On 12 Oct 2001 08:46:54 -0700, tomk@ap.com (Tom Kite) wrote:

>I have been watching (NTSC) TV on an Amiga monitor for many years. It
>has a superb picture, having been designed to display 640x400
>originally, but is only 13" in size, so I finally bought a TV this
>week. It's a 27" Panasonic Tau. The picture is pretty decent.
>
>Here's the issue: I hooked up a Commodore 64 (hence the Amiga monitor)
>to the TV last night to test the TV a bit with static images, etc.
>Well, I am disappointed in the results relative to the Amiga monitor,
>but the question is, am I expecting too much of a regular TV? Here
>are some of the problems:
>
> o Poor colour convergence near the screen edges.
> o Big change in image size (both vertically and horizontally)
> depending on the size of bright areas in the image. I would
> say there is probably a 5% increase in vertical size on changing
> the screen from mostly black to mostly white. This is also
> seen, for instance, when displaying a picture from my VCR with
> the channel number superimposed on the image by the VCR. If the
> TV image changes greatly in brightness, the channel number bounces
> to the right noticeably.
> o Slight skewing at the top of the picture depending on bright areas
> o Artifacts that appear to be related to the digital comb filter.
> Not colour artifacts (the colour is in fact excellent), but
> what looks like pixels being displaced here and there. I've
> also noticed this on computer-generated titles on regular TV.
>
>It's not clear to me whether I can expect such problems in all
>consumer TVs, and therefore should live with it, or whether another TV
>would do a better job. I should add that the picture is very good on
>regular TV imagery, when one doesn't notice these kinds of artifacts.

Ah, welcome to the world of consumer-level TV these days...
It is RARE to find one that has very low convergence
problems (color fringes from non-coincident imaging of the
primary colors), low "blooming" (the tendency for the
image size to change with brightness), low linear distortion
(can be static and/or affected by blooming), good focus over
the whole screen, high sharpness, low aliasing ("dot-crawl"
on contrasting color edges, generally reduced by using the
"S" or 3-color inputs). I looked 2-3 months for a good 27"
TV about 8 years ago (when they were still competing in
resolution, thank goodness...! ;-), and found one I liked
in every way but one. Realizing that its virtues were
attached to that VERY demo sample, I bought that one, and
not a new one (other samples of the same model on the floor
were TERRIBLE!). I then removed the back and adjusted the
color (the one failing of that sample, but correctable...).
Recently I did the same thing when looking for an "S"
compatible 20" flat-screen for monitoring (I bought the
one demo sample I saw that was good...). Alternatively,
you can spend big bucks on real video monitors...