Thinking of buying a 32' samsung R7 but need advice

Gerard_Smith

Hello

I'm thinking of buying a 32' Samsung R7 as it seems to be the best TV you can get for the money but I am a bit worried. I have an Xbox 360 so obviously HD is going to be a big part of what I'm buying it but lets face facts for the foreseeable future SD is going to be the primary thing this TV is used for. I'm just wondering how it will handle. It would be replacing a 28' JVC AV-28X4 CRT which has an absolutely beautifully picture so I would expect a picture drop but will it really be that noticeable? I also have a PS2 a Gamecube and an original xbox, how will these fair? What about DVDs?

Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

YoYOPowder

Gerard_Smith wrote:

Hello

I'm thinking of buying a 32' Samsung R7 as it seems to be the best TV you can get for the money but I am a bit worried. I have an Xbox 360 so obviously HD is going to be a big part of what I'm buying it but lets face facts for the foreseeable future SD is going to be the primary thing this TV is used for. I'm just wondering how it will handle. It would be replacing a 28' JVC AV-28X4 CRT which has an absolutely beautifully picture so I would expect a picture drop but will it really be that noticeable? I also have a PS2 a Gamecube and an original xbox, how will these fair? What about DVDs?

Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

I have the 40" so the 32" being substantially smaller you should see less imperfections than I do.

DVD quality - excellent
XBox - Dont have one, but this was the LCD promoted with the Xbox, so I assume it would be perfect.
SD TV Sky+ - Ranges from channel to channel, ranges from sh!t to quite good.
DID showing HD content in their shops - Excellent.


On a side note, a v good crt will outperform the LCD on SD quite easily, but to really appreciate HD from any source Xbox etc, my advise would be to bite the bullet and go for a 37" LCD. You'll have it two days and you'll say Im really glad I didn't go with the 32". I promise you'll say that.

By the way, my bro has a 37" Sony Wega CRT, Sky SD looks rubbish on it also.

Zombrex

Gerard_Smith wrote:

Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Buy a good quality upscaler stand alone unit. Or an AV reciever system with a good upscaler.

An upscaler converts a SD picture to a HD picture. All HD TVs have one otherwise you wouldn't see a picture, but they aren't all that good (some are). A stand alone unit is a better option.

http://www.lumagen.com/ make units that i hear are good (if expensive). I'm sure you can find cheaper ones, but this will give you an idea of what they do

Gerard_Smith

YoYOPowder wrote:

I have the 40" so the 32" being substantially smaller you should see less imperfections than I do.

DVD quality - excellent
XBox - Dont have one, but this was the LCD promoted with the Xbox, so I assume it would be perfect.
SD TV Sky+ - Ranges from channel to channel, ranges from sh!t to quite good.
DID showing HD content in their shops - Excellent.


On a side note, a v good crt will outperform the LCD on SD quite easily, but to really appreciate HD from any source Xbox etc, my advise would be to bite the bullet and go for a 37" LCD. You'll have it two days and you'll say Im really glad I didn't go with the 32". I promise you'll say that.

By the way, my bro has a 37" Sony Wega CRT, Sky SD looks rubbish on it also.

The 32" is as big as I can go, anything more would be too big for the room, I would have to nail myself to the fair wall to get optimum viewing distance. I went up to DID today and had a look at the 32" running SD, hard to tell as the signal was obviously poor but for a bad signal it wasn't that bad. Another one however had and The Incredibles playing on it, this picture was quite poor for some reason lots of blocking and artifacts. At least it showed that the TV had a very fast response time and could display a very good black.

(Also Wicknight, thank you for the advice but I can't afford an upscaler right now. Something to keep in mind for the future though)

Gerard_Smith

Something I forgot to ask in the original post, can this TV display a 60Hz NTSC signal via scart? I have a lot of imported American DVDs.

Gerard_Smith

Heres another question, the TOSHIBA - 32wl66 is considerably harder to get a hold of but I have heard good things. How does this compare to the Samsung R7? I hear it has a better picture but I fail to see how a set with a 1000:1 contrast ratio can have a picture that is that much better than a set with 5000:1.

YoYOPowder

Region 1 DVD's will play just fine. DID will show their SD content and possibly HD through one source and broadcast to lots of TV's, this is why you shouldn't expect a good picture. BTW, seen an XBox being played through an older model Samsung 32" and it was superb. The contrast on Samsungs is Dynamic Contrast and in reality would be closer to that of the toshiba that you mentioned, its more of a marketing ploy. At 32" you'll be very happy with either, dont wreck your head too much about it.

Gerard_Smith

YoYOPowder wrote:

dont wreck your head too much about it.

Bit late for that!