Yeah, this one almost clicked for me. I'd have to see it in akshun to be sure, there was some early geometry "issues" that may have been issues or just one guy with alot of time on his hand.

I think the geometry issues are unavoidable, given the depth of the tube. Some of these sets are affected more than others scanning avforums, so seeing one in action would be needed.

Also, its crt, so hopefully no native resolution, but multi sync. Dunno for sure.

Sorry excuse my lack of knowledge on these things. How does CRT get over the problem of native resolutions?

Does it just fire a slightly wider beam at the phosphur at lower resolutions so it falls through a couple of holes in the mask instead of one?

I've read up on the geometry problems. Seems there's an issue at the bottom of the screen in the middle with a slight dip in the picture. This makes a lot of sense as the beam is at maximum bend there (assuming they mount the guns at the bottom of the tube pointing upwards). There also appears to be some bluring in one of the corners.

These newer sets '419D' are supposed to be a whole lot better than their first effort overall. Certainly worth a trip to Currys for a look although you're unlikely to see an HD source running through it.

It appeals to me overall because CRT can still give excellent results (baring geometry) over flat panels and every HD flat panel I've ever seen looks fookin terrible when you pump a SD source into it.

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BBC news
Nintendo has snubbed the loyal band first to take the DS home by releasing a new, improved model,...N64 was the only console in the Japanese giant's history to escape the makeover.

I'm using a Dell 24" Widescreen Monitor (16:10) with the VGA out on the 360 to get the correct aspect ratio. Looks good at 1360x768. Can also use it with the old Xbox and the DC (I have VGA adaptors for both). Also the PC of course.

Here is an image of the screen (and Kameo) I got from the net:

http://g-prime.net/x360/x9.JPG

Xbox Gamertag - RogsR34UK

Looks lovely; good choice

My panel is lovely, but yeah it's dreadful for SD sources as Madders says. I'm hoping the massive takeup of LCDs (because of the World Cup) means Sky are willing to throw loads of cash at their HD service now, so that most broadcasts come at 720p/1080i.

Madders: I've heard many people give decent all-round reviews of these hybrid CRTs, but the tech is a bit new. I'd wait for a few more models to become available before jumping on this particular bandwagon, to see if they become a viable alternative to proven LCDs and Palsmas.

______

Bassman, that certainly looks good. How much did you pay out of interest. We could do with a new PC monitor. Also does the screen rotate?

Don't think the tech is really that new to be honest. They've had them in the states for donkeys years and the broadcast industry almost exclusively use CRT HD sets for HD work.

What is slightly new is the flatter tube, which requires some serious beam bendage to work. That's almost certainly causing some of the geometry issues (however slight they may be).

Just need to take a look at a demo unit...

We've had those cool Toshi Z series progs over here for a good few years now.

I quite fancied one of those, but they are hooooge.

WEAK!!!!

I simply refuse to get a HD TV any time soon. There seems to be so much to take onboard if you are getting a HD TV, that its just put me off completly. Ill get one when the technology gets to a stage where you dont have to worry about aspect ratio getting borked, and other assorted nonsense. Too expensive as well tbh, cant justify buying a tv just for games (even though its one of my main past times) because I hardly watch TV or Sky as it is.

Ive got a VGA cable for my 360, but honestly, it looks crisper but the colours look really washed out on my monitor. So much so, I just dont use it. Im still dealing with composite for my 360. XD I know it would look better on HDtv, but its not worth the headache of shopping for one and ultimatly justifying the price. Looks perfectly playable even in composite. Also, i refuse to buy another scart lead EVER.

Yeah you're right it is weak. It's the 360's fault it has me convinced that I need an HD set. Really I don't and my 28" widescreen gives a fine picture

That said I did go and take a look at one of these sets yesterday. It's pretty difficult to assess quality due to the overall shitness of the feeds they (Currys) plumb into their sets. That said I was able to notice a few things.

1) The advertising for HD Television is horrific. I really don't understand how the advertising watchdogs and trading standards haven't come down on these arseholes like a ton of bricks. There's a little demo real that loops in the shop to inform customers about HD. I shit you not one of the segments said "HD TV is... 5.1 Channel surround sound". There was also a completely laughable comparison with SD which had a plane taking off with a line down the picture. The left supposedly in SD and the right in HD. Strange that the whole image was actually in SD and all they'd done is make the SD side slightly out of focus. Criminal.

2) The picture on an SD feed into the CRT HDTV was noticeably miles better than the equivalent sized LCD panels alongside. None of that horrible upscaling blockiness you get. It looked just like you'd expect a CRT to look. Nice.

3) I couldn't detect any dip in the picture geometry at the bottom centre of the screen.

4) I could see some slight geometry issues in the corners, but these tended to be transient rather than always there.

