Sainsbury's Amiga Ready LCDTV

[alexh]

motorollin wrote:
Sounds similar to the one I'm using. Got mine from ASDA though.

I dont think ASDA sell them anymore hence the new post. Some other people have also "slagged off" the DUAL brand as rubbish, although you are happy with yours

[Oliver]

OT: I haven't looked closely at that website linked to by Dammy, but I didn't notice any author's listed.  I'm often skeptical of this.  Several times when I've followed up on material arguing against the validity of global warming, it's been written by economists with absolutely no training in the physical sciences.  Furthermore, they misrepresented their qualifications by calling themselves experts in the field.  Business groups and politicians are great at using things like cost benefit analysese to assess environmental risks, while essentially ignoring any physical processes.  Too often, genuine scientific argument is just not entered into.

P.S. Has anyone in Australia used one of these LCD TV's, and have a good line on where to purchase one?

[Agafaster]

@Darksun9210,

one of the things i hate about Sky is the 5 minute advert breaks. i get bored, go channel hopping, or go do something else - having completely forgotten what i was watching...

Thats what really bugs me about Sky, and all the other Rupert bl00dy Murdoch price gouging TV stations- you pay for a dish and box (fair enough), you PAY for a subscription to his (mainly) sh!tty stations, add MORE for the sport if you like that, then he goes and CRAMS it full of Ads !! its one or the other for me. thing is, it sells like water in the Namib because of all the dopey more-cash-than-sense (and not a lot of cash really!) football addicts, who have probably forked out best part of a grand on a season ticket anyway ! :madashell:

BBC do excellent stuff - it does tend to be of a better quality than ITV even (ITV edge it in some areas), so I'm well in favour of the licence fee - it only works out about 3 quid a week, and of the 8 channels they bung out, I regularly use 4 of em, (6 if you include the kids ;-)) and tune in to News24 at least once a week.
there interactive service is second to none, of all the ones I've experienced.

anyway. looks like a nice set, to get back OT ! might replace my Digital 15" CRT nicely, and I can use both Amigas at the same time !!

[uncharted]

Agafaster wrote:

thing is, it sells like water in the Namib because of all the dopey more-cash-than-sense (and not a lot of cash really!) football addicts, who have probably forked out best part of a grand on a season ticket anyway ! :madashell:

No need to worry, not much chance of there being many Forest matches on Sky next season, unlike those of us now in the Championship* :-P

tune in to News24 at least once a week.

After catching their "NewsWatch" programme last week it seems that they never learnt anything after the Hutton report.


* Even though the chances are we'll be straight back down again. ;-)

[Agafaster]

hmm. uncharted lives in Kent.
his side were promoted (we dont know how briefly) to the champignonship.

I'll name that side in one - Colchester. even though its in Essex.

After catching their "NewsWatch" programme last week it seems that they never learnt anything after the Hutton report.

well, nobody's perfect ! and the whole thing was a fudge anyway. Tony protecting his butt.

I'd also like to call evidence in favour of BBC's quality: the coverage of the game last night.

[uncharted]

Agafaster wrote:
hmm. uncharted lives in Kent.
his side were promoted (we dont know how briefly) to the champignonship.

I'll name that side in one - Colchester. even though its in Essex.

Nooooo!

FFS give me some credit! :-)

[Hyperspeed]

Hrrrm, I've just bought a 17" LCD TV with VGA input from Woolworths. It's a Samsung SyncMaster 710MP (1280x1024) for £220 GBP.



I thought since it had a SCART socket it would take the Amiga signal nicely, especially as I have a scandoubler/FF too.

Unfortunately I am not happy with it at all.

I reasoned that since it was capable of 1280x1024 (double exactly 640x512 of PAL Hi Res Laced) that I would get a crisp and proportional screen. However, the display is not fitting into the pixel array properly - giving me vertical bands of ill fitting pixels.

It recognises NTSC as 640x480 but expands it to full screen which on this ratio monitor stretches everything disproportionately.

There is no vertical resizing option and the horizontal resizing is very blocky. PAL will not compress down into the screen area on the vertical plain so you either have to edit the overscan prefs with a lower resolution or in the case of demos/games lose some of the screen (even though PAL: Hi Res Laced is exactly the same screen proportion as the LCD's).

The brightness/contrast settings are too dark and on 15Khz RGB SCART I get a funny green tint (which doesn't appear on other display devices I tested).

My EZ-VGA Plus already reduces the quality of my A1200's output from 18-Bit RGB down to 16-Bit CVBS with banding, this monitor not only emphasises the scandoublers reduction in quality but adds to this with poor contrast, lack of resizing and no seperate memory banks for image settings.

