[mythtv-users] LCD HDTV recommendations (that are Myth friendly)...

[aaron]

On 4/9/08, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> i've been given the 'ok' from the CFO to upgrade our 10yo CRT to a
> modern day LCD HDTV.
> currently, 95% of what we watch is SD content captured by Myth.  the
> other 5% is DVD and Internet content.  i know that a lot of the
> earlier HDTV's really struggled to make SD video watchable.  is that
> still the case?

I recently got a 40" Samsung LN-T4069F. Unfortunately a 52"--60"
screen would look silly in my apartment, and we had enough trouble
squeezing the 40" into the car...

My source is analog cable, and I find that the picture is quite
watchable, both through Myth (which is connected via the analog VGA
input) and when I connect the cable directly.

DVDs look quite good as well, both through Myth and from the
standalone DVD player (connected via cheap "component" cables ...
actually they're audio cables, but who's counting :) )

>
> aside from brands/models of LCD's to look at, do you have any content
> suggestions?  most of the retailers either have a dedicated HD feed
> that they loop or some other high end signal to show off the maximum
> picture the sets can possibly display.  of course, these signals are
> rarely real world examples.

When I went to buy the TV the guy actually switched over to a "real"
feed (not sure whether it was satellite/cable/digital cable, etc, but
it was SD at least) to show me what it will look like. I was actually
impressed by that, considering it was Best Buy. :)

My only complaint is I don't really have any HD content to play on it.
Yet. One can only watch Elephant's Dream so many times ;-)  and I'm
not sure I can pick up much OTA from my location (haven't gotten an
antenna yet to try...). The four-year-old machine I have (AthlonXP
2800+, GF4-440MX) doesn't seem quite fast enough to play the h.264
stuff. And the X server version I have installed doesn't properly
support XvMC. I need to upgrade the OS at some point, but I don't want
to break anything... and I have a hard time justifying building a
whole new machine, although next time I'm going to put more effort
into making it quiet.

-- 
aaron

"Oh oh oh. I'm incoherent with excitement. Please tell me what fascinating
bit of badger-sputumly inconsequential trivia you will assail me with next."
        -- Arthur Dent