Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler How big is Yours?

ok, i'll bite. What does the "Touch Focus" button do?

32" sony plasma
just signed up for adelphia cable in hd. their offerings are lean. it was only $4.00 per month more than the digital offering. considering our old tv was 20 yrs old, there is no comparison.
dan

1 & 2 - Mine's a 43 inch Samsung DLP (Apologies to those of you who've seen this before)



3 - Oh yes. I love HDTV, My cable company (COX) provides HBO, Showtime, ABC, CBS, Bravo, ESPN, INHD, and INHD2. Watching sporting events (football, hockey, and I hope baseball this summer) is a special treat.

4 - Fit the size of the TV not just to the room size, but also to how far from the set you'll be sitting. As you can see from the photo, I'm in relatively close quarters. So, although I've become accustomed to the size of my set (and have a secret longing for a 50 or 56 inch model), anything larger might be overkill for this room (11.5' x 18'; 7' to 9' from the set). If you are sitting to close for the size of the TV, you begin to lose "clarity," as the Capn brought up above. Nonetheless, get the biggest that you can afford and fit to the room and distance.

Metalaaron; One of the reasons I went with DLP is because of the size/weight factor. My old 24" Toshiba flat screen (which is now in the bedroom, and is still a very nice set) weighs 75 pounds. My 43" Samsung, weighs 7 pounds LESS at 67 pounds, and I can move it (albeit very carefully because of size, not weight) by myself. And, It's only 16" deep.

27" RCA stereo tube... seriously considering replacing it with the 26' x 20' jumbotron from the arena when they tear it down.

There, I win!

Bren R.

In reply to:

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ok, i'll bite. What does the "Touch Focus" button do?

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Bad... bad... things oldskool.

Like so many companies out there, striving to find the best innovation for the consumers' ease of use and the lust for the highest quality tweakings as possible, there are 2 right now that make me wince.
One is the YPAO feature of the new receivers.
The second feature (one that i own) is the Touch Focus button on my Toshiba rptv.

Technically it is supposed to align the guns so that all the convergence comes together nice and sharp. In reality it warps the damn guns more out of place than they were when i bought the unit. After first using this amazingly vaunted feature myself, i had to go online and find the Toshiba access codes normally used only by technicians which took some digging (many thanks to HomeTheatreSpot for the help though). Using these codes invalidates the warranty and you can seriously screw up the tv if you set something wrong. I found a great guide to doing a 56 point convergence alignment of the guns and after using the S&V disc following the convergence fix, the Toshiba was looking awesome!!
Then my brother in law came along to watch our dogs last weekend while i was at the Axiom Factory. He was playing his PS2 and noticed some slight misalignment of green and red in one corner (i haven't retweaked the set in a couple of months now so it was probably due) and he thought the Touchfocus button would fix it.
Obviously after using the button, he realized this judgement was seriously in error.
He then proceeded to try the "reset" button also on the front of the Toshiba thinking that would set everything back to the way it was. Of course the reset button sets everything back to the way Toshiba originally gave it to me with the contrast maxed out at 100%, shaprness set to zero, every other parameter set to on or 50%, etc. etc.

Needless to say, Touchfocus is a nightmare.
I now have a 2 hour tweakfest ahead of me this weekend.
At least Toshiba was thoughtful enough to include a lockout of the front panel controls in their menu. Too bad i had not set it up before i left. I never thought there would be a reason for him to use the Touchfocus.
Darned inquisitive relatives.

chess, post a wet paint sign and watch how many people touch the paint to see if it actually is wet.

I have a 61" Samsung DLP. I use a Sony HD Directv receiver. HD content is awesome. I have the Denon 910 and DVD picture quality is superb. Right now I have a POLK RM6700 sub/sat system. It does ok, but I am going to purchase an axiom set. Just trying to decide what setup to go with.

I have heard some complaints and concerns by people about the DLP's, but all I can say is if there is a better picture than what my setup provides, I would be amazed, and want to see it.

Within the last year got a Panasonic 34" widescreen pure flat
got it for $1500 at Circuit City. I was originally in love with a Sony 32" plasma, but I got that look from my wife and did not even push the issue.

My personal thought on the use of a old TV with a great audio set-up is that the audio fidelity makes up about 70% of your HT experience. So immersing yourself into a movie is much easier with awsome sound and a crappy TV, rather than the reverse. Then again what do I know?

my TV is a Sharp 36" stereo tube set. nothing special.. it was an improvement from my 27", but seems small now. since my entertainment center only holds a 36", my future options are limited..

i have measured, and the 42" flat/plasma screens will fit in the space in the E.C. on a stand.. it sticks out just a little bit, but definetely manageable..that will be my next 'BIG' purchase, a few years away..

i am getting DirecTv srvc in a few weeks.. i wanna go ahead and get it installed before the speakers arrive so i can hook it all up together.

bigjohn

I have a Samsung HLN-507W 50" rear projection DLP. Media is Hi-Def Comcast cable box (DCT5100), soon to be DirecTV HR10-250 (formerly HD-DVR250), aka "HD Tivo". I also have a Bravo D1 DVD player with DVI output. Although not high-def, well mastered DVDs played on a DVI-capable player to an HD display with DVI input can have almost HD quality to the casual observer.

Because of the high resolution, the viewing distance calculation is different from analog NTSC. You basically must sit closer to see all the resolution you paid for. For this reason a physically larger display may be more useful than you first think.

The extreme light weight and relative thin depth of the DLP is nice. The 50" is only 17.5" deep and weighs only 77 lbs. My wife and I have easily moved it several times when re-cabling equipment.

If you're used to time shifting via a VCR, Tivo, or other recorder, be advised HDTV recording is in its infancy, definitely less mature than HDTV displays themselves. Fortunately within the next year HD digital video recorders in cable boxes and satellite receivers will be more available and less buggy than today.

If you don't have HD cable or don't like it, be prepared to put up an antenna. Even if you have an HD satellite dish, you'll usually need an antenna for local HD channels, since the satellite providers don't have HD local channels. See http://www.antennaweb.org/

Material availability is pretty good, except for the difficulty of recording HD. Many of ABC, NBC and CBS prime time shows are HD. Specials like the Superbowl are HD. HBO and Showtime have HD versions.

Image quality is generally very good, but ultimately limited by source material. There's wide variation in quality of film-to-HD transfers. Likewise the bit rate can vary significantly from some local broadcasters. The worst offenders are those which use "subchannels" to steal bandwidth from the HD channel in order to provide additional lower-res channels like home shopping, etc. The lower data rate can cause pixelation and "macro blocking" on certain scenes.

In general HDTV is now at a maturity level so it's useful, with the caveats of difficulty/complexity of recording and frequent need of an antenna if not using HD cable.