Another annoying thing is that the CVBS input for accepting camcorder signals also crops the sides of images and in this mode there is no way to resize or reposition the screen. Also, the feeble speakers are positioned underneath the display which is a major design flaw in my opinion (A sound field is best appreciated when the speaker is at the same height as your ears, not above or below ear/eye level).

I was a little wary when a Samsung driver CD came out of the box when I opened it. A monitor relying on Windows drivers struck alarm bells and my fears proved correct.

I'm going to have to look for something from NEC or Philips - they know how to make good monitors.

In the meantime, I'm packing up this Korean crud and sending it right back. Glad I kept my CRT for the time being!

Oh, and silver really doesn't go with vanilla, I must look for a colour matching LCD, darlings!

;-)

[X-ray]

@ Odin

Ja, they will take your details at the checkout.

@ All

Spare a thought for the South Africans. They also pay a TV license AND have ads on all channels, AND end up paying for content they can't watch because of the 11 official languages. My Zulu isn't that good  ;-)

[odin]

Disgusting .

[CLS2086]

@Hyperspeed : what happen when you use the VGA input with just the Commodore VGA adapter and not your SD/FF ? does the 15 Khz modes work ?

[The_Editor]

So when you buy a tv and they ask for your address you say..

"No fixed abode"

It's good enough for the Pikey's

[alewis]

Actually, this has been a legal requirement for many years. And it isn't just purchasing a TV.

The agency is informed of the following:
1. purchased of television and other receiving equipment
2. owners of new houses
3. council house tenants
4. house sales/purchases (in theory!)

plus some others I can't recall of top of head. The residential details were interesting, as they were held for 10 years. Ever wonder, given the number of sets in the country, the agency knew when to send a detector van out, and where? The residential information was cross-referenced against the licence database. When the number of "unlicenced" properties reched a given proportion, a van would investigate, concentrating on unlicenced addresses.

The 10 year date reflected the size of storage systems back in the 80's (small).

This still lives on, today. You might not have a TV/video/etc, but for years you will receive a reminder that you 'need' a TV licence as you - the address - does not have one. Of course, larger datasets and more powerful processing allows them to store data longer, and fine tune the various parameters, such as letters, visits, and detector vans.

"Interesting" story. How do I know this? 15 years ago I was on a systems analysis course, in the Army. The course as run by the Royal Signals at Blandford Camp, in Dorset. This barracks is large, very large (by UK standards) and includes married quarters living accomodation within camp boundaries. The perimeter is about 8miles long, in total. Its so large there is a bus route that passes through it(!)

Part of the course context for the analysis studies involved a fictional location - Popo Island - which was replacing manual systems, one being the TV licence system. As students, we gathered the business requirements, the future needs, analsysed the current system, and developed a three options report;

a. keep as is
b.
c. throw more money/men at it

Option B was always the "preferred solution", ie replace/upgrade computer system (althouh I did once submit one that didn't involve a computer, merely a streamlined manual system, but I digress). We put together various 'solutions (including the data analsysis, JSP diagrams, etc)' and business cases. Anyway, when this particular assignment was completed, suprise suprise we find that just about every one, on every course, had submitted a solution that was very similar to that used in the UK, and were then given a presentation on the system used in the UK, and how it works.

But this is were is gets humourous: Solders tend not to buy TV licences (well, not when I were a lad!), at Blandford no-one living inside the perimeter bought one. The TV licencing would periodically send a detector van (they didn't have details of soldiers in barracks, and the MOD does not supply MQ details to anyone exept courts - this predates "poll tax") to investigate the MQ area.

Now Blandford Camp is a communications nexus, with some very sensitive traffic. The agency had to noify the MOD in advance, because the detection equipment is of course based on the same principles that TEMPEST uses... so in advance this visit would be printed on Part 1 orders. When the van did arrive, it would be stopped at the Guardhouse, and searched - in minute detail, to ensure it really was - and only just - a detector van, with equipment soley tuned for TV frequencies. Meanwhile, a landrover would take off round the MQ area, letting everyone know the detector van was on-site.

Oddly enough, no one was ever caught without a licence there :-)

motorollin wrote:
@Doobrey
The law has changed recently. Retailers are required by law to send the TV Licensing Agency the names and addresses of all customers who buy equipment containing a tuner. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy a license, but once the licensing agency know you have bought something capable of displaying a TV signal they will start sending you letters...

--
moto

[alewis]

Actually, this has been a legal requirement for many years. And it isn't just purchasing a TV.

The agency is informed of the following:
1. purchased of television and other receiving equipment
2. owners of new houses
3. council house tenants
4. house sales/purchases (in theory!)

plus some others I can't recall of top of head. The residential details were interesting, as they were held for 10 years. Ever wonder, given the number of sets in the country, the agency knew when to send a detector van out, and where? The residential information was cross-referenced against the licence database. When the number of "unlicenced" properties reched a given proportion, a van would investigate, concentrating on unlicenced addresses.

