Im looking at several tvs at bestbuy and had some questions. Heres what I was looking at.
1:samsung ln22b460 ($320)
2:samsung ln22b350 ($280)
3:LG 22lh20-ua ($300)
4:insignia ns-l22x-10a ($300)

tv1 & 2 has 15000:1 dynamic contrast ratio with 8ms refresh rate.
tv3 has 8000:1 DCR with 5ms refresh rate.
tv4 has 3000:1 DCR with 5ms refresh rate.

Whats more inportant, contrast ratio or refresh rate?
I watched a baseball game on both tv 2&3 side by side, both had flaws when watching the game.

 

if the lcd's look like they're "ghosting" look into plasma tv's

the higher the contrast rate, the blacker the blacks will look
the lower the refresh rate the less ghosting you'll see

 

when a player was running the bases, everything around him would turn to blocks.

 

As a general rule:
DCR: the higher the number the better.
Response time: the lower the number the better.

There may be some fudging by manufacturers in the response time numbers, and although a standard measurement has been set, no real menaingful standard is required in how the measurement is taken, so the numbers given may not be truely representative evaluation tools from one manufacturer to another.
Having said that, if comparing aples to aples, lower is better, but the average person probably cannot detect the difference between an 8ms response and a 5ms response.
Screen Refresh rate however will make a big difference in the possibility of ghosting in fast action scenes. If the specs of any of the above units is 120HZ or above, it may make it a more desireable choice.

1,2, or 3 seem acceptable but 4 looks to be a real dog in the DCR field.

Perfect set has:
Highest DCR, lowest responce time in ms, highest refresh rate in HZ

P.S. The refrence to things turning to blocks most likely was due to a poor signal. Digital sets are very picky on their received signals, and if any part of the signal drops off, the result is displayed as a series of blocks . This does not necessarily reflect badly on the TV.

 

> the result is displayed as a series of blocks

Good post.

Yes, because any lost data means they can't reconstruct the MPEG block.

 

One thing to consider is that the LG brands are very reliable. I think this is because they bought Zenith corporation a number of years back and have that experience in the background. Zenith was a top end brand tv maker. I have two LG LCD's at my place, ones a 32" and one a 19" and I have no complaints on either one.
Contrast you want the higher numbers as offered for best picture and the faster the refresh rate the better for fast motion programs.
Note that I have observed with the new digital broadcast is that they are very susceptable to signal interferance and signal strentgh. I use an outside antenna and a rotor, but the stations that are farther away I see interferance when we get heavy rains. Signal strenght wnaders quite a bit and picture and audio get out of sync or picture freeze occurs. Can't wait to see what happens in a snow storm. My antenna is a fringe strenght antenna.

 

For 22 inch TVs, you're pretty much going to be getting an LCD.

Contrast ratio means very little when comparing different brands. There is no industry standard so they can make the numbers say whatever they want. So saying that an LG with 10,000:1 is worse than a Sony at 15,000:1 is like saying that 4 is less than car. It doesn't make any sense.

Response time is important. It's how fast the screen reacts to the signal. Lower is better as it's responsing faster. 8 is fine but 5 is better however it may be imperceptable to you.

For a 22 inch screen, resolution isn't that important. 720P is going to look just as good as 1080P because the pixels are so small so don't get caught up in all that. I'd make sure it can receive 1080P though.

The boxiness you saw is probably dithering. Do some googleing on it but it's basicly the TV's way of fudging the picture when it can't figure out exactly what to show. If you saw this at the store, it's probably because the feed has been split a million times and you're not getting a good signal. I saw this watching the Olympics last year from China I think, but I don't get it from domestic broadcasts like the NFL. I can only imagine that the added transfer from China degraded the image a little. Once you get it home, everything should be fine. Ghosting is almost a thing of the past.

Also keep in mind that seeing the TVs in the store is not that great. Like I mentioned the signal quality is usually crap from being split so much. The TVs are not setup alike and the more expensive sets might be set up to look really good and the cheaper ones setup to look like crap.

All the TVs you listed should be good. I never liked the Insignias though as they seemed too light no matter how I adjusted it. Maybe look at Dynex as well. I have a 19 inch and it's a great set. The viewing angles are a little smaller than a more expensive set, but not by much.

Mike

 

thanks guys, im gonna watch this tv on a standard def satelite connection through an rf cable. only thing i dont like about the lg is that there is no heaphone jack so i cant connect computer speakers for a more realistic sound.

 

well i bought a samsung ln26b460. what is the ranking for the different types of connections in terms of quality? Theres RF, s-video, component, composite, hdmi. I know HDMI is the top and RF is the bottom, how do the others stack up?

 

HDMI and component are basicly the same thing. Both can carry 1080p. The benefit of HDMI is that it carries HD videa and sound in one cable. For video there is a channel for each color.

Composite and S-video are similar. S-video is like the HDMI cable of composite. In composite all the colors are blended into one channel and the TV filters them back out.

RF isn't bad. Actually you can receive HD video and surround sound over the air with rabbit ears via RF.

Also you probably have optical ports for audio and coax connections for digital audio. Those can carry multichannel audio to a receiver if you have one for 5.1 sound. I don't think they can carry 7.1, I think only HDMI has the bandwidth for that.

Mike