to turn down the brightness, saturation and turn off any post processing, they won't mind you doing it yourself if they think they'll get a sale out of it.

Actually you still need to calibrate the set. If you have a colorimeter, you can do it yourself. Reviews on some sites, such as flatpanelshd.com, include calibrated settings for the sets they test, so you can check the review for your model and apply the settings.

 

 

You go to look at them because quality is largely subjective past a certain point and not everyone sees things in the same way, everyones eyes are different.

This is true in the world of hi-fi audio, but not in the world of displays. Video quality is objective and measurable.

You have strengths, like max brightness, panel contrast level, LD contrast level, color gamut, subpixel area ratio. More is always better.

Then you have flaws, like min brightness, backlight unevenness, overdrive tails, LD haloing, stereo ghosting, color shift for TN, black crunch for VA panels, violet for IPS. Less is always better.

 

All of them can be measured, and all of them need to be considered, individually and together.

Are your eyes and skills good enough to do in minutes in a regular storeroom what professional hardware reviewers have to look at for a couple hours on different material and measure in darkened rooms with equipment, and do it better? Then you have my congratulations and envy.

 

 

 

edit: On TV sets - in UK you have Philips 9000 series sets, such as 46PFL9706 or the cheaper 40PFL9705. If the prices I've seen online are true (as little as 720 pounds for 9705), there's simply no beating them, or even coming close to them for the price. If image quality alone is considered and not design (though I don't mind the industrial look of Philips sets at all myself).

 

For some reason (probably an agreement with Sony, which sells too-similar-for-coincidence sets at huge markup) these high-end Philips units aren't sold in US, and the next best thing, particular Vizio models, lag behind considerably. Or one can buy Sony HX909 ~= Philips 9705 without Ambilight for twice the price.

Edited September 13, 2012 by FMod

[Thor.]

I've added a poll to the subject if anyone's interested,http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/thumbsup.gif Edited September 13, 2012 by Thor.