[mythtvnz] anyone recommend the Phillips 32" LCD Widescreen flat TV?

[Julian Peterson]

On Wednesday 17 January 2007 15:01, Jason Haar wrote:
> Hi there
>
> We are finally looking at replacing our *very* old  Sony TV, and of
> course I want to make sure the new one will play nicely with
> MythTV/Linux.
>
> Currently my wife has her eye on the Phillips 32" LCD Widescreen
> (32PF7321: see http://tinyurl.com/yqzyx2) and from what I can see it
> looks pretty good. It appears to have every output format except DVI
> (but they say a DVI2HDMI can get around that limitation) - but as my
> VIA frontend doesn't have DVI - that's not really an issue. I assume
> the HDMI support means Sky would be happy with it in the future (unless
> they change their minds ;-)
>
> Has anyone else already got one, and if so, how is it going?
>

That's what I just bought myself for Christmas =)

I felt it was the best TV (as in nicest picture) of that size at that 
resolution, and I looked at a bunch of them.

I didn't feel like paying double was worthwhile for a 1080p display when 
there's limited content to display at that resolution (and I find the DRM 
in Blueray and HD DVD too onerous anyway).  I figure by the time 1080p or 
better is mainstream then it'll be new TV time anyways.

I'm very happy with my purchase.  Zero complaints about the display.  
Firefly never looked so good.

MythTV works like a champ.  I didn't need to modify my config for that 
(although I may change the recording resolution just to make it a 
function of the TVs)

UT2k5 plays great, other games too... it makes a really nice monitor 
having a really good refresh rate, and the viewing angle and contrast 
ratios are excellent.

I use a VGA cable to connect my computer.  I plan I getting a HDMI-DVI 
cable at some point, but obviously can't tell you how well that works 
yet.

There was a little fiddling around getting xorg configured, mostly just 
around getting a modeline that worked nicely, and mostly then it was just 
a bit of googling.

Here's the useful part out of my xorg.conf file (note the refresh rates 
are pseudo-guesses, but I think it's pretty hard to kill an LCD display, 
and mines still working =)

Section "Modes"
    Identifier         "TV-WideScreen-Modes"

    # 1368x768 @ 60Hz
    ModeLine "1368x768" 85.5 1360 1424 1536 1792 768 771 776 
794 -hsync -vsync 

EndSection

Section "Monitor"

	Identifier 	"LCDTV"
	VendorName 	"Philips"
	ModelName  	"Philips 32PF7321 LCD TV"

	HorizSync	30.0 - 70.0
	VertRefresh	48.0 - 62.0

        UseModes  	"TV-WideScreen-Modes"

 	Option     	"UseEdidDpi" "false" 
 	DisplaySize	697 392
	
	Option	    "dpms"
EndSection

(Note: I use the closed source nVidia drivers fwiw)


I hope all or some of that was useful, and I'm happy to answer any other 
questions you have.

Cheers,

Julian.