[Gllug] TV ExpressCard/USB - any recommendations/avoids?

[Christopher Hunter]

On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 23:33 +0000, Peter Corlett wrote:

> May I suggest a good optician?

My wife is an Optometrist and can therefore prescribe glasses and
contact lenses.  An "optician" can fit a frame, but has no prescribing
training or rights.  If someone calling themselves an "optician" is
trying to examine your eyes, leave immediately and report them to the
Association of Optometrists!  (That's the professional body representing
the people who are allowed to clinically assess your eyes).

> I can't speak for off-air signals since I don't actually watch TV, but  
> the 1080p TV I acquired a while back wipes the floor with the grubby  
> old raster gun it replaced. It's got a high enough resolution that  
> it's practical to use it as a computer monitor, for a start. And the  
> headache-inducing 50Hz flicker is no more!

There are few reasonable quality off-air signals available since all the
digital services use particularly nasty MPEG compression techniques that
wreck any vestige of video quality that the original content ever had.

It's no better with local sources, either.  Domestic LCD TVs have such
poor resolution (don't ever believe that "1080" automatically indicates
"HD" resolution) that they are really unpleasant to watch.  Their
refresh rates are so low that any motion is smeared (particularly
horizontal motion), and no "600 Hz technology" is ever going to mitigate
the slowness of the LCD screen.

> CRTs are not a technology I will ever be nostalgic for.

Nor me - they're unreliable, hot, have nasty high voltages inside them
and produce noxious fumes.  However, they are the only option providing
any real quality for the foreseeable future.  The ONLY LCD screens I've
seen installed in TV studios are used for "Autocue" purposes.  The three
monitor types still used in the TV studios I work in are Sony, Panasonic
or Barco, and ALL are CRT-based.

The current betting (and I was at Sanyo in Watford for a demonstration
of their newest HD kit today) is that LCDs will catch up with CRTs in
quality terms in about 5 years, but the sources available to the casual
TV viewer are so poor that the " average punter" may as well go and buy
something halfway good today.

There is a "cult of reduced expectation" in this country these days
which I find particularly disheartening - it applies to music
reproduction (MP3 is a HORRIBLE format), TV (see above), broadcast radio
(both programme content quality and the broadcast medium quality have
fallen radically in the last few years), education and even personal
behaviour!

Gah!  I sound like a grumpy old man....

C.


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