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Hi all,

Was in Aldi today and saw this as coming on 11 May. Grabbed a brochure, here's the details:

"94cm HDTV Compatible LCD Television.

8ms response time

1000:1 contrast ratio

550cd/m2 brightness

1366 X 768 resolution

HDTV compatibility at 1080i/720p

2 x 5w speakers

PIP in PC/DVD mode

Connections:

PC in VGA

DVI in

component video in (YPbPr)

composite AV in

composite AV out

S-Video in

headphone jack

Wall mountable

Includes desktop stand, remote control component video cable.

12 month ON-SITE warranty!

115mm thick, weighs 39Kg."

They also offer home delivery for $49.50 per unit.

Anyone know what this is?

Aldi service and support has been first-rate in my experience and their products are generally made with high end components (the Medion PC is all quality name-brand stuff inside), their return policy is good so what do you all think????

The picture of the rear connections looks like HDMI in my not very knowledgeable opinion, though could be DVI.

David.

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their products are generally made with high end components (the Medion PC is all quality name-brand stuff inside), their return policy is good so what do you all think????

High end components? Not always, quality can vary dramatically depending on the product, Medion products are generally much better than Tevion branded products though, not sure which one this screen is by, very different approach taken between these two brands, sometimes a bit of luck involved.

Some of their stuff has been quite good in the past, they've had their share of crap too though. At least as you say their return policy is generally good, more money than I would want to gamble just because I could return it if it was a lemon. Also some better screens are not a lot dearer these days, depends how much you can stretch the budget I guess.

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The picture of the rear connections looks like HDMI in my not very knowledgeable opinion, though could be DVI.

David.

well the spec does not mention HDMI or HDCP, so most likely DVI. Hard to tell from the piccy on the website, picture is pretty small

specs looks pretty decent "on paper" - but I wonder what the internal scaler is like - usually the killer with this kind of screen

might drop in ALDI, see if they have anything on demo

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Medion products are generally much better than Tevion branded products though, not sure which one this screen is by,

This one is a Tevion

Some of their stuff has been quite good in the past, they've had their share of crap too though.

Not unlike Sony :blink:

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A German site tested the 32" model with same contrast ratio of 1000 and found it only just over 400. However they claimed that picture was quite good for TV viewing. The 32" model in UK got good reports on PQ but had many problems with input matching, Pic In Pic, stability, etc. Many were returned. Hopefully, they have fixed the input and firmware problems by now for this model.

I recently purchased two of their Medion HD recorders 160mb II and both were faulty. OK once fixed. They claimed a "faulty batch". There is no support yet for this recorder or proper model number. I also purchased the last 15.4" Medion laptop which had a number of firmware/driver issues out of the box although most are now resolved.

I am coming to the conclusion that Australia is being used as a testbed for any new Medion/Tevion products rushed to market that are not quite ready, then they use our feedback to fix the next batch for the bigger European markets.

If it is released here first you are wise to consider it a "beta" model and be prepared for teething problems..

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Well, the curiosity got the better of me, so I had a look at the "94cm HDTV Compatible LCD

Television” from Aldi. (Shepparton)

Here is some more information about it.

- Tevion brand, not Medion.

- 8ms response time ( nominal ) - Is nominal OK ?

- Analogue TV tuner, but HDTV compatibility. So a digital set top box is needed.

- 170 degree viewing angle.

- Dimensions of the unit are 1090mm (L) x 600mm (H) and 650mm (H) on stand.

All the specs are on the carton & are pretty much as David wrote on May 4, 2006.

- Speakers are not detachable.

The store manager was good enough to open the carton for me, so I could see for myself.

He said 6 units were received & if any are still in stock next week, they would put one on display.

If the speakers were detachable, I would have considered snapping one up for the asking $1999.

- My wall unit is not big enough :(

The older 80cm (32”) version was priced at $1599 & has detachable speakers, but not as many features.

I trust this information is of some value.

Geoff.

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- 8ms response time ( nominal ) - Is nominal OK ?

Umm, I don't think they understand the meaning of the word "nominal". I guess what they think it means is either "we think it's correct but we haven't checked", or perhaps "on average". :P

What it says to me is "we have no idea so we checked the other manufacturers and the best ones were quoting 8ms so we decided to follow suit, but in case we get caught, we'll just add the vague term 'nominal' at the end". Given the dodgy contrast rating (1000:1 is also in the better range of sets out there) I think this might be on the right track.

