LCD-TV Reviews

This product is great! I had it running during a recent party at my home and within in a few minutes it had captivated the attention of everyone in the room. Its great...the scenes are beautiful, the sound is very relaxing and everyone loved the extra "art show" at the end. It really added a lot to the atmosphere of the party....I heard more raves about the entertainment "TV Scapes" than I did about the wine and food! You definitely want this for your next get together!!!!! Come December, I know what everyone on my list is getting.

Signed, a very satisfied customer.......PML in LA

I recently moved to Boston and my friend gave me this great housewarming gift! Tv Screenscapes, its like a screensaver for your TV just like one you'd have on your computer but better. These scenes actually move, like theres one that's a beach with 30 minutes of continous waves- its my favorite. They can be relaxing or just plain background if you have people over to mask the fact that you have a big tv in the middle of your living room -cool to use even when you're not watching TV.

I had a party and there are ones that are fun like a fish tank or some funky lava lamps so you can leave your big screen tv on like its a decoration for your party! I hope they make more like for different cities and holidays -they make such great gifts.

I was looking for something to have on in the background on my TV when I'm at home and this is great. It should be good for any kind of room, preferably big screen tv. Nice views from NY and LA.

I bought an amazing new Dell PC, one of the XPS models, ultimate in gaming and graphics. Needed a monitor to stand up to the capabilities of the new PC, and the SyncMaster did so very proudly. DVDs are crisp, Unreal Tournament is astounding, and so on...

No regrets whatsoever.

I took this monitor out of the box, connected it to the computer and it has worked flawlessly from the beginning. I use AutoCAD software daily and this monitor has a very clear picture so I don't have to zoom in and out constantly. I've got the screen set to the maximum resolution and the only problem I see is when I select an item, the oblect selected shimmers, but that's a minor issue.

First Impressions of New Samsung 243t 24 Inch Widescreen Monitor

Let me say one thing before I start… WOW!!

Every LCD monitor that I had looked at before turned me off because none were as bright as my beloved Sony 19 inch CRT monitor.

The Samsung 243t, First Impressions …

Screen brightness… WOW… very bright, more so then my Sony 19 inch CRT.
Fonts… very bright and VERY sharp; crystal clear to be exact. No compromise here.
Viewing angle… much better then I imagined for an LCD, can view it from all normal angles. Yes, there is some fall-off at very wide angles but even here it is much less then I thought there would be.
Swiveling the monitor on the base stand… Forward, Back, Tilt way back, Raise the whole monitor up and down, Rotate 90 degrees for portrait mode; it does it all thanks to the new detachable VESA compliant universal base. What a wonderful design.
Bad pixels… At first I could find none, but after a couple of days of looking at different colored screens I finally found one… a red one that was turned on, directly under the Win XP Start button so it is not an issue at all as it is completely invisible with Windows running.
Does it handle TV correctly? You bet! Using MC’s Aspect Ratio called “Crop” (not “Crop Edges”) all TV is viewed full screen and full width without any stretching or distortion at all. Crop automatically blows up standard 4:3 aspect ratio so there are no black borders on the sides and it removes the top and bottom black borders on letterbox or HDTV images.
Response time… this is where most LCD monitors fall down with fast moving objects such as games. The Samsung does pretty well here. In fact, PC Game web site tested it and declared this monitor to be the perfect game monitor. They said you have not really played a game until you do it on a large, widescreen monitor. One of the fastest LCD monitors available is the NEC 2180UX 21 inch (4:3 aspect ratio), it has a response time of just 20 milliseconds. The Samsung 24 inch widescreen is only 25 milliseconds, pretty impressive for a 24 inch widescreen with 1200 x 1920 pixels.

In addition to the widescreen, what really impressed me right out of the box is the brightness and crystal clear, tack sharp image. I did not know that LCD’s have gotten this good. I have heard that in the last year or so there have been big improvements in LCD monitors.

I am getting fantastic image quality using only analog (ATI A-I-W 9600 Pro video card). I have heard that it is even better when connected digital (video card has to have digital output, not all do).