5) There was definately some blurring in the corners. Not sure if this could be adjusted out through the operators menu or might improve in HD resolutions or with a decent signal. could be due to the compessed tube dimensions (who knows).

Overall pretty impressive and definately worth a look if the upscaling on the LCD screens bugs you to hell as it does with me.

__
BBC news
Nintendo has snubbed the loyal band first to take the DS home by releasing a new, improved model,...N64 was the only console in the Japanese giant's history to escape the makeover.

Yeah, but that's all bollocks though. Because the takeup on LCDs and Plasmas were slow because of expense, they've remained the domain of nerds and geeks, therefore all you ever hear is witter about geometry issues and the like. Ignore them. Buy a decent LCD set from a quality manufacturer and it'll be absolutely fine with any HD signal - don't let the nerds frighten you away

Madders: I honestly, honestly don't think you either want nor need an HD TV. I think you're just trying to talk yourself into it. Why not wait for a while until the price drops?

The only question you need to ask yourself when considering HDTV is: what signals do i use my TV for MOST? If the answer is:

PC
HD Gaming
DVD

Then YES, you should buy one.

If it's mostly:

Standard TV
Videos
Current gen / Retro gaming

Then NO, don't buy one.

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On 28" CRT SD the Xbox 360 looked remarkably fine to me. But going up to 32" or above you'd start to notice.

LOL

Jib, Treb and Singho you've convinced me I don't need an HD set. If my current tele was 4:3 or broken then I'd snap this Samsung up like a shot. I only have my current tele because the last one broke (now repaired at my parents).

I'd be better off getting one of those Dell monitors probably. It would certainly get more HD use

I still like the idea of the CRT though and I'll be sure to look in that direction when the time comes. It seems to offer a good compromise for people like me who aren't Fully HD ready

Now what else can I splurge 500 notes on...?
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BBC news
Nintendo has snubbed the loyal band first to take the DS home by releasing a new, improved model,...N64 was the only console in the Japanese giant's history to escape the makeover.

Half a Naomi Universal Cabinet? That you then lend to me??

Oooh nearly a year since my original post and I'm still not HG Ready.

However my resolve may be weakening again and it's down to DLP rear projection sets. What got my hairs standing on end was playing Lets Go Jungle on Lindberg, which uses a DLP monitor for the display. There's excellent colour saturation, black levels and no ghosting. I figure if it's good enough for Sega then it's good enough for me right?

They're also relatively cheaper compared to a Plasma. The only problem is going to be sourcing one in the UK. They just don't seem to be stocked by anyone. Samsung do a 46" unit (and a 42") which would be dandy, but I don't think anyone in the UK stocks it. Their 50" unit which looks super sexy is available, but it's considerably more expensive and I have a feeling it simply will not fit in our living room.

The 46" unit is around the $900 mark which makes it very attractive at todays exchange rates, but I know that shipping it over would be crippling, plus there's the issue of maintenance on it (colour wheel replacements and bulb replacements).

Confused I am.

Really I'd view this as a stop gap measure to last maybe six years until they sort out SED TVs.

Some peeps from work came round with their 360s for a few games. Put one on my prog scan 32" widescreen crt and the other on my 42" 720p plasma. The crt looked very impressive - until you looked at the plasma and suddenly it looked pretty poor in comparison. So as long as you don't experience it, you'll be very happy as you are.

SD stuff looks great on my plasma. The DC via vga looks pinsharp. The GC and PS2 and xbox via component look just as good as they did on the CRT but with the added bonus of perfect geometry. Even the N64 looks ok via scart. The only grumble I have is with freeview. It looks turd. But I think that's because it's 42" screen and which makes it easy to see the pathetic compression being used. Viewing SD avi stuff (divx, xvid) looks really great, so I think it's just freeview being rubbish. And DVDs upscaled to 720p by my xbox media center look stunning. Actully there is one other grumble and that's on the odd occassion I notice the plasma trails on bright objects. There isn't a perfect solution seemingly.

Come down and check it out if you want.

Which model plasma did you get? I was looking at the Panasonic PX60, 42" 768p native, which is about £900 at the moment.

There is then a huuge leap in price to the 1080p models, but I haven't read much about them.

I was hanging on to see how much the 42" 1080p versions would be, but they are too much (£2200).

I got the TH-42PH9
http://www.panasonic.co.uk/plasma-displays/th-42ph9bk/index.htm
Although I imagine most people would get something that included speakers and a freeview tuner.
It was £1200~ once I'd bought a wall mount, component board, hdmi board and scart board. That's still 3 shitloads of money for a TV I admit.

Like the px60, it's 1024x768 which worried me, but after an hour long demo at kenthomecinema it was clear the scaler is totally amazing.

