Give your TV a new home from IKEA
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Good size, picture quality, and price"
Pros: 1080i quality, 2.1 surround sound virtualization
Cons: input selection button scrolls through sources
Summary: While the wife was set for a plasma TV, the prices are still yet a little beyond what we have planned. Unfortunately, our current (and long serving) 27" JVC CRT started to go bad and watching episodes of Monk was a pain in whiteout mode. We needed to get a new set before the new season of BSG started.
We came upon this model while it was positioned at the corner section of a Video Only store. What initially impressed me was the clarity of the picture at an angle for an LCD set. LCD?s had the rap of the inability of viewing the picture when you go beyond a certain angle away from the center of the screen. The missus had her treadmill next to the couch and it was difficult for her to view the 27? CRT from an angled view without moving the TV.
What also impressed me was that this set was 1080i native, the highest level of picture clarity. Yes, it has a built-in tuner but the native 1080i picture resolution for me, has negated the warnings of a built-in tuner not being able to upgrade to a better picture quality-it is already at the highest quality. What sold it to the wife was the HD picture quality while watching a DVD on food.
We bought the set for $2599.99 and it fit just right in the back seat of Chevy Malibu with about an inch to spare on each end. No, the box had to removed and folded and made as a back cushion for the set. But we kept the TV in the shipping box bottom which served as a steady and sturdy base while in transit. It still needed two people to handle moving the TV out of the car as it was not the lightest thing in the world-but it is not as bulky as the old 27? CRT set.
The TV was kept mounted on its table top stand with a later thought in making it a wall mounted set in the future. The initial wiring setup was not troublesome- just figuring out what goes where (a DVD player, an LD player, and 2 VCRs) took a bit of thinking. You will need good access to the back side to make the best cabling connection and cable management. Even though you can rotate the screen 20 degrees to the sides, I could not recommend doing that while hooking your peripherals to it.
JVC gives you two cable splitters, two RF cables, the remote and batteries with the set. The TV has a 75-Ohm (VHF/UHF) and ATSC digital Cable In coaxial receptacles for input. The splitter splits the coaxial from the cable to both connections or splits the signal between the VCR and TV and to both connectors.
The set has inputs for the following:
-2 video (RCA Connectors: Audio/ Video)
-2 video (RBG)
-2 digital (HDMI)
-2 iLink
-2 S-Video
-1 PCM/digital audio (optical)
-1 PC Video (max resolution 1024x768 at 60Hz)
- Cable Card
-RS-232
-SD (multi-media) card for software updates
-Headphone
I suggest getting those Velcro cable straps in managing the cables as you will make changes to it later. We use rolls of the Velcro cable straps in my IT job for server room cable management and it helps out a lot when you are adding or removing machines regularly.
You have several viewing ratios depending on what you are watching in broadcast or recorded programs:
>480p
-Panorama
-Cinema
-Full
-Regular
>1080i
-Panorama Zoom
-Cinema Zoom
-Full
-Full Native
>780p
-Panorama Zoom
-Cinema Zoom
-Full
>480i
-Panorama Zoom
-Cinema Zoom
-Full
-Slim
>PC
-Full
-Regular
The best aspect setting for standard cable TV viewing is Full. The best aspect ration for DVD viewing is Full. The Cinema aspect sort of cuts the top and bottom of the picture for both TV and DVD viewing. Until we get Digital Cable with HD, I cannot comment on the other settings.
To get the best quality picture for playing recorded DVD, you will need the current generation of DVD players with the progressive scan which adds more lines. Most DVDs are at 480 resolution so picture quality will suffer. We purchased a Sony DVP-NS75H DVD player that upscale the picture resolution to 780/1080i so that our current DVDs can be played in the TVs native mode. Picture is excellent and all you need is the HDMI cable to hook up to the TV for video and sound (the bad part is the HDMI cable DOES NOT come with the DVD player and it is an additional $60 minimum for just the cable).
The 2.1 surround is excellent in creating a virtual surround sound with just the TV speakers. I am tempted to just run the system in that sound setting for the time being until I build our Media Center PC.
The only disappointment I have with this set is the input button which it rotates the sources in order rather than being able to specifically choose which input to play from. Maybe I haven?t re-read the whole manual yet that has the desired control feature I want.
