A couple of weeks ago I bought myself a brand new TV.  A rather exciting purchase since I've had my Mitsubishi 68cm CRT for almost a decade now, I think.

The Shopping

The story starts with a Retravision catalogue advertising a Samsung LA40S71BX 40 inch LCD TV (1366 x 768 pixels) for around $2200 (RRP $3299).  The price was right, the reviews were good.  But Retravision had no stock.  In fact they stocked sweet FA LCD TV's in that size and the ones they did have were odd-named brands with rubbish picture.

We looked at a couple of other stores but they all had pretty limited stock that was out of our price range so I jumped on the phone and rang around the stores in a town 100 km away.  Surprisingly, even Retravision there didn't have the TV from their catalogue either.

But I stuck luck with Joyce Mayne who offered the Samsung model up (LA40R71BDX) which included a built in HDTV tuner and a higher contrast ratio than the other model for just $2400 (RRP $4699) on interest-free finance.  Had I been paying cash they would have knocked $200 off that price.  They had a couple in stock and I made the decision to travel there on the weekend and pick it up.  A friend of mine has the same TV and his recommendation eased my mind about the purchase.

But just to be sure, I also rang Harvey Norman in the same town to ask about a price for the same TV.  They had 10 in stock and were selling it for just under $4000.  The price difference was so huge I had to triple check we were talking about the same TV.  When I told the guy what price I could get it for from Joyce Mayne he told me to buy it from them.  Since Joyce Mayne only had 2 in stock and I didn't want to chance missing out on such a bargain I rang them back, checked again we were talking about the same TV and placed a suspended purchase on it to ensure it would be waiting for me.

Getting it Home

The box was huge and we had to borrow a station wagon to get it home.  One of my concerns was transporting the TV in the correct orientation.  It's well documented that you should not transport a plasma TV laying down.  Apparently doing this can cause the glass to flex and tear the walls between the plasma pixels.  I couldn't find a reliable reference on the web about if you could transport an LCD laying down.  I knew the car wouldn't be big enough to stand it.  The sales staff at these stores didn't seem to know either.  My fears were put to rest when I seen arrows on the box that advised that the TV be laid down when transporting - so there you go.

Unpacking and setting up was relatively easy.  When I played my first DVD on it I was horrified at the image quality.  At first I was confused as the I was using component video cables and the DVD player was set correctly.  But it was poor picture was because the factory settings for the TV has the sharpening level set at 75%.  I turned it all the way down to 10% and it looked infinitely better.

I've seen it argued that with DVD you shouldn't need to use any sharpening.  I no longer believe this is totally true because the resolution of DVD and digital SDTV looks pretty poor on a 40 inch LCD.  Which makes me extremely glad I got a TV with a built in HDTV tuner because the difference in resolution between HDTV and DVD is night and day.  DVD is still good, but it's just not crisp.  You can notice that DVD's aren't that crisp even when viewing them on a PC monitor so it shouldn't be surprising that it will be noticeable on an LCD TV.

The Quality

It's difficult to judge the picture quality of the TV when you're not sure if any issues originate from source or not.  The higher quality the TV the more noticeable defects in the source will appear. 

On subtle transitions of colour you get a colour banding effect, most noticeable in dark scenes.  But this could be a result of MPEG compression in the source.  It also shows up compression artifects which I doubt is being introduced by the TV.

The colours of HDTV content from the built in tuner appears a little off.  The colours are very warm where skin tones appear as a hot peach colour.  It could be in the source, and it is only present on the HD channels.

High Definition

I think it's fair to say that the HD revolution is a long way away still and anyone wanting to jump on board now is jumping on too early.

The current offering of HD channels are still in testing.  Not all shows are broadcast on the HD channels and of those that are, some are SD upscaled to HD.  It's evident these channels are still in testing mostly because they lack commercials and any promotional information that are instead replaced with a HD demo video.  It funny how these demo videos makes the breaks seem even longer than if they were showing commercials.

HDTV is my first taste of HD though and I love it.  It's quite amazing to be able to see the individual droplets in mist of water, or the fine texture of fabric on clothes and furniture.  It makes SDTV and DVD look like a pile puke.  The difference is that significant that I've decided I will not buy any movies on DVD that I would prefer in HD.

If there was only one HD movie format I would probably go out today and buy a player and start my collection.  But because there is two I dare say it'll be years before I'm prepared to invest.