But to be fair, the tests I've seen comparing specs to real world measurements of a variety of LCDs including "top" brand units, the results have been all over the shop. So anyone can really quote anything and get away with it. The only measurement that makes sense is your own eyes.

:blink:

I'm interested to hear ppls PQ rating once someone eyeballs the panel running.

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howdy guys,

I had a bit of spare time (and cash :blink so I picked up this tv this afternoon, after confirming with the store manager that I could indeed return it if I found it didn't meet my requirements..

anyway after a lot of dicking around, and my impressions with the screen so far (keep in mind I don't really know that much about what makes a good tv screen etc).

Firstly, the contrast is pretty damn awful, 'black' is really a fairly bright, and is quite a lot greyer than the bezel. In dark scenes its hard to distinguish whats what.

Also, the backlight is fairly uneven. I didn't capture it very well on the camera but the screen seems to be composed of 4 vertical waves of varying backlight intensity, as well as a funny one in the bottom left corner.

Viewing angle is.. I don't know. At about 120 degrees the colour starts to drop away. It's not a dramatic change and the picture still looks good by my estimation, but there is a difference from looking at the screen head on (I don't know if you would really notice it unless you looked for it). The image is still very watchable right up to the 160 degree field and beyond.

Image quality in general.. well I'm probably not the best person to comment on because i'm not a real big expert on it, so yeah, it looks good to me :blink: As stated before dark stuff is a bit sketchy.

As for the remote and OSD, well they seem pretty good by my estimation, but once again I have no perspective on this. There's a button to change the main signal source, and a button to change the PIP signal, so you can quite easily select between any combination of any 2 inputs in all sorts of fun PIP/PBP (can even have DVI and D-SUB, which my fp2405 can't do).

I haven't tested any of the component inputs at all but there sure are a lot of them.

At the moment 2 gripes:

1. I can't get external sound working at all!?!? I've got a 3mm to RCA plug adapter, and I've tried plugging it into EVERY RCA socket while a movie was playing (and showing on the screen) and have not been able to obtain sound. And these have been plugged into my old TV to confirm that there is sound.

Maybe somebody could explain the inner mysteries of what plugs are supposed to do what. There's like multiple audio input plugs and I'm not sure which one I"m supposed to use (not that either seem to work).

Relevant pages are here (also has the supported signals for those interested)

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/p1.jpg

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/p2.jpg

2. I can't get the !#!#@$!$@# into 1366x768 mode. I've tried my linux box on both D-SUB and DVI, which claims the EDID information sent to it says the maximum width is 1280, height 1024. How odd. Also tried connecting via d-sub on my windows laptop, but that only lets me specify 4:3 resolutions (I'm putting that down to windows more than anything else). I don't understand the wizardry of powerstrip enough to actually get it to do anything useful.

I've also tried forcing a 1366x768 mode but it didn't like that much. So at the moment I'm not entirely sure if this thing can do 1366.. it seems like a toss up between that and my incompetence.

Some pictures.. I don't really know how representative they are because I use a variety of varying quality sources and my camera sucks (actually my camera skills suck..). Sorry they are all really big but I'm lazy.

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03911.JPG - one very white black

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03913.JPG - trying to show the backlight variance... you can see the ripples, they are a fair bit more pronounced from and angle

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03914.JPG - desktop use, looks ok. I was going to show a gradient picture but i forgot, heh

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03915.JPG - lots of inputs

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03916.JPG - random scene from batman begins. note this is a dvdrip and looks about as sketchy on my 2405

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03917.JPG - dark scene in batman. pretty bad. looked every so slightly better in real life

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03919.JPG - chocolate land, another dvd rip. Note the brightness on the edges, I think thats backlight leakage because it's not in the source.

