johng Blog

Managed to get some time in with the new TV (JVC LT-32DX7BJ) over the weekend. It’s now plainly clear to me that if you don’t have an HDTV with Xbox Live Gold there is no point getting a 360. You’re only getting a fraction of the experience if you don’t - seriously. And for that reason you should get both rather than missing out.

I fired up a Gears multiplayer match to see how it was looking and I found it quite hard to concentrate on the match as I was noticing details I hadn’t seen before. Also having an overall larger, sharper view made the game easier to play after getting used to it. I can definitely see the guys with HDTVs having in edge online against those that don’t.

Being the only HD device I own I also tried out some movies via the 360. It upscales standard def stuff nicely but if you have a low quality source prepare for it to be exposed. DVDs are fine but if you backup to Xvid on a single CD prepare for a shock. Of course all this wasn’t playing natively but via TVersity which transcodes to a compatible format from your PC.

Aside from the general HD stuff the TV has excellent features in other areas. The VGA input is extremely handy and the best way to get the perfect resolution for the screen. It also allows you to tweak the position of the image on the screen if it’s off slightly, something many TVs leave out. Colour and brightness are good and there are so many levels and tweaks that can be done behind the scenes that it would be hard not to get the picture you seek.

As for normal TV (Sky, Freeview, etc) it seems to handle that as well as most other similar displays. Essentially stuff shot in HD or wide-screen with a decent bit rate even when broadcast in SD will look great. As for everything else (low bit rate channels, old movies) it will look shockingly bad. I don’t even want to think about VHS on this thing (or a Wii without component cables for that matter ;-)).

So a very solid display with some handy features. Highly recommended if you have a lot of different devices and sources that need hooking up, no matter what strange image is being sent it can usually be tweaked to look as nice as possible.