Toshiba Regza 32UL863 32in LED TV This Toshiba delivers possibly the sharpest HD picture I’ve seen on any 32in TV all year. There, I’ve said it. If you’re looking for a good reason to buy this set, that’s it. But there’s more to this screen than just kick-ass clarity. There’s also internet connectivity - in the form of the Toshiba Places Smart portal - local …
If there were true LED TVs on the market, then fair enough, but they haven't progressed past prototypes yet, with size being the limiting factor.
Generally when you see an "LED TV" in a store, it's just to differentiate against CCFL-lit LCDs, indicating it'll be thinner and more energy efficient.
But then, I'm just pissed off that I'll never see an SED flatscreen that I was promised many moons ago :-(
I'm always worried when I see that the best picture on a TV is achieved by having various picture processing machinery in play. In my experience that causes two problems for gamers: 1) you can get artificial sharpness (banding in sunsets or other diffuse light) and (2) LAG LAG LAG.
The amount of lag on the last LG plasma I used was so extreme (>0.2 seconds or so) that I was totally slaughtered online by people I can normally dispatch with ease. This amount of lag is totally irrelevant for non-interactive TV, but we really do need stats on this in reviews especially as no manufacturer is forthcoming about this on on their published specs.
We're using Sony Bravia whatevers for our driving simulators, and yeah, lag is a big issue (particularly for racing!). We're using 720p60 on a 55" panel that's quite close; in 2D it looks pretty bad, but 3D seems to mitigate the resolution issues a lot.
At any rate, lag at 1080p60 (just on the desktop) is so bad that it's actually hard to use. This is witb zero image fuckery turned on. There's 'quality-vs-speed' thing that helps, but it's still awful. And turning on every bit of insanity available - and that's a ton - has no appreciable effect.
I'd say the 1080p60 lag is 500ms plus.
720p60, in the fast mode, is much better - maybe as good as run of the mill lcd projectors and monitors. (whatever you do, don't project a hot shit superfast lcd projector image onto your crt projector and copy the outputs... it'll be blazing bright but look like it's 20 miles behind).
720p60 is perfectly usable, anyway, but it'd be first against the wall when the revolution came for me.
1080p, due to the hdmi limitations (and utterly moronic refusal of the card/tv to allow 60p pageflipped at 30hz, despite their obviously being bandwidth) mean you get 24p or, bizarrely, 23p. Horrifying lag despite he atrocious framerate, and choppy likean angry sea no matter what I did. And I did a lot.
Looked great sitting still.
Oddly, Sony's motionflow and other temporal hijinks work really well. I know, I know, I was just as surprised. I sat there gaping for a while. The motionflow took 1080p24 from 'I will surely vomit!' to 'Oooh, smooth amd pretty but JERK why is itJERK still doing that eveJERKry so often?'... but unfortunately, between the time you turned he steering wheel and you saw the car move, entire Amazonian species evolved, thrived, and were rendered extinct by human encroachment and clearcutting. This would have been fine for NASCAR, where 'polar moment of inertia' means, "It's like the inertia of the earth between the poles", but we focus more on other areas.
At any rate, the motionflow didn't add to the lag (perhaps they throw in filler NOPs to keep timing stable regardless of settings?) but buttery smoothness couldn't make up for the epochal response times.
What I don't understand is the massive difference - nearly an order of magnitude - between 1808p24/60 and 720p.
And hey, kudos where due - the Sony temporal enhancements actually work. Not sure how they'd play out for non-computer sources, but they honestly do turn a scrolling treeline from swedish-chef-on-meth chopping to optical-table smoothness.
Can't say the same for their "Reality creation". You just have a setting for what is essentially contrast adjustment, between 'sane' and 'convert to b/w' and edge enhancement between 'too fucking much' and 'white noise'.
Which brings me back to the article... How is this the sharpest TV?! It's either filling its grid of pixels or not. Unless every other TV is throwing gobs of shit at the image, any TV doing 1:1 pixel pushing will be just as sharp as any other.
I suspect that you're mistaking contrast or EE or source quality for 'sharpness', or have a wacky definition of sharpness I haven't heard in years of home theater obsessiveness, as with a fixed pixel display, sharpness is just gonna be sharpness.
Don't forget that also there are two type of LED backlit LCD's. The type that are lit from the sides and the type that are lit by an array of LED's called localised LED displays. The latter being superior as you suffer from less blooming (brighter edges) at the sides of the display and also the ability to dim/turn off for parts of thee display for deeper blacks.
Edge lit is common. Localised is less common (not sure if there are any new ones on sale) and expensive.
Of course true LED displays are the OLED type or variants thereof which are yet to make their way to affordable screen sizes.
Hope that clears things up a bit.
The Sony Bravias I mentioned above (at length... tl;dr time!) are true led backlit and run around 2k usd for 55" flavors, 3k if you want the upmarket one, whose additional value is dubious.
Not having tested with appropriate content, I can't comment on the selective backlighting. Instinct tells me it should look like a crt projector - fantastic large area blacks that bloom out over a wide area, determined in crtpjs by optics and the lcds by led section size. I've got a big ol' honkin' crt pj... I should test that when I have free time.
I don't think I've had such a bad experience of when I turned on the variable backlights (so as to locally dim some of the screen). It is just awful, with lag being a common problem (screen turns to black, half a second later the backlight of that section noticeably dims) and the density of the backlights not being high enough to give an even effect (part of a section turns black, backlight dims across the section giving an uneven contrast).
Top tip on any backlit screen - turn off the "variable contrast" or whatever they call it.
I can't stand that almost all LED-lit screens are edge lit. From what I can tell, this is because 'LED' is a price-bump feature, and so is 'thinness,' so they end up combined on the higher end sets. I like the color and energy efficiency of LED backlit screens, but I think that edge lighting generally looks like crap. And I really don't understand the point of a thin monitor - you just look at it from the front anyway.
Oh well, I picked up a lovely full LED backlight Sharp a while ago, I guess I just won't buy any more displays for a while.
So it's the sharpest therefore buy it? Why? Real life isn't that sharp nor is the cinema. My 8-year old 720p projector appeared less colourful, less bright and not as sharp as my old 854x480 (upscaling) plasma, let alone in comparison to my new 1080p LCD, yet the projector image is more pleasing to the eye (in a darkened room) than either of them, producing a more cinematic, true-to-life image.
Sharp & bright is slightly more suitable to gaming, but I'd still prefer to unroll the screen for some serious Forza, GT5 or CoD/Bf3 action (perhaps it's the 96" vs42" screen siye that does it).
Steve
Paris - 'cos sometimes size is better than quality.
This looks like it’s an awesome TV. I plan to check this out at my local Best Buy. I think having excellent HD quality is important. I have an awesome HD package that could use a great TV. Seeing HD for the first time will be impressive. Once I set up my employee service I felt that the more channels the better. I have over 200 channels of HD, which is the most of any pay-TV provider. The crisp clear picture makes a normal picture look fuzzy. Now I can only watch HD. DISH has an offer where you can get the most HD free for life. This is an offer all customers can get. This is one of the best combos to have, a great HD package and a great HD TV. There is also a free HD upgrade from DISH offered for a limited time. Once you are set up you will get the most enjoyment from TV.
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