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03920.JPG - some lost thing. this is digital SDTV

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03922.JPG - also sdtv

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03924.JPG - simpsons stretched

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03925.JPG - some band of brothers scene. This is probably the highest quality video I have on my system at the moment.. 1280x720 or something ridiculous

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03927.JPG - more bob. the bottom of the screen is not actually as bad as it looks (thats my camera), irl it was quite distinguishable

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03929.JPG - bob is awesome

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03932.JPG - PBP mode with TV (the built in analog) on the left and DVI-to-digitalTV-on-computer on the right.

http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03933.JPG - same thing. didn't investigate the PBP features that much but they seemed to work quite well.

At the moment it's kind of a toss up as to whether I'll keep this or not. The quality seems pretty decent - I had a quick scan of some 'big' tvs at jbhifi and harvey norman the other day and was shocked at how awful they looked, I assume because of the source. While the quality on this one isn't exactly stuff to write home about, it does the job better than what I witnessed, and the price seems decent.

I guess what's a bit iffy is the 1 year warranty and what sort of support I can expect from tevion. Oh, and if I can get the sound in working :P

Anyway if anybody has any comments of other things to check out I'd like to hear from you. I don't really know how to properly evaluate tvs, particularly in terms of image quality so any input would be welcome. e.g. some videos to watch or whatever

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Guest podgy

Hi im new to this sort of stuff dont know much about lcd or plasmas,i to went out and brought the aldi 94cm lcd tv aswell design looks good,specs look ok the highest mode i can get with dvi going from my pc is 1280*720 thru d-sub i can get 1360*768*60 ihave included some screen shots as well but dont know how to put them up does anybody know

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Regarding your sound issue -

Take a close look at the AUDIO jacks to the right of RGB/PC input. There looks to be a 3.5 stereo jack just to the left of the L/R RCAs.

EDIT: I should say that the reason I mention this is coz the same jack is used on the Soniq 42" plasma for sound when using DVI or VGA/PC inputs.

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Guest podgy

Hi guys back again heres a few pictures i took of the aldi 94cm sorry lighting not all that good

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0444.jpg cars trailer 720p

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0441.jpg another cars trailer 720p

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0423.jpg desktop picture 1360*768

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0421.jpg Xmen trailer 1080p

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0412.jpg Superman Returns 1080p

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0408.jpg Over the Hedge 720p

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j320/pod...06/IMG_0399.jpg MI 3 1080p

these are all apple quicktime HD Trailers,playing with media player classic

still testing the unit can take it back if not happy and will get a full refund :blink:

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Regarding your sound issue -Take a close look at the AUDIO jacks to the right of RGB/PC input. There looks to be a 3.5 stereo jack just to the left of the L/R RCAs.

EDIT: I should say that the reason I mention this is coz the same jack is used on the Soniq 42" plasma for sound when using DVI or VGA/PC inputs.

yep, thanks nico6 I did notice it but was hoping to avoid using it because the only 3mm to 3mm cable I've got is all of 20cm long.

anyway I bit the bullet and moved the computer into some abnormal angle and plugged it in and behold.. works fine.

I don't know if this is normal but I'm a bit annoyed you can't use RCA audio input with DVI/LCD.

Also, one more picture to illustrate the awesomeness true black levels on this screen: http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03935.JPG

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anyway I bit the bullet and moved the computer into some abnormal angle and plugged it in and behold.. works fine.
Good to know the sound does actually work.
Also, one more picture to illustrate the awesomeness true black levels on this screen: http://adante.11011.net/pics/tv/DSC03935.JPG
It's hard to believe it can't get any better than that. Get a hold of DVE or some other calibration disc, even if just to get the contrast and brightness set as best as possible. You may be surprised at the settings you end up with - in my case (Soniq 42") with DVE my DVI brightness calibrated to just 2 out of 100, and I've never looked back, it's great!
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It's hard to believe it can't get any better than that. Get a hold of DVE or some other calibration disc, even if just to get the contrast and brightness set as best as possible. You may be surprised at the settings you end up with - in my case (Soniq 42") with DVE my DVI brightness calibrated to just 2 out of 100, and I've never looked back, it's great!

You're quite right. But due to the contrast ratio (I think? I don't pretend to understand this stuff), setting the levels so that black is a reasonable black makes dark scenes look like horrible dark soup.

I don't know if I can compare the contrast ratio directly to my 2405 computer monitor, which is also specced for 1000:1 contrast and 500cd/m brightness. However if I can, I should say that it is significantly worse than 2405 in terms of these levels.

