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My family brought in a new 32 inch Westinghouse flat panel TV into the house today for me to setup in the living room.
While I was at it I couldn't help but play around with it some with a couple of computers, a PC and my Mac. The TV is pretty good although it's not one of those ones that can display 1080p. I tried 1080i on my Mac which supported it better than the PC Laptop did. The recommended resolution for computer use on it was 1,366x768. 1080i was too flickery\glitchy.
It looked pretty good. I tried a few downloaded videos and I noticed that standard non-HR HDTV videos don't look any better than regular TV on it.. but HR HDTV formatted ones look nice and sharp. I played some of standard resolution Doctor Who and HR HDTV TORCHWOOD since that's what I had on my Mac. There's something interesting I noticed when having my Mac Mini hooked up to it is that it doesn't support showing the whole screen totally fullscreen there. If you click on "over-scan" it cuts of the outer edges of the desktop including the menu-bar making it a pain to use. If you uncheck that it leaves a thin border around the whole desktop so it's not flush with the edge.
I tried a couple of games but of course games need tweaking and are a mixed bag. Max Payne doesn't support widescreen at all so it looks stretched on there. Doom through the doomsday engine with high res replacement textures looks nice and sharp. Doom 3 looked OK although my computer doesn't have enough power to run it high res so it looked like how I imagine the old xbox version looked on a widescreen TV. I didn't try out too many other games because I had my Mac Mini setup in a very un-ergonomic way.
The PC laptop didn't support the TV as well as the Mac did. But I found out that the TV has an ATI image processor in it and I knew my Mac has an ATI GPU so that may have had something to do with it. Either way it seemed like the Mac supports it better out of the box than the PC did. I wasn't able to set the recommended resolution on the PC to 1,366x768 so I wasn't able to get it to fill the whole screen. I'd have to download a special utility on the PC in order to set the non standard resolution it needs and I don't have a wireless router\adaptor in the notebook.
I hooked up their standard definition equipment to it and of course at 480i it didn't look much better than regular TV but it does look better than the old TV they had particularly because of the width and the fact that it's more like a PC monitor than an old TV was. We are probably going to get the DISH box that can connect using an HD cable later (right now they are using just standard RCA A/V cables and thus are seeing TV in 480i).
When I say we I mean my family as it's their TV.. not mine.
To be honest with you I'm not all that jealous because of reasons I mentioned above. For me dots per inch is more important than size and I would like a monitor that is at least 1920x1080p or even just a nice 24 inch monitor with 1920x1200 such as the one in the new iMac. The latter looking better because it's not stretched. Some people say you need a big size to see the difference in HD but my experience is actually the opposite.. stretching HD bigger and bigger actually makes it look more and more like standard definition to me. HDTVs still don't look as HD as computer monitors to me. No I'm not basing that off my experience with this one TV but with them in general.
My new setup would consist of a 24" iMac for work\computing\PC games and for watching movies\videos\media one that is as big as my family's or maybe bigger with 1080p native resolution and a Mac Mini with an eyetv on it. This would especially work since I tend to sit close to my computer but far from my TV.
Don't get me wrong though, especially when I was playing an HR HDTV version of a TV show using my Mac Mini on their TV at 1366x768 it did look real nice... some people may not even see a difference with anything more than that. But I'm kind of a videophile so I do see the difference. Of course my family also only paid $500 dollars and I guess you can't expect 1080p for $500 dollars in a TV yet. ;)
Update: I setup a powered antenna for them to recieve DTV channels and it works pretty good. Since there are some HD DTV channels those look better than their DVD and Dish Network boxes... especially those channels that are 1080i. The first HD channel we picked up was the channel that has Family Guy on it and Family guy looked good but it's not widescreen so it was pillarboxed. PBS looks great in 1080i.
There's only one concern. They spent most of their extra money on the new TV so I don't think we are going to get the new internet anytime soon. Perhaps because they see that as just for me and saving $50 a month isn't as exciting sounding as getting a new TV. I can't say I blame them for getting a new toy but I feel a little sad about possibly not being able to get the new wireless internet. I'm not going to say anything about it and just make do with WildBlue if I have to. If they come up to me with the desire to go through with the switch we'll do it but I don't want to hound them about it and I don't want to make a fuss about this recent purchase as it's well within their rights.
They told me we are still going to get it but I almost feel that they might have said that just to make me feel better. I'm not questioning it though as I don't want to appear to protest too much and I did have fun playing with their TV anyway. If that's the case though I wish they didn't feel like they had to do that. I can handle the truth. I am not going to ask them if they did that either though as that would not be appropriate in my opinion. I don't want to appear like I'm throwing a temper tantrum. I'm too old for that... am I immature for feeling disappointed? Should I just be happy for them and that's it? Some may say yes I think.
