Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Advice on television choice

I hear what you are saying.....I spent many hours on AVS before I bought my LCD TV. Reports of Flashlighting and Clouding had me concerned. In the end, after several hours of viewing for myself in big box stores, I went ahead and purchased. When I got home, I had both the dreaded Flashlighting AND Clouding. My first thought was..."I knew it!". But....both "problems" were only visible in gray screen or blank screen mode. In actual useage, it has never been an issue. Moral: Take the AVS rants with a grain....I am sure that there are legit issues discussed but a lot of those guys will pick a nit of a nit of a nit.

Agree 100%, those videophiles pick apart picture quality worse than we do with sound. Other than Rainbow effects etc., which obviously deal with color and actual viewing material, most complaints come from black variations and most admit the issues are nearly only seen when credits roll or very dark scenes in movies etc. Not a big deal in my book so once I get the house and hava place to put the TV, which ever TV I can get the best deal on out of a select few will be the one I go with.

I do have to laugh a little at some of the complaints of off angle viewing, some of those guys are talking about an angle so ridiculously high I would never watch from.

It's true LCDs do become unviewable from extreme angles, but any amount off center and contrast starts to drop. Heck, on big screens which fill your field of view it's possible for the sides to already have a measurable contrast drop.

Try some of these test patterns on an LCD display (you can use either a HTPC or a media player, just make sure the driving device and the display are in pix-by-pix mode): http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

I own the Samsung LCD LN37B550 37 inch and I'm disappointed in the off-viewing angle performance. The only time I can see a really decent picture is when I'm looking exactly from the center. Anything off from this, the picture quality starts to degrade. But since I only paid $700 for it, I tell myself that I'll just upgrade in a couple of years and delegate this either to another room or to a friend that can't afford one.

I can easily watch my 6 series Sammy from 45* off centre...at 60* off centre you can see the picture degrades quite rapidly but who watches TV at these angles anyhow?

Exactly

The 6 series must have a much better panel that the cheaper ones, then.

Honestly I don't know, Cat. I doubt if the 60 vs 120 hz has anything to do with it which I think is the major diff between the two. Is your TV 1080p?

Yes, 1080p. In the stores I don't see the PQ dropoff like I do at home when I walk back and forth in front of it. I have the backlight turned down to 5, which helped for direct zero degree viewing. I set the brightness and contrast according to instructions on a calibration disk. My chair that I watch from is about 20 deg off. Sometimes, I pull up my computer chair and watch at zero degrees off and I get a much better picture. (Earlier I compared this TV with my 26 inch Samsung LN26B360 and got the exact same picture quality with off angle viewing, so I know it's not a defective panel).

You're not catching reflections off a nearby window or anything?