Help choosing TV

[Thjodbjorn]

Yeah, it is reasonable. It just trips some wire in my head where I don't want to pay as much for shipping as the actual product. But I was awfully tempted to still go for it. I'm glad it went to someone from here!

[neorichieb1971]

Well I wanted it actually. This thread got me in the mood for some CRT hunting and I was amazed ebay uk picked up on one in Canada. Then I thought Kamiboy is in Canada he could use this

[kamiboy]

300-350 is a heavy enough burden for something that is largely a risk. Who knows, this might have been used to death, being left on all day long showing high contrast static imagery so the image is screwed up. Or might arrive DOA, or even worse, end up biting the dust a week after entering possession.

But living in Canada I don't exactly have the luxury of letting such thoughts deter me from jumping on an opportunity when it presents itself, who knows how long it will be until I can find another XM29 available to me.

[kamiboy]

Well huzzah for obsolete technology, CRTs are not going to be around for sale for ever. If the XM29 performs up to expectations then I might in the future get a 19 or 25" SONY PVM to have as backup.

[burgerkingdiamond]

CRT's are dirt cheap now. Nobody wants them anymore, which is a plus for us. I got a 27" Panasonic with component and s-video for $40 from the local pawn shop. It's ridiculous.

[kamiboy]

Well the results are in, after shipping and taxes the XM29 ended up costing me around 330. A smidgen more costly than I had hoped for, but that is the fault of taxes mostly. As expected they ignored my inquiries regarding age and previous use, prolly due to them likely being a reseller that came into its possession by the whimsy of chance.

Anyhow, the dice have been cast. Hope to have this in hand within a week or two.

[Thjodbjorn]

Please post when you've had a chance to test it out. Hopefully I can eat my heart out for not having ordered it myself.

[kamiboy]

Fingers crossed that it has not been used to death, is responsibly packaged and at least comes with a remote. Also, I very much hope the delivery person has it mind to deliver it at my apartment door, not apartment building door. And now I need to see about finding some sort of wheeled contraption to put this on top of so that I can easily transport it around the house. Just like that CRT monitor of mine this is going to spend most of its time in the spare room unless I want to use it, in which case it will be hauled out into the living room.

[GateofThunderforceIII]

Going back to the subject of plasma, has anyone had to recharger theirs yet? If so, how long have you had it?

[dieKatze88]

I'm posting here about my Acer P244ws again.

24 inch LCD 1080p MONITORS.

They support HDCP and have a line out bit though. VESA mount so you could buy something to easily tate them.

0.0ms of latency over a CRT. I'll post the pictures when I figure out where that flash drive went.

20000:1 Contrast ratio, decently wide viewing angles. Pretty cheap but sadly no longer available new.

[kamiboy]

Going back to the subject of plasma, has anyone had to recharger theirs yet? If so, how long have you had it?

Heh, that joke is a blast from the past. Made its round in a display forum I visit from time to time several years ago, where Plasma tech still had a fighting chance, and the war of ignorance and disinformation were still being fought.

Sort of preposterous in hindsight how some sellers, or general miscreants spread that myth of Plasma's needing refills with such success.

In the off chance that you were not jesting, hate to break it to you chap, but Plasma televisions never had, and never will need to be "refilled", no more than CRT's need deflating, or LCD's need liquid crystal refilling. This myth was just a part jest, part blatant lie making its rounds when the technology was new and people could easily be made to believe anything about the brave new world of flat panel displays.

Basically it was a way for those in whose benifit was to sell LCD's to dissuade buyers from let their funds go to the other side.

[GateofThunderforceIII]

Thanks kamiboy! Unfortunately for me, I was one of the brainwashed masses. Guess I'll be buying a plasma here soon...hopefully it won't make my Sharp LCD look like day old bread...

[kamiboy]

Well, according to the FedEx tracking website the XM29 is by the front door of my apartment building, awaiting my return from work.

Ah, the joys of parcel delivery times, now I have to go home and think of a way to drag that 70kg monstrosity up to my apartment, that is if I can even manage to carry, or rather drag it through the lobby doorway. If I can manage this miraculous feat then I'll be sure to post my impressions of it in a few hours.

Unfortunately the only things I can connect to this thing will be all my S-video enabled Nintendo systems. Everything else I have is so far is equipped to facilitate only composite, RGB or component. Those will have to wait until a XSELECT-D4 finds its way into my possession. I have a feeling though that if the unit is in a good shape then I will be more than happy with my SNES via s-video.