The 10 year date reflected the size of storage systems back in the 80's (small).

This still lives on, today. You might not have a TV/video/etc, but for years you will receive a reminder that you 'need' a TV licence as you - the address - does not have one. Of course, larger datasets and more powerful processing allows them to store data longer, and fine tune the various parameters, such as letters, visits, and detector vans.

"Interesting" story. How do I know this? 15 years ago I was on a systems analysis course, in the Army. The course as run by the Royal Signals at Blandford Camp, in Dorset. This barracks is large, very large (by UK standards) and includes married quarters living accomodation within camp boundaries. The perimeter is about 8miles long, in total. Its so large there is a bus route that passes through it(!)

Part of the course context for the analysis studies involved a fictional location - Popo Island - which was replacing manual systems, one being the TV licence system. As students, we gathered the business requirements, the future needs, analsysed the current system, and developed a three options report;

a. keep as is
b.
c. throw more money/men at it

Option B was always the "preferred solution", ie replace/upgrade computer system (althouh I did once submit one that didn't involve a computer, merely a streamlined manual system, but I digress). We put together various 'solutions (including the data analsysis, JSP diagrams, etc)' and business cases. Anyway, when this particular assignment was completed, suprise suprise we find that just about every one, on every course, had submitted a solution that was very similar to that used in the UK, and were then given a presentation on the system used in the UK, and how it works.

But this is were is gets humourous: Solders tend not to buy TV licences (well, not when I were a lad!), at Blandford no-one living inside the perimeter bought one. The TV licencing would periodically send a detector van (they didn't have details of soldiers in barracks, and the MOD does not supply MQ details to anyone exept courts - this predates "poll tax") to investigate the MQ area.

Now Blandford Camp is a communications nexus, with some very sensitive traffic. The agency had to noify the MOD in advance, because the detection equipment is of course based on the same principles that TEMPEST uses... so in advance this visit would be printed on Part 1 orders. When the van did arrive, it would be stopped at the Guardhouse, and searched - in minute detail, to ensure it really was - and only just - a detector van, with equipment soley tuned for TV frequencies. Meanwhile, a landrover would take off round the MQ area, letting everyone know the detector van was on-site.

Oddly enough, no one was ever caught without a licence there :-)

motorollin wrote:
@Doobrey
The law has changed recently. Retailers are required by law to send the TV Licensing Agency the names and addresses of all customers who buy equipment containing a tuner. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy a license, but once the licensing agency know you have bought something capable of displaying a TV signal they will start sending you letters...

--
moto

[recidivist]

 The government lists of radio and gun owners were really useful to the Nazis .
And such lists continue to be useful to like-minded socialist dicators,whether they run a small bureau or an entire nation.
Sadly ,the U.S. is moving in that direction.
AS for the monitors,since the lcd types have an absolute fixed number of pixels,it would seem necessary that all the various Amiga display rates somehow be a factor of the pixel number.This may require waiting until there are LCD screens of 16megapixels or something.No,I didn't work out the math.

[MASACREWILL]

@ Hyperspeed - ..hi, I own the same monitor and I must disagree with you quite a lot.. It is not as bad as you describe..
PAL signal is quite good even if I am using just a CINCH cord for Amiga PAL composite OUT.. demos look good, games are playable, but there is problem with text, but it surely can be solved by using proper SCART 2 Amiga RGB cable.. Also I have not experienced any geometry problems..
You don`t need to use Windows drivers to get this monitor working correctly, it displays signal from my Voodoo at 1280*1024*60 Hz without any problem.. AFAIK there are some drivers packed with every LCD monitor these days.. I doubt that you will get any significantly differnt results using different LCD TV..

Best regards    ;-)

[Tomas]

The tv license issue here in Norway is worse...  :-(
Here you automaticly have to pay even if you do not watch tv at all and the people selling tvs, vcrs and such are forced to send your name and such to the state owned tv company. The worst part is that they now want to extend this license onto computers and cell phones because you "can" stream tv over internet or 3g phones. And do you think the internet streams are free for those who pay the licenses?? hell no... You will have to pay a subscription to be able to use it.
The analog tv signals will also be cut off soon and be replaced with dvb-t through a customized mpeg4 decoder. This means it wont be possible to recieve tv anymore without buying an additional decoder and this will cost money too. But that does not mean that we dont need to pay a tv license even if we dont own this decoder.  :crazy:

So we are forced to pay this license even if we do not own equipment capable of recieving tv signals from the nazi state owned tv channels.
It wont be easy to get the license terminated even if you sell your tv later on... They have such power that they can do whatever the hell they want.

Oh and when tvs get built in dvb-t tuners, it will still not work as they only let you use their approved decoder.