Matsui 28 Telly

...that I approached the £269 Matsui 28" widescreen TV (model no' 28WN05) while in Curry's one day. After all, the next cheapest 28 incher was a penny shy of four hundred quid.
And let's face it, the name 'Matsui' doesn't exactly inspire you with confidence does it? Does it come with boiled rice..?
Still, it certainly looked the part, all silver and shiny, sleek, uncluttered and fairly sturdy looking. In fact, it didn't look out ...
...of widescreen material, but the Matsui comes with no less than eight different viewing modes, which basically means that it can handle images of all shapes and sizes with ease.

Explaining all the viewing formats isn't made easy by the fact that different manufacturers call the different zoom-modes different things, but, in as plain English as possible, here goes:

Howie's Essential Guide To Widescreen Viewing
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Howie's a happy bunny. I've got a new telly, see!

I'd been yearning for a big widescreen TV for yonks (just how long IS one yonk?). When I say yonks, I mean ages, not just for the last couple of years when every Joe Bloggs and his dog has got one, no, I mean since waaay back in the early nineties when the very first widescreen videos hit the shelves (Alien, Die Hard - (best film ever made!) and the Star Wars Trilogy - remember? (And yes, I did buy 'em all)).

But the TV's were always so expensive, at the time you couldn't get one for less than a grand but the last few years have seen the price of a basic widey tumble to around £300. Okay, so three hundred notes is still a fair old chunk of wonga, but for a movie-anorak with a craving, it's just about do-able and I was looking forward to a new era of viewing entertainment.

However, when you're shopping at the 'budget' end of the market (no matter what you're buying!), you DO have to be careful - you can easily end up with a duffer. A couple of my mates did, and ended up with new, widescreen televisions that quite simply didn't do what they're supposed to. Either it didn't come with enough 'SCART' sockets, or didn't show (or wasn't capable of showing..)widescreen videos in the correct viewing format, or threw a wobbly at the first sign of an 'NTSC' signal (such as that found on a region 1 DVD), showing it in black & white.

It was with some trepidation then that I approached the £269 Matsui 28" widescreen TV (model no' 28WN05) while in Curry's one day. After all, the next cheapest 28 incher was a penny shy of four hundred quid.
And let's face it, the name 'Matsui' doesn't exactly inspire you with confidence does it? Does it come with boiled rice..?
Still, it certainly looked the part, all silver and shiny, sleek, uncluttered and fairly sturdy looking. In fact, it didn't look out of place alongside TV's at twice...four times the price.
So I inspected it, played around with it, deliberated, cogitated and digested it, trying to figure out why this thing was so cheap, but to no avail. It came with all the sockets, had loads of viewing modes, an attractive, curvy remote-control and was, at the time, displaying one of Richard Whiteley's God-awful, Countdown jackets in vibrant, crystal clear technicolour.
If that isn't a conclusive test of a TV, I don't know what is.
(Incidentally, while there I DID get the conundrum. Yay me!).
Finally, I caved in and bought one of the damn things - Hurrah!

That was a month ago, and I still haven't figured out why this telly is so cheap. This telly does everything that it's supposed to, and does it well.
First of all, it has two 'SCART' sockets (those are the large, 21-pin, rectangular shaped ones), which is most important if you need to connect more than one piece of equipment to your TV, a video and DVD player for example. Although most TV's now come with two SCART's, (maybe even three) it's always worth checking because there are one or two rogue models that only come with one.

Useful tip: When connecting a DVD player and a video recorder to your TV, for best results connect the DVD player to SCART socket 1, and the video to SCART 2. SCART 1 is capable of receiving an 'RGB' signal for optimum image quality, whereas SCART 2 can only receive video.
Whoa Howie! Whassat mean?
Okay, go into your DVD player's menu screen and look for 'SCART output' (or similar). Found it? You should now be able to choose between 'video', 'S-video' and 'RGB'. These are all different methods that the DVD player can use to send the information to your TV.
'Video', as the name suggests, is the same method that your video recorder uses i.e jumbling everything up and sending it down a single cable for you TV to unscramble at the other end, and therefore will offer little improvement in picture quality.
'S-video' or super-video, sends the image outline seperately from the colours and results in much sharper edges and better defined colours at the other end.
Finally, 'RGB' is better still and works by breaking the image down into it's three primary colours - Red, Green and Blue - and results in a picture of the highest possible clarity when reassembled by your telly. (Yes, I know that green isn't really a primary colour, but hey! I didn't invent the thing!)
Note: When using 'RGB' mode, the colour and contrast controls on your TV won't do anything because these are automatically set at the correct levels by the DVD, ensuring that you see the image exactly as it's meant to be.
End of useful tip.

