My Vizio 42″ plasma television went back to Costco today. I’ve had several issues with it. The Progressive Component input never provided a decent image — with my DVD player it seemed slightly out of sync, with the Xbox there was vertical banding, and with the PSTwo it just plain made my eyes hurt. Second, the 1024×768 native resolution just does not work well with Media Center — as best as I can tell, Windows does not like non-square pixels. Which is too bad because at the native resolution with ClearType turned on the text was stunning. The final problem was the heat, having the television running a few hours would raise the room temperature by 10F. I have enough trouble keeping this room at a comfortable temperature without a space heater next to the bed…
Costco has an extremely generous return policy, which was why I was willing to take a $2,143 gamble on an unknown brand like Vizio. The downside is that they paid me off in $20 bills. I could barely squeeze that wad into my front pocket. If there is ever a next time I will call a day or two in advance to make sure that they can get enough $100 bills…
I replaced the Vizio with Costco’s latest special, an $899 Proview 32″ LCD. It doesn’t put out much heat. The panel has a native 1366×768 resolution. It has VGA, HDMI, Progressive, and a few RCAs. It is extremely unfriendly to PCs — on the VGA port it pretends to be 1024×768, on the HDMI it only likes 480p / 720p / 1080i, and the HDMI input lacks an audio jack.
On the plus side, it’s compact, light, and did I mention that it doesn’t put out much heat? PQ on SD sources looked horrible at first but cutting the brightness in half solved that.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep this one or not. The PC-hostility is a major turn-off since 99% of my television usage is through the Media Center. Guess I need to research the other LCDs that Costco offers — if there is no PC-friendly alternative than this one is good enough…
HDMI has Audio built into it. That’s part of the point of having HDMI.
And all the 32″ TVs are 1366x 768 native resolution.
I have the same Proview TV, and ITUNES TV shows I downloaded look GREAT on it through my PC. The resolution of the shows you download aren’t HD, though, but they look great.
You are right, they all are 1366. I drive the Proview at 1368×768, which the VGA interface scales to 1024×768 before up-converting to the panel’s native resolution. Most other LCD TVs around this size, such as the Westinghouse I purchased as a Christmas present for my brother, pretend to be 1368×768 and scale directly to 1366×768.
The scaling is a non-issue for video playback but has a dramatic impact on text readability, especially small text.
As for HDMI, some manufacturers do include a separate audio input for their HDMI ports, acknowledging that HDMI is relatively new and DVI sources are more prevalent.
FWIW, I still have this set. For the price at the time it was good enough. For the price today there are much better sets available, especially for PC usage.
What set would you recommend at this size for PC usage? Thanks!
I’m not terribly comfortable recommending items that I have not purchased or used myself. The Westinghouse 27″ that I purchased for my brother looks stunning with a Mac Mini attached via DVI. Don’t know how it’s television reception is.
Whatever set(s) you consider, search for the model number on avsforum and you’ll probably find a thread detailing it’s specs and what modes the inputs actually support.