In a year's time the 1080p version (which is true 1x1 pixel 1900x1080) will probably be down to the same price, but I needed the space in the lounge that my old CRT used to take up.
www.charlesr.com/Temp/setup.jpg
Any questions, let me know.

Yeah, those are the sort of models I'd been looking at, I don't know much about the PH9 though. Not seen any of them in action yet, I'll need to find an AV place that'll let me hook stuff up. Couple of folks round here have the PX60, I'll give that a test run first. One complaint I'm hearing on the PX60 is poor 480i / 576i handling by the built-in scaler.

What is the grey box you have under the PH9? It does look pretty cool - it is just the photo, or is that mounted quite high up? Think I'd go for the Ikea uber-TV table route and jam the shelves full of consoles.

At the moment I'm erring on caution and waiting for an affordable Pana 1080p, but I'd like to clear the bulk of my CRT too. I'm using a projector at the moment, but I don't set it up all that often, so a HD set would make more sense.

So tempted by a Panny Plasma, or a Pioneer. Seriously cool. I'm not sure I can be arsed with 1080p tbh seems like one hell of a premium for something I'm probably not going to appreciate that much. The only thing I have that's HD is the 360 and that can pump out 720p, which should be dandy. Is there any evidence to suggest that regular SD/ED stuff looks better upscaled to 1080 than say 720? I figured that if you bordered the 1080 image a little you could basically double up the number of pixels to scale it to the screen? I bet the scalers do something a little more clever than that though.

This is the set that's giving me sleepless nights at the moment. Everything I've read about it says that it's phenominal. Needs a hefty chunk of space though as it's 50" and over a foot in depth. The base is actually part of the tele, so you can't unmount it from the stand. It does look like pure sex though and would fit in the corner of our living room and not take up any more room than the current tele. It's 720p native and DLP. I'd like to see a DLP projection set running next to a Plasma, but I think I will struggle to find one on the highstreet. Current retail price of this bad boy is less than £900. From what I can gather DLP gives better fill than LCD no screen door effect, very black blacks due to the micro-mirrors reflecting light away from the screen, good colour saturation as it produces a very accurate grey scale and no ghosting/smearing. Obviously it's not flat, so you can't wall mount it and the bulbs have to be replaced periodically.

@ Papercut, buy a house first

Just a centre speaker with a grey grill. Sorry.

The screen's about the same distance up from eyeline as my old crt was downwards. When I sit on the sofa, my eyes are a couple of inches up from the base. When I stand, my chin rests on the top. I've seen loads of installs where it's half way up the wall because it looks nice there, but is useless because you need a lounge 20 feet long to avoid neck issues.

www.charlesr.com/Temp/waverace1.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/waverace2.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/waverace3.jpg

ntsc waverace64. It's really hard getting good photos from the screen especially if stuff is moving, but hope that gives you an idea.

Obviously for HD stuff it looks nice:
www.charlesr.com/Temp/vt1.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/vt2.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/vt3.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/vt4.jpg

www.charlesr.com/Temp/vt5.jpg

If you can't find anywhere that will let you plug your stuff in, come down to mine.

Oh and in case you were wondering, in above pics, waverace is rgb via scart and VirtuaTennis3 is component 720p on a US 360.

Cheers for the pics, VT3 looks great

I'll have a look at a PX60 soon, but I may take you up on the offer to see a PH9 in action

Another thing to watch out for with these HD things is that there's often a picture delay due to picture processing. If they have inbuilt tuners, these know about the delay, but plug in your own kit (dvd, games etc) then they don't so the sound happens before they start moving their lips. On mine it's around 0.1s
The xbox media center has movable audio delay, so I use that for films/divx etc. I've not noticed it in games yet, but I don't play many games with speech in. My surround amp doesn't do an overall delay, which would be the preffered option. They assume you are plugging everything into a scaling amp with one hdmi output from the amp to the screen
Can't afford to upgrade at the moment, so just glad I have the xbmc. Freeview seems to be a smaller delay which is weird. It's barely noticeable except on mtv and stuff. Normal speech is fine. Weird stuff. Super gay. Note this happens on all LCDs plasmas crts that need to do scaling - the size of the delay differs. They don't mention this in the advertising strangely enough, although I did know about it before I bought mine since Brats had the same one.
Most people just don't notice it though. Only anal gits like me. There's a bunch of stuff about it on the avforums if you are interested.

But yeah, come down with Trevor or on your own and try out your kit.

Right.

I think this could be it. TODAY may be HD day.

Costco are knocking out Panasonic TH46PZ80B sets for £780 that's a huge saving even off online prices (approx £950).

I have the verbal OK from Mrs Madbury, despite concerns over screen size.

I have the guy across the street on standby with his van.