I was looking at three different big-screen monitors… NEC 2180UX 21.3 inch, standard aspect ratio, Sony PremierPro 23 inch windscreen, and the Samsung 243t 24 inch widescreen. All are great monitors.

Although the NEC is a wonderful monitor, it is not wide screen and I really wanted that.
The Sony has been out for over a year and is starting to show its age a little (only 40 milliseconds response time and only 350:1 contrast ratio). Also, the Sony seems to be having a quality control problem with a lot of bad pixels. Some users have reported as many as 15 bad pixels on the Sony.
The Samsung is brand new with the latest technology (25 milliseconds response time, 500:1 contrast ratio) and that fantastic universal base).

I read a report where a guy found the Sony and the Samsung in a store, side-by-side. He played with the controls for over an hour on both monitors. He bought the Samsung as no matter how hard he tried he could not make the Sony look as bright as the Samsung.

As I write this (in Word) I am using the monitor swiveled 90 degrees for portrait mode. I can see 1 and � full pages; how simply wonderful.

The Samsung 243t Widescreen, after a week or two of getting some real world use...

Now that I’ve had a couple of weeks to get used to the Samsung Widescreen, I have noticed some real world differences between LCD’s and CRT’s. Some things that I used to take for granted are no longer an issue or are vastly improved over CRT monitors; such as…

•My fears about switching to a widescreen for my computer monitor were totally unfounded…

oMC and all other software expands nicely to fit the new format with a LOT more room for everything.
oMy concerns about TV on a widescreen monitor was a non-issue; the black borders I was concerned about on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image are very clean with no artifacts.
oThe black borders on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image can be totally removed with MC TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command (not the Crop edges option). It does not stretch the image as ATI’s Aspect controls do (causing distortion of the image), but rather it ‘zooms’ the image so the side borders go off the screen. This does make some of the top and bottom of the image go off the screen but is a very good compromise until real widescreen comes to all households in a year or two.
oOne thing that did came as a surprise to me was that letterbox images do not automatically fill the screen but have black borders all around… top, bottom, left and right. I had just assumed that letterbox TV images would automatically fill the screen; but after seeing a letterbox image on my widescreen monitor I saw what was happening. The TV station was sending out a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV signal which included a letterbox movie within it so it was on the screen as a 4:3 image. MC’s TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command did the trick and expanded it to full screen thereby filling the whole screen with a non-distorted widescreen image.
oEven with MC’s TV’s Aspect - ‘Crop” command, some real widescreen images that TV stations transmit will still leave a very thin black border along the top and bottom of the screen; that is because most letterbox images are 16:9 aspect but for some reason all widescreen computer monitors are 16:10 aspect ratio hence the thin black borders left over. This is something that MC needs to address.
•Much faster turn on after a Win XP standby start up.
•The screen does not come on faint at boot up (like CRT’s) but seems to come on at normal color; in other words there is no ‘warm up’ time required.
•The image does not shift in size as the screen warms up like a CRT does.
•There is no need for ‘tweaking’ the screen size and position settings as it is done automatically by use of the ‘Auto’ button which works extremely well indeed.
•A full screen image with a thin line running all the way around it (a border) will be precisely positioned and well centered on the screen with the thin border just inside the screen bezel; it will be straight and precise. No matter how hard I tried, I could never achieve that for very long on any CRT monitor. On a CRT, even when I could precisely position such an image on the screen some of the thin border would always bow out of the image and hide behind the bezel as the line was not really true and straight due to the CRT gun scanning in an arc and the different thickness of the glass tube surface.
•As there is no more screen behind the bezel (like CRT’s) the screen size is precise and very well known so the video card only has to provide the exact number of pixels that the screen needs. So, when you set up the screen size in Windows to 1200x1920 the video card produces that exact amount of pixels and the LCD reads that exact size (1200x1920). This is why the ’Auto’ feature works so well.
•There is absolutely no pincushion, barrel, trapezoid, non-linearity, or any other kind of distortion that needs to be adjusted. This is because there is no ‘gun’ (as in a CRT) scanning in an arc that needs to be controlled and adjusted. Furthermore, these controls are not needed and are not present which greatly simplifies the setting up of a LCD monitor.
•Brightness… I was very pleasantly surprised in this area as I had always thought that LCD’s were dimmer then a bright CRT. A lot of things have been improved in LCD design in the last year or so. This LCD is actually much brighter, and with better contrast then any CRT that I have used.
•The screen does not ‘wash out’ as brightness and/or contrast are turned up as most CRT’s do. There seems to be much better control over the contrast then on a CRT.
•Contrast ration is very good (500:1).
•Due to the high contrast ratio, blacks are really black; in fact when the screen is turned off it appears to be almost totally black and not the dark grey of most CRT’s. I think this may be because there is no shadow mask screen or thick glass for the light to travel through and become weakened. There is only a thin black plastic screen between the LCD’s and you.
•Much thinner bezel surrounding the screen as there is no screen area behind the bezel that has to be covered as there is in all CRT’s monitors.
•The only negative side to LCD’s has to do with the backlighting…
oCRT’s are notorious for having ’spotty’ brightness especially on a full screen of a bright color such as white; this is due to many reasons including the gun scanning in an arc, the electron beam striking the shadow mask at more of an angle near the edges, and the different thickness of the surface of the glass CRT tube all leading to light fall off near the corners and edges.
oI thought that would be a thing of the past with a LCD as there is no electron gun, no shadow mask, and no scanning in an arc; but there are back lights and no matter how hard the manufacturers have tried there will always be some slightly lighter and darker areas of the screen as current back light technology simply is not as uniform as one would hope for. What you see on an LCD monitor is a slight ‘shimmering’ of light as you move your heard at different angles to the screen. Some of this is due to backlighting fall off over the screen surface.
oThere is hope for the future in a new type of backlighting using not fluorescent as the light source, but an array of LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes). LED backlighting on an LCD monitor may be about a year away but the test that I have seen looks very promising so far. Such a monitor is brighter, has better contrast, and much more saturated colors, the overall effect is very positive. The nice thing about LED backlighting is that current assemble lines can use it on new LCD monitors at very little additional manufacturing assembly cost (the actual LED backlighting may be more expensive).
•All in all, most of my fears about LCD’s have been put to rest; needless to say, I’m one happy camper.