[kamiboy]

Looks like that old tease lady luck has lifted her skirt for me once again. The XM29 was actually placed right outside my apartment door to greet my gleeful tired face as I was dragging my weary worn form back from that old succubus, employment.

To the credit of the sellers they had packed this monitor in so well that I have reason to believe it would have survived a rather impressively lengthy fall completely unscathed. The abundant protective foam filaments ended up filling up all of the empty space left behind by the vacated unit.

Upon unpacking it was revealed, one could argue, that all that protection was like putting a bulletproof west upon the dying form of a shootout victim, it seems the damage had already long been done. Alas, as soon as I connected my SNES to the XM29 it was evident that the manhandling was of a purely cosmetic nature. The image quality was hard to find fault with, brightness, contrast and vibrancy were all perfectly adequate, as were the dear old scanlines.

After playing Mega Man X for a while to test the general image quality I remembered a thought I had had before. The XM29 has VGA input, and my XRGB2+ has VGA out. Perhaps a console routed trough the XRGB with full scanlines might be equivalent to the same console hooked up to the unit directly.

I tested this thesis by routing the SNES to the XM29 via this arrange by means of the JRGB21 cables which I have. Alas I got the same horribly mangled picture that I got when attempting a computer CRT monitor. This just confirms that the SNES revision I have is incompatible with Nintedo's JRGB21 cables.

That aside I tried S-video and the picture looked comparable to me. I couldn't do a side by side, but to me the scanlines produced by going through XRGB looked very much the same as the ones the TV produced itself when hooked directly to the source. Alas when using the XRGB the image window became much smaller than when hooked directly which filled the entire screen.

My unit did not come with a remote and I was not in the mood to fiddle with settings via the front buttons to correct this size issue, so I left things as they were. Next I tried my Saturn both via RGB through the XRGB and directly via S-video. S-video looked much better because, onem it filled the enture screen, and two, for some reason, and I had the same problem with my CRT monitor, games connected through the XRGB have slightly washed out colours.

Now the XRGB has plenty of colour, brightness and contrast controls but no matter how much I fiddle with them I find that I cannot get the levels just right, the image always lacks vibrancy. In contrast both the SNES and Saturn looked spectacular when hooked up directly via S-video out of the box. The SNES, as with any other display I have used it with, has a slight shadow column going from bottom to the top of the middle of the screen. This is visible on S-video, RGB and composite, and I chalk it up to shoddy McScrooge Nintendo engineering.

I also tried my CDX, testing Ghouls 'N Ghosts for the Genesis on it via RGB through the XRGB and that one looked rather good. But then Ghouls 'N Ghosts is an early Genesis games and has a rather modest palette, so I need to test something more colourful. But even then I have no way of connecting the CDX to the unit directly for a proper comparison because that particular console has no S-video support.

I do not have S-video cables for my Playstation consoles and the XM29, sadly, does not support component input. So I can only test those through the XRGB, which I will get around to eventually. I will also do a NES test via composite as soon as my RCA to BNC changers arrive.

I did witness slight geometry issues when the screen would scroll, but then this is an inherent flaw of CRT's and I've seen it on every such display that has found its way into my hand. It is a rather minor issue that is weighed insignificant by the advantages of CRT for obsolete sources.

It goes without saying but the onboard speakers of the XM29 are not of the same build or quality as the picture of the unit. It is therefore too bad that the unit does not come equipped with a simple headphone out for times when it is not in the vicinity of my surround system.

Disregarding the cosmetic scars I think this is one fine unit to marry with any serious harem of vintage games. The only things I could do to improve upon it is to have thrown in component inout support, with progressive scan of course, a SCART RGB input and the aforementioned headphone out, then it would have been the perfect unit. But it already is darn adequate for something that only cost me 330.

My next order of business will be to acquire that XSELECT-D4, even if its benefits are mostly moot at this point, purchase a working remote for the unit, and then find something to throw it on, preferably with wheels, because I cant keep it on my floor permanently.

Overall I can wholeheartedly recommend this to any serious gamer of the old school.

[Thjodbjorn]

Nice. I'm glad to hear that it is working out for you!

[kamiboy]

It sure has, thanks goes to our English friend for the heads up, otherwise I would have likely missed out on this.

Hope to get many years of good service out of this one. Now, to actually play some games.