I have the money in the bank account.

1080p is within reach.

Hope I can find the component vid cable for the 360

Sounds good. Didja get it?

Probably is a bit big though... had a look at the 32" Sony/Panasonic LCDs? I'm curious about the quality of those at the moment.

I have to say the LCD sets have come a long way, but they're still not as good as a plasma to my eyes. They're still too bright and 'overdriven' to reproduce a natural picture (I guess the LED backlit ones will be better). Some people prefer LCD as it does seem to give a pin sharp hard image, but personally I prefer my picture to be a little softer and a little more natural looking. I'm also not overly convinced that they've completely licked the smearing on LCD panels. I'm not taken with the software fudging of intermediate frames (although I think the current crop of plamas do something similar?)

A bit big? I thought yours was 50"??? Never thought your set looked 'wrong' in your front room tbh.

Thing is this is a set for what 10 years+ and I don't plan on being in the same house that long

Hopefully going down there tonight to pick it up. Will see, largely will depend on the snow and if my neighbour wants to risk his van in these conditions.

Crossing fingers and toes...

Costco website says they offer 5 year warrantee on all televisions at no extra cost, so that's a bonus.

Size wise I don't think you can get a 1080p plasma below 42", and 46" isn't much bigger. This is how I'm rationalising it in my head....

I'd have got 42" if I had found one that actually worked.

Agree on the plasma rationale, LCD doesn't look as good for sure, gaming or no.

This site has just gone HD.

I'm am still in the 480p camp myself... I find it hard to justify the difference of 480p to 720p as my brain can't really suck in all that information at once anyways... especially the distance I have from my TV.

I suppose I'd go for a 720p LCD of somekind, just for the space aspect, but the CRT I have is the peak of human engineering as far as I am concerned.

My screen is properly screwed already (Samsung plasma) ¬_¬ - I'm too lazy to phone the bredders up and arrange something...

I get ghosting to the left of anything against a flat colour and after a couple of hours a strange blue glow along the left edge of the screen appears. I'll phone them about it this week for sure, I just don't have time to be screen-less with this guide writing gig I'm doing.

What I love most about this screen is that the older stuff looks sex, the Saturn especially makes me want to lick the glass XP

Pooh. Sold out of the first shipment. Should be getting more for Wednesday/Thursday. My name is on a waiting list #16th

Not particularly optimistic.

W00t etc. etc.

I am now HG Ready. Shame I can't find the component cable for the 360 (I think it's in the loft). SD stuff looks nice though and DVD seems to look good. Watched the House Bunny last night (don't ask).

It is bloody big though will take a while to adjust...

Getting my screen sorted now. The engineer said it was a known fault with the Samsungs and he's gonna come back with the software update on a laptop.

Thats what he said he's going to do. You just know as soon as you are not looking, he's gonna flick a switch or give the TV a hug and it's all better.

Laptops...what do they know!?

Also, I'm still against HD Surround 1080 degrees TVs. I'll be playing SFIV tommorow, exclusivly on a big massive TV through scart, on the AV1 channel. I have to unplug the Sky Box for it.

YEAH!

My eyes are now adjusted to the size. Looks normal. Was playing F-Zero GX yesterday through the Wii in 480p. Bloody hell that game looks amazing.

Also have DC hooked up with VGA, which is cool for 4:3, but useless for widescreen. I may be able to get my hands on a 60GB JPN PS3 via a friend too... We'll see.

How have you got the 360 hooked up?

Think it can do 1080p VGA which might be your best bet, but the set might not accept it. Otherwise you are looking at 1080i component.

I have it set up 1080i component. I could VGA it, but that means dropping the DC back to RGB or buggering about with a VGA switchbox. Might be worthwhile I suppose... Not sure I could tell the difference to be honest.

I just upgraded to a plasma and got an HD DVR i should have gotten one a long time ago to record my shows while away now anytime i'm home and have some down time i can catch up on my favorite shows.

Sounds good, which make/model did you get.

I'm thinking about investing in a 'Popcorn Hour' media streamer. Don't think that has any PVR capabilities though. There doesn't appear to be a 'cheap' solution that does everything i.e. media streamer and PVR.

Thanks to some awesome research by the Paper, I got me an "I'm still on the fence" 24inch Full HD 1 to 1 pixel LCD fella, for PC and HDMI console akshun.

Doesn't make games any better, but it does mean I can read adverts in racing games along way off, and maybe lean back a bit when I am playing on the thing.

PS3 is the best overall 1080p UI so far, the rather mixed Xbox dash doesn't really scale too aesthetically well, whereas the crisp lines and wavey things of the XMB seem to take more advantage of the pixels.

Doesn't excuse that both of them are an absolute user journey mess if you want to do more than start a game...