Things to look for in a HDTV for Mythtv

[romany1961]

Over the last 2 couple of months I have been putting together a Myth box to do HD - the last issue is to to purchase a HDTV. What features/capability in a HDTV should I be looking for? Native resolution, issues with modelines, etc - anything that might be an issue ONLY as far as Myth is concerned....I have a Asus based MB that has a built in DVI interface with a Nvidia 5200 chipset. I did not find anything that leaped out in this forum - probably my search criteria. Anyway thanks for any pointers .....

[Denver-Ed]

Just a couple of trivial points. We bought a low end LCD HDTV. I was attracted to it because of price and the fact that it had separate RF inputs for NTSC and ATSC. You won't find that very often. In any case get a TV that has tons of inputs, HDMI, S-video, components , etc..

My biggest complaint about this one is that the TV menus are too small. Probably only about 10% of screen. So until you learn the menu layouts, you have to get up close to see what you are doing. We have now learned and can change between Tv and HDMI without reading. The other thing was the remote was TV only, we can't program the remote for other uses.

Ed

[Rekna]

I would look for a TV that allows PC input over DVI, HDMI, or VGA. With the first two being preferable. Also depending on how you are doing your sound you may want to see which audio inputs are available when using these connections.

[indulis1]

If you can, get a TV that supports its native panel resolution at either 50Hz (PAL) or 60Hz (NTSC regions). If you can do this via VGA you are lucky. If you can do this via DVI-D/HDMI you are *amazingly* lucky. If you can't get the native TV frequency (50/60Hz) then you may get some image shudder on panning picture. If you can get native panel resolution at significantly higher vertical refresh rate (ie 85Hz) then this should reduce the shudder (probably, haven't been able to experiement yet).

Most TVs support their native panel resolution over VGA at 60Hz only. Exact 1:1 pixel mapping is nice if you can get it!

Also, check for "square pixels"- that is, a 16:9 picture will map exactly to the resolution (ie 1024x768 has pixels that are stretched sideways, 1355x768 is 16:9 square pixels). Just makes life easier.

[fromans4]

The manual for my 42" plasma references lots of resolutions including 1280x1024, 1280x720, 1920x1080,..., etc. How do I know what the "native" resolution is?

Also, I can't seem to get my system set to any resolution higher then 1280x1024, even though the manual says higher resolutions are supported. I am using the latest nvidia drivers available via "livna" repository. I have tried the drivers available through the nvidia web-site and the end results seem to be the same.

I did not intend to hi-jack this thread, but it seemed like related issues.

Any help would be welcome.

Thanks,
Brent

[indulis1]

The manual should say "congratulations on buying this fine product- Happy Flying Swan brand LCD TV with its amazing 852 x 480 resolution". The "native" resolution is the actual number of pixels on the LCD or plasma panel. It could be also mentioned on the specifications page. Or you could count the pixels

If possible, your aim is to have one pixel on the computer's display adapter map to one pixel on the LCD or plasma panel.

Your other aim is to have the source material's refresh rate map nicely to the adapter's and display's refresh rate (ie 50Hz for PAL, 60Hz for NTSC). This reduces "shudder" when you get movement on the screen.

Or if you can get a refresh rate of 75Hz and up, any shudder due to frame rate mismatch will probably disappear.

[buu700]

I'm just saying, soon (probably some time this month), I'm going to start selling extremely bright 720p LCD projectors with 100000-hour bulbs (10000000mcd LED backlighting) for only $350. So if anyone wants to get a high-definition projector that will last essentially forever (100000 hours is ~11.4 years, so you could leave this projector on for 11 years straight, and, assuming nothing goes wrong, it should still work for almost another half-year), you could wait for me to post the link here. I will be selling them on iOffer, and hopefully eBay as well (I have to wait to find out something about something first).