I bought one of these televisions from 6th Avenue Electronics (which will NOT accept returns for LCD TVs or plasmas, so be careful when purchasing from there) for hi-def gaming on my XBox 360. Sadly, 720p was TERRIBLE, and 1080i was better, but still suffered from a lot of jaggies. I'm currently getting it ready to be serviced, so I'm not sure if I got a dud or not - but be careful when purchasing televisions from Panasonic, ESPECIALLY LCD TVs.

Why settle for less, when you can get a brand new original Panasonic or Samsung 42 inch plasma TV for Free! I got mine from this web site: awesomestufffree.com/plasma-tv

I bought this TV for our kitchen beause I wanted to see what is written on a screen, and don't see clearly our 42" TV from faraway in a living room (open space with a kitchen). The new TV has a great set of features including an ability to change the size of the screen (wide, normal, and the ZOOM mode is really great). Similar TVs from Samsung and Sharp have terrible sound and are underpowered. This TV has 6 Watt amplifier, and I use it at 40%. Overall, I am satisfied with the TV even the quality of an image sent over the cable (Comcast) is terrible. You may ask why I am satisfied? If you look at it from 5-7' distance, the picture is quite good. I am planning to change the cable and to use the digital signals. The quality of signal will be much-much better. The TV has a very stable base, tints pretty well, and also can be tinted horizontally (I love it because depending where you are staying in the kitchen, you can always adjust the screen for better viewing). There are several video inputs that I did not expore, yet. The remote control is simple and efficient; also you can use the buttons on a top of TV.
The 19" size can be great for any bedroom, as well.
I'll provide more details soon.