[GateofThunderforceIII]

So can anyone recommend a great plasma TV for modern gaming (360 & PS3 via HDMI)? I'm looking at 50 inch at the least. Panasonics seem to be awesome, but it seems people here usually have some little known information to share. Thanks in advance!

[StarCreator]

A friend that was doing research suggested that newer Panasonics aren't as good as the older ones in terms of lag. Definitely worth researching if you're looking at buying.

This is just anecdotal, but another friend just got a Panasonic 50" TC-P50G25 and Rock Band calibrated to ~45ms lag or so (2.7 frames) for him.

[njiska]

A friend that was doing research suggested that newer Panasonics aren't as good as the older ones in terms of lag. Definitely worth researching if you're looking at buying.

This is just anecdotal, but another friend just got a Panasonic 50" TC-P50G25 and Rock Band calibrated to ~45ms lag or so (2.7 frames) for him.

I'll have to doubt check the 57" Panasonic plasma we have. I've never experienced ANY noticable lag when shmuping, but I also have it in Game mode so it deactivates as much post processing as possible and I'm running the X360 at the display's native res.

[kamiboy]

If you find a dealer still carrying any Pioneer Plasma's then there really is no finer choice.

[Aguilar]

Hate to hijack this thread but ive been looking at the Sony PVM2030 to replace my big 37" crt tv. Im looking for something thats easily TATEable. Would this be a good choice?

[GateofThunderforceIII]

I went with the Panasonic TC-P50G25 and hooked up the PS3 via HDMI and played Lords of Shadows. PQ looked excellent and I was quite impressed. I then tried the new Hot Pursuit and the colors looked a little chunky. Then hooked up the 360 via HDMI, played Ketsui and it looks like things could be sharper. I remember dealing with this on the furnished TV I used at the flat at Bahrain. I had to settle for 1080i because it actually looked sharper than 1080p on that TV (and I don't remember the brand). This can't be right...I will try component cables next. I've only played with the setting a little bit, but I'm not good at doing this.

On a weird note, the G25 does NOT have any S-Video inputs. Kind of a downer, but old gaming would probably be blurry and laggy anyway...

[kamiboy]

Going component will not solve anything, keep to HDMI, that is the ultimate signal path. As for setting, first thing to do is change the picture setting to the one labelled Normal, that gives the best picture out of all of them. You might want to give the one labelled Cinema a go if watching a movie. Stay far away from ones labelled called "Dynamic", it might look impressive at first but it is a horrendous mode where colours are cranked way beyond what they should be and sharpness is set a few notches too high.

[Sparda]

Hello, i've two choice a PVM-20M4E and a PVM-2044 QM 30

Can you help me to choose one of them ? Wich one is better ?

[kamiboy]

Just take a gander at their backs, the one with most useful inputs gets to win the silver sterling. If niether have at least one RGB input then the only winner is the seller because they are both pretty much useless.

[yojo!]

Hate to hijack this thread but ive been looking at the Sony PVM2030 to replace my big 37" crt tv. Im looking for something thats easily TATEable. Would this be a good choice?

I have a couple of PVMs and the 2030 and is freaking heavy; it does not even have a built in speaker!. The best compromise I found is a PVM 1390; same I/O than the 2x30 serie; a little smaller (13" instead 20" so no biggy) but has a built in speaker.

[mesh control]

I have a quick question regarding the PVM-1942Q: Does it have built in speakers?

[SGGG2]

Found the model of my old HDCRT: Samsung TXM3297HF. I can't comment on lag, but the picture quality for 480i component gaming was unbelievable. EVERY game was perfectly crisp and clear with gorgeous saturated colors. I'd buy another one used in a second if it didn't weigh over 200 pounds.

[gray117]

I have a quick question regarding the PVM-1942Q: Does it have built in speakers?

**Edit: apologies apparently some did have speakers built in ... so ... er no clue I'm afraid... I've never heard any pvms I've worked with before ***

No ... none of the pvms have built in speakers as far as I can remember, some have speakers which can sit on the side of the monitor; but they all generally link to generic speaker outs on the rear of the monitor anyway.

This is to help make them as closely stackable as possible - and I presume there maybe concerns that speakers could offset picture geometry very slightly, even if shielded.

[Sparda]

Someone is selling me a PVM-2130Q 50euros, but no remote controller.. is that a good deal or not ?