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well i faffed around for another few hours and completely failed to get the elusive 1366x768 working.

I have tried:

- Linux box with a gf4mx, with about 16 trillion different modelines. After upgrading my drivers to 8756, the monitor does not seem to want to accept anything larger than 1024x768. (xorglog http://rafb.net/paste/results/03KNlC63.html )

- Windows laptop with Geforce Go 5200, powerstrip, D-SUB output. Does all sorts of fun 4:3 resolutions including 1280x1024, but won't have a bar of 1360x768.

- Windows laptop with Geforce Go 7200(?), powerstrip, DVI output. As above.

Obviously I'm not competent enough to get this thing working at its native resolution, and to be honest if it's this much trouble (which, from the proliferation of posts on the internet it generally is, apparently), it's not worth it in my estimation.

It's been fun, and it's been large, but I think I'll be returning this tomorrow.

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Adante,

Let me know how you go. I just bought one as well. Besides the black being uneven, it seems as though when parts of anything is in darkness its really really dark. When you up the contrast/brightness to help then whites are bright as all hell. Don't get me wrong, the picture sharpness is excellent and so far, if we can figure out this darkness brightness issue, we want to keep it. The way we see it, for the price its a big fat wide screen with a nice sharp picture and seems to do well.

Mind you, how much I know about LCD TV's you can fit on the end of a needle. For example the first movie I put on was Minority Report and wondered why all the colors were weird. The film is made that way on purpose to give a certain mood. Not a good first film for testing. So now we are watching CSI DVD's on Composite connection and it seems damn fine, except for the dark areas being too dark. I have an cheapo SD set-top box which is showing slow moving bands down the picture. When showing scenery they become visible so I assume its my cheap Hyundai SD box and somesort of frequency interference so I need to get another to compare.

I am realist so if it turns out to be a bad buy I will just return it for a full refund. I even got them to verify with the area manager that I can return it if I consider its a quality issue. So it a win-win for me either way. I just might get lucky and find this screen will do me fine.

Regards

Jarvil

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<snip> So now we are watching CSI DVD's on Composite connection and it seems damn fine, except for the dark areas being too dark. <snip>

You really want to use Component or DVI/digital inputs to get the very best out of any digital widescreen TV.

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Adante,

Let me know how you go. I just bought one as well. Besides the black being uneven, it seems as though when parts of anything is in darkness its really really dark. When you up the contrast/brightness to help then whites are bright as all hell. Don't get me wrong, the picture sharpness is excellent and so far, if we can figure out this darkness brightness issue, we want to keep it. The way we see it, for the price its a big fat wide screen with a nice sharp picture and seems to do well.

Hey jarvil,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm about done with this screen. If I could have gotten this screen into 1366x768 it might have been its final saving grace, but I had no luck. If you want to give it a go, I suggest you start looking stuff for powerstrip tutorials (with regard to your query) - I admit I'm no expert on it either, but I believe the process should have been easier than what I went through.

With regards to your talk about the contrast and the dark/white soup problem, I'm pretty sure that's a problem inherent to the screen which is due to its poor contrast ratio and I don't know if it can be 'fixed' per se - i.e., this is why expensive tvs are expensive and cheap tvs are cheap :blink:

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With regards to your talk about the contrast and the dark/white soup problem, I'm pretty sure that's a problem inherent to the screen which is due to its poor contrast ratio and I don't know if it can be 'fixed' per se - i.e., this is why expensive tvs are expensive and cheap tvs are cheap :blink:

Can anyone recommend a DVD I can use to work on RGB color correction and contrast settings for an LCD TV? I dont have a cord for a PC connection so was looking for a DVD that might do the job.

Regards

Jarvil

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Can anyone recommend a DVD I can use to work on RGB color correction and contrast settings for an LCD TV? I dont have a cord for a PC connection so was looking for a DVD that might do the job.

Regards

Jarvil

I mentioned DVE above - that's Digital Video Essentials. I know JB HiFi sells it, some independents, and you'll find it online. About $28. I have the PAL/Component version and as the name says it's specifically for calibration over component connection. It comes with colour filters, so unless you only want to calibrate brightness and contrast you'll need to ensure you have the colour filters that come with an original package.

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