Anyway, back to the Matsui.
A particularly thoughtful feature of this TV is a security pin-code (of your choosing) which can be stored when first plugged in, and needs to be re-entered each time the power is turned back on. Okay, so it won't guarantee that your telly is returned should it get stolen, but at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that whoever nicked it can't use it.
Setting the thing up was easy too, thanks to an 'auto-tune' facility which correctly found and stored the five terrestrial TV channels within seconds, a real bonus as tuning in a new television can be a long and frustrating process.

Next priority was, of course, trying out a few widescreen videos and DVD's to see how they look, and I wasn't disappointed. I mentioned earlier that certain widescreen TV's aren't equipped to deal with certain types of widescreen material, but the Matsui comes with no less than eight different viewing modes, which basically means that it can handle images of all shapes and sizes with ease.

Explaining all the viewing formats isn't made easy by the fact that different manufacturers call the different zoom-modes different things, but, in as plain English as possible, here goes:

Howie's Essential Guide To Widescreen Viewing
==================================

First up is 'NORMAL' which, as the name suggests, is the normal, square-ish shaped picture that we've been used to for years. On other televisions this mode may be called 'FULLSCREEN' or '4:3', which refers to the width:height ratio of the image. (May also be known as 1.33:1). Naturally, when viewed on a widescreen set, this results in black bars down the side of the screen and these do look rather intrusive, but it does retain the entire image. Watch a widescreen programme in this mode and you'll have black bars at the top, bottom AND the sides.

Next is '14:9', which takes the 4:3 image of 'NORMAL' and zooms in on it slightly, considerably reducing the thickness of the black bars at the sides but losing a small amount of visual information from the top and bottom in the process. Despite the missing image however, this is quite a comfortable viewing mode for watching regular 4:3 programmes and, it should be said, is not a feature of all widescreen TV's.

If you can't stand the thought of black bars at all though, 'EXPAND' mode will sort it out. This takes the 14:9 image from the previous mode and 'stretches' it horizontally, eliminating the black bars at the sides but without losing any further information from the top and bottom. This does, of course, distort the picture slightly making people look shorter and fatter than they really are, but after a couple of minutes you don't notice the distortion and again this a useful mode for watching normal, square shaped programmes. This too, is not fitted on all widescreen sets, but when it is, it's more often called something like 'SMART ZOOM'.

Next is 'CINEMA 1', and this is the mode you use for all of your widescreen videos and TV programmes. Like '14:9' mode this zooms in on the picture without distorting it, but to the extent that the entire width of the screen is taken up, an aspect ratio of 16:9. (Hence, this might be called '16:9' or '16:9 ZOOM' on other televisions). You can watch normal 4:3 programmes in this mode too, but you do lose a considerable amount of information off the top and bottom of the screen, making credits/subtitles tricky and cutting the tops of peoples heads off. In the case of widescreen programmes however, all you're losing is black bar, meaning that about half of your widescreen movies fill the screen entirely with no horrible stretchiness. Lovely!
Believe it or not, there are certain widescreen TV's out there that don't come with this viewing mode, despite the fact that this is the one needed to watch widescreen VHS tapes. (Be very wary of TV's from 'Bush' and 'Goodmans'...)

You may have noticed that I said "half of your widescreen movies will fill the screen entirely". The reason not all of them will fill the screen entirely is because some movies are wider than others, so to speak. While a good percentage of them are filmed in an aspect ratio of roughly 16:9 (or 1.85:1), a good many more are filmed in the wider 2.35:1, or Panavision as it's known. On these movies you will still see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but the Matsui has a viewing mode to cope with these too. 'CINEMA 2' will stretch the image of 'CINEMA 1' vertically, making a 2.35:1 image fill a 1.85:1 screen.
Very clever, but not really very useful as most people will, I'm sure, prefer to watch a film with thin black bars at the top and bottom, than watch it with everyone onscreen looking elongated.

The next two viewing modes are 'SUBTITLE 1' and 'SUBTITLE 2', and these are basically adjusted versions of 'CINEMA 1' and 'CINEMA 2' respectively. Not surprisingly, these are angled towards the lower half of the screen so that any subtitles can remain in view.

