[mythtv-users] OT: Buying a new TV - Sharp Quattron or 3D?

[Neil Cooper]

--- On Sat, 6/4/11, R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org> wrote:

> From: R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org>
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] OT: Buying a new TV - Sharp Quattron or 3D?
> To: "Discussion about MythTV" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> Date: Saturday, June 4, 2011, 7:27 AM
> On 06/04/2011 03:23 AM, Paul Gardiner
> wrote:
> > On 03/06/2011 21:29, Kingsley Turner wrote:
> >> Does anyone have a Quattron?  I am hoping to
> get decent skin-tone colour
> >> reproduction.
> >
> > If you are coming from a good quality CRT, buying a
> new TV can be
> > very disappointing. My recommendation would be buy a
> second hand
> > Pioneer Kuro.
> >
> > A big problem with buying TVs is you cant really
> believe reviews,
> > and the best TVs don't look great in brightly lit
> shops. In a line
> > of TVs all showing the same content, the one that
> catches your eye
> > will be the one that looks unnatural when you have it
> back in your
> > living room. It's hell buying a new TV.
> 
> 
> I have been to CES each year for the past couple of years
> with a group. 
> In 2010 the BIG thing was 3D with active glasses. Those
> gave everyone in 
> the group a headache. And if you get migraines or suffer
> from flicker 
> vertigo or have epilepsy I think you could be in trouble.
> And the 
> glasses are heavy, restricting and expensive. Even worse if
> you already 
> wear glasses.
> 
> This year the neat thing is LG's polarized glasses 3D. You
> wear what 
> look like sun-glasses but the glass/plastic is polarized
> differently for 
> each eye. Very nice.
> 
> But then how the director films it becomes important.
> Subtle hints of 
> depth in the picture are great. But it was all to easy to
> get assaulted 
> by images which leap from the screen. I did not see any
> game replays. I 
> think that would be nice to see.
> 
> But 3D is not yet ready for prime time IMHO.
> 
> Regarding the TV itself. If you get good HD transmission
> and like 
> watching sports, then the 120/240 refresh rate feature will
> be 
> worthwhile. Plasma's are electricity hogs and HOT, HOT,
> HOT. Something 
> to consider if the kids will leave it on all day.
> 
> One thing I REALLY noticed was that different brands have
> marked 
> differences in how difficult it is to change INPUTS. I
> returned a Sharp 
> 42" a couple of years ago, because it had a (comb filter??)
> error which 
> made the picture look like you were looking through a
> waterfall. It also 
> had the most complicated menu system and took about a dozen
> key presses 
> on the remote to change the input.
> 
> OTOH, the LG I now have, has a dedicated button on the
> remote to change 
> inputs, so swapping from OTA, to cable, to mythbox is just
> a keypress. 
> (My wife prefers to watch the news and weather 'live', not
> through myth. 
> News is OTA, weather is cable.)
> 
> And I will never, ever again buy anything Sony. The
> root-kit and the 
> blackmailing of geohotz says far too much about the
> corporate culture.
> 
> 
> Geoff
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 

The disadvantage with polarized glasses over shutter glasses is that the both L&R eye images are in the same frame. This means you don't get flicker but each eye only gets to see half as many pixels, meaning your HD content (1080) becomes only 540 pixels, which is hardly more than standard definition TV (480). Worse is DVD which is 720 so get reduced to 360 pixels which is significantly lower resolution than your 50 year old analog TV signal.

With shutter glasses you get the full resolution for each eye as it splits the images over separate frames so HD is still HD. The other advantage of shutter is that polarized glasses are a lot more susceptible to viewing angle issues.