I am happy for them actually.. but I also have other feelings that I can't change... sorry.
While I was at it I couldn't help but play around with it some with a couple of computers, a PC and my Mac. The TV is pretty good although it's not one of those ones that can display 1080p. I tried 1080i on my Mac which supported it better than the PC Laptop did. The recommended resolution for computer use on it was 1,366x768. 1080i was too flickery\glitchy.
It looked pretty good. I tried a few downloaded videos and I noticed that standard non-HR HDTV videos don't look any better than regular TV on it.. but HR HDTV formatted ones look nice and sharp. I played some of standard resolution Doctor Who and HR HDTV TORCHWOOD since that's what I had on my Mac. There's something interesting I noticed when having my Mac Mini hooked up to it is that it doesn't support showing the whole screen totally fullscreen there. If you click on "over-scan" it cuts of the outer edges of the desktop including the menu-bar making it a pain to use. If you uncheck that it leaves a thin border around the whole desktop so it's not flush with the edge.
I tried a couple of games but of course games need tweaking and are a mixed bag. Max Payne doesn't support widescreen at all so it looks stretched on there. Doom through the doomsday engine with high res replacement textures looks nice and sharp. Doom 3 looked OK although my computer doesn't have enough power to run it high res so it looked like how I imagine the old xbox version looked on a widescreen TV. I didn't try out too many other games because I had my Mac Mini setup in a very un-ergonomic way.
The PC laptop didn't support the TV as well as the Mac did. But I found out that the TV has an ATI image processor in it and I knew my Mac has an ATI GPU so that may have had something to do with it. Either way it seemed like the Mac supports it better out of the box than the PC did. I wasn't able to set the recommended resolution on the PC to 1,366x768 so I wasn't able to get it to fill the whole screen. I'd have to download a special utility on the PC in order to set the non standard resolution it needs and I don't have a wireless router\adaptor in the notebook.
I hooked up their standard definition equipment to it and of course at 480i it didn't look much better than regular TV but it does look better than the old TV they had particularly because of the width and the fact that it's more like a PC monitor than an old TV was. We are probably going to get the DISH box that can connect using an HD cable later (right now they are using just standard RCA A/V cables and thus are seeing TV in 480i).
When I say we I mean my family as it's their TV.. not mine.
To be honest with you I'm not all that jealous because of reasons I mentioned above. For me dots per inch is more important than size and I would like a monitor that is at least 1920x1080p or even just a nice 24 inch monitor with 1920x1200 such as the one in the new iMac. The latter looking better because it's not stretched. Some people say you need a big size to see the difference in HD but my experience is actually the opposite.. stretching HD bigger and bigger actually makes it look more and more like standard definition to me. HDTVs still don't look as HD as computer monitors to me. No I'm not basing that off my experience with this one TV but with them in general.
My new setup would consist of a 24" iMac for work\computing\PC games and for watching movies\videos\media one that is as big as my family's or maybe bigger with 1080p native resolution and a Mac Mini with an eyetv on it. This would especially work since I tend to sit close to my computer but far from my TV.
Don't get me wrong though, especially when I was playing an HR HDTV version of a TV show using my Mac Mini on their TV at 1366x768 it did look real nice... some people may not even see a difference with anything more than that. But I'm kind of a videophile so I do see the difference. Of course my family also only paid $500 dollars and I guess you can't expect 1080p for $500 dollars in a TV yet. ;)
Update: I setup a powered antenna for them to recieve DTV channels and it works pretty good. Since there are some HD DTV channels those look better than their DVD and Dish Network boxes... especially those channels that are 1080i. The first HD channel we picked up was the channel that has Family Guy on it and Family guy looked good but it's not widescreen so it was pillarboxed. PBS looks great in 1080i.
There's only one concern. They spent most of their extra money on the new TV so I don't think we are going to get the new internet anytime soon. Perhaps because they see that as just for me and saving $50 a month isn't as exciting sounding as getting a new TV. I can't say I blame them for getting a new toy but I feel a little sad about possibly not being able to get the new wireless internet. I'm not going to say anything about it and just make do with WildBlue if I have to. If they come up to me with the desire to go through with the switch we'll do it but I don't want to hound them about it and I don't want to make a fuss about this recent purchase as it's well within their rights.
They told me we are still going to get it but I almost feel that they might have said that just to make me feel better. I'm not questioning it though as I don't want to appear to protest too much and I did have fun playing with their TV anyway. If that's the case though I wish they didn't feel like they had to do that. I can handle the truth. I am not going to ask them if they did that either though as that would not be appropriate in my opinion. I don't want to appear like I'm throwing a temper tantrum. I'm too old for that... am I immature for feeling disappointed? Should I just be happy for them and that's it? Some may say yes I think.
I am happy for them actually.. but I also have other feelings that I can't change... sorry.