Finally, the badly named 'FULLSCREEN' mode. Badly named because this is clearly a widescreen mode, the one you use for your anamorphically enhanced widescreen DVD's.
WHOA Howie!!
Ana-what??
Okay, picture this - a TV screen (whether wide' or full') is made up of 625 horizontal lines of resolution, right?. If an image is presented in widescreen, at least 200 of those lines are made up of nothing more than black bar, top and bottom. Therefore if you expand the remaining 425 lines of picture to fill the 625 lines on your widescreen telly, you're going to lose resolution aren't you?
An anamorphically enhanced DVD will fill in the missing 200 lines of information. With your telly in 'NORMAL' mode, this will make the image appear vertically stretched because of the extra lines, but 'FULLSCREEN' mode then stretches it horizontally, restoring the image to its correct proportions and retaining maximum resolution.

Useful tip no 2: When you get your new widescreen TV, remember to switch your DVD player to 'anamorphic widescreen' mode to get the best results from your enhanced DVD's. Don't worry if you haven't got a widescreen TV though, anamorphic DVD's work perfectly well on regular 4:3 TV's, simply leave your DVD player in 'letterbox widescreen' mode and the picture will be presented in the normal way.
Note: Not all DVD's are anamorphically enhanced, for those that aren't - simply set the viewing mode on the TV to 'CINEMA 1', as you would with a widescreen video.

There, that's all eight viewing modes covered.
You could, of course, make things a lot less complicated for yourself by leaving the Matsui in 'AUTO' picture mode, which automatically detects the kind of picture being received and adjusts the viewing mode accordingly.
(Now why didn't you tell us that six paragraphs ago Mr Howiemon??)
Whichever mode you choose though, picture quality remains first class - clear, bright and colourful.

Sound quality isn't bad either, offering nicam stereo from two, 5-watt speakers housed either side of the screen. It won't blow your socks off with room-shuddering bass or fancy, 'whizzy' sound effects, far from it, but everything sounds crisp, clear and the stereo effect does add a certain ambience which you simply don't get with mono sound.
Of course, any movie-geek worth his salt will already be using some sort of surround-sound equipment, such as a Dolby Pro-Logic hi-fi or, better still, a Dolby Digital Home Cinema kit (can personally recommend the Videologic DigiTheatre - hint hint!), but for the casual viewer the nicam stereo sound offered by the Matsui should be perfectly adequate for most uses.

The rest of the features on this TV are fairly straightforward and are probably fitted to the TV that you already own, but they all help to make it easy and a pleasure to use.
It comes with fast-text, which is an easier and quicker way of using teletext, and an auto-sleep timer which switches the TV to standby mode fifteen minutes after programmes have finished. You can also set the timer to turn the TV either off or on after a time of your choosing, meaning that you can even use the thing as a makeshift alarm clock!
All of these, as well as the basic settings - colour, contrast, bass, treble, etc...etc.. are accesible via clear and concise on-screen menus that, while not exactly awe-inspiring in terms of style, are certainly a doddle to navigate and use.

In fact, everything about this television screams 'user-friendly' - even the instruction manual is written in a simplistic, idiot-proof style that defies the TV's true capabilities. The page that describes all of the viewing modes for example, simply says:-
"Your TV can display the picture in eight different ways, press the 'SIZE' button on your remote to look at all the different picture formats. Alternatively, press the 'AUTO' button on you remote. Your TV will now automatically set the picture format that is being transmitted."
Apart from several diagrams on the page that clearly show where the 'SIZE' button and the 'AUTO' button are, that's it! No mention of anamorphically enhanced DVD's, not a whisper of aspect ratio's and no hint of any explanation of 'RGB' or 'S-video' signals. If you find all of that stuff daunting and incomprehendible (in which case you'll have probably stopped reading this opinion ages ago!), then you should find that this user-manual is a welcome change from the thousand-page chronicles that accompany some other televisions.

Clearly aimed at the technophobes of this world, the Matsui 28WN05 offers genuine, high-quality widescreen viewing at an extremely attractive price and is also very easy to use, even for a novice.
Sure, you can buy a better television - bigger, flatter screens, built-in surround sound, built-in digital receivers, even built-in DVD players - and if you've got a thousand quid to spare then by all means do so, but as a no-nonsense, entry-level widescreen set this really is going to be hard to beat.

Howie is indeed, a happy bunny!

 

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