It was Christmas day and we were all stuffed with Turkey, paradoxically speaking. We sat down ready to watch my Christmas present the 4 DVD set of The Lord if the Rings: The fellowship of the ring with my portable DVD player plugged into the old 21” TV. As it started we gasped at the;
Inadequacy of the picture quality
The unspectacular shrunken wide screen letterbox size image
The magnificent lack of sound quality through the single full range oval loudspeaker.
It didn’t stop us, we watched the entire move and enjoyed every minute, but I knew that very moment, things had to change.
Well it’s the Sunday after Christmas, my wife is nervous. She can see either we’re going make mad love which will make the wallpaper peal or I’m going to spend money on the
credit card. ‘Why don’t you go and get a
telly she says’, well she did get a new
laptop for Christmas how can I compete with that (it’s a lot slimmer than I am) and anyway, it’s a TV we’re talking about… I’m off.
Comet
After a little shopping around a while I turned up at Comet, its one of the newly built stores, quite a size and has a large selection of audio/visual equipment. Eventually after much viewing, chatting to a very helpful member of the sales staff and a few ‘phone homes’ I decide on a brand I’ve never heard of, Thompson, model number 28wf401g (catchy eh). I’m told by the member of staff that Thompson are comparable to just about any other TV in the showroom and at a cheaper price, when I ask him, ‘Isn’t it just your own brand, badged Thompson, using lesser quality parts (not nice am I)’. He assured me that Thompson were a new leading edge French manufacturer just beginning to make an impact in this country. They were developing technology on a par with Sony etc, and in fact they had a large screen Plasma TV in the store (which I’d seen, £2000 ish) which indicated how ‘on top’ they were. I said, ‘well a copy is a copy, tell me all about this box’, (Sony have been involved in plasma technology since the 80s, leaders not followers) and he did, the man did know his stuff, he was a great help. So, to cut out an already long introduction, I bought it along with a Goodmans DVD player (reviewed ages ago), fitted it half in the back of a Nissan Micra (the wife’s car, of course I have a Black TVR thingy (I wish), no good for TV’s though) and made for home.
Thompson
So how right was he, well not completely. It was an Amercian Scientist, Elihu Thomson (1853-1937) who founded the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. I’m not going to bore you with all the details but currently 53% of their business is in America and 29% in
Europe, the rest being elsewhere. He was of course talking about the French/European branch of the business, so I better cut him some slack. Anyway, they are not a small budget and re-badge company and own the RCA and Technicolor brands.
Health and safety
I got it home, got it out of the car, unpacked it, built the stand, put the TV on the stand, it was as simple as that. Well it was, but I would like to stress to anyone not in good physical condition, weak from illness, or getting on, don’t do this yourself, its big, heavy and awkward.
I did it on my own, but I am strong if overweight person. If this had been delivered to my mums she would have not stood a chance to get it in the house, unpack and certainly not dead lift it to put it onto the stand. The stand is colour co-ordinated, strong, comes flat packed and is easy to put together using the single printed instruction sheet.
Extended guarantee
In with the TV is a form offering a further 4 year guarantee scheme from Thompsons. At comet I was offered Comets own version of this costing £170. I don’t usually sign up to these because at between 25 and 30% of the product cost they always seem like a very expensive bet to me and not worth it. Thompsons own extra 4 year guarantee costs £50, which I think is quite reasonable, but I would have liked to have been informed at the store. If I had signed up for Comets scheme only to get home and find that offer inside they would have had to come and collect the lot (after watching LOTR of course, angry not stupid).
The manual, set-up and overall functions
I must be getting old, I used to rely on my experience in electronic workshops and studios to just get things up and running but this time I sat quietly with the manual, trying to find the ‘In English’ section. The manual is printed on recycled paper, a bit like blotting paper, and perfectly satisfactory. The sections are;
Safety: Clear instructions are given about the conditions it should be operated in and recommendations are made about what to do in a thunder storm etc, quiet helpful and in plan language.
Switching on: What you should do before you switch on basically. It deals with ariel connection, power, remote control batteries, even down to changing a fuse in the plug. Excellent
Initial set-up and completing set-up: Another step by step guide. Most of this is automatic now, but a nice touch is the dual view throughout the manual, offering a more complicated description for those who want it, most useful.
Remote control unit: All about how to use this very standard no frills remote with the on-screen menus, very simple. If you’ve used a computer then this will be easy, if not, it won’t be too bad, it’s logically set out, but I imagine it would be easy to get lost in amongst the menus at first, but I can’t think of a better way. The remote itself is black, small and lightweight, not in the least bit funky but does the job and very easy to replace
Everyday use: Explaining how to use timers, personal preferences, security functions. If you didn’t need to or want to bother you would never have to use this section, still if you do
it works very well and following the instructions is a doddle.
Teletext: Just what is says on the tin really, how to use the Teletext functions on the TV.
Program Info (TV Guide): This was new to me, and I imagine it’s a lot more popular elsewhere, which is a shame. It’s a panel which flips up on the TV giving you a run down of the programs for that channel and a bit of info about them. It’s a bit like the information feature on satellite boxes.
Unfortunately not many of the channels support it over here, but who knows.
Sound: Stereo/Nicam sound with Dolby Virtual Sound. This means this TV is capable of receiving and reproducing an enhanced stereo audio signal with your TV picture called Nicam. It’s comparable to CD quality. Dolby Virtual Sound is a set of ‘virtual filters’ which enhance your listening pleasure more by projecting a pseudo multiple speaker sound from just 2 speakers. This is a trick, it’s not as good as ‘surround sound systems’ but it’s better than a standard stereo TV sound, good if you aren’t having a surround system yet or ever. Other options you can set up here include a Graphic Equaliser, Dolby virtual, stereo wide, etc. there are presets so you can flick between different settings. You never need bother with this if you don’t want to, I left it on default to start with and it sounded fine
Other Connections: All about the different connections on the back of the TV and information on how to connect to
other devices, very useful. This TV has 3 Scart sockets but only two allow for 2 way travel, i.e. a signal coming into the TV and one going out of the TV. Very useful if you have a satellite box,
video recorder and
DVD player as they can all go into one socket each
Display formats
There are 4 different formats which between them encompass 4/3 (normal TV), 4/3 Cinema (normal picture fills the screen by stretching picture), Letter box, Letterbox offset (for pictures with subtitles), 16/9(widescreen). All you need probably.
Features
The boring bit. All details were taken from the Comet site but I’ve adapted them slightly.
Dimensions: 51.9x79.1x52.4(H/W/D)cm
Picture grading B, Sound grading C, Connectivity grading B
(Rated by the independent experts at What Video and TV
magazine. Graded A-E:A being the best)
TV size : 28inches, visible screen 66cm Screen
Screen type:
Pure flat (reduce distortion) incorporating 100Hz flicker free technology (uses
digital processing to double the frequency of the scan rateremoving all traces of flicker, standard TVs use 50Hz scanning, half the resolution if you like. 100 hz is much better for larger screens)
Sound Nicam stereo , Power output (RMS) 20watts, Graphic Equaliser
Sockets:
Headphone, front AV inputs for easy connection of a
camcorder or
games console, 3 Scart sockets , 1
S-video socket
Teletext: 128 pages can be stored by the TV for later recall.
On screen menus
NTSC playback compatible
Auto set up
Remote control
Child lock
99+3 channels
Sleep timer
Wake up timer
Testing times
Finally it was time to turn it on. I’d connected the new DVD surround sound unit, the Satellite box and the video. Click, a slight delay and on it came, automatically a list of Countries came up, I picked UK and it went of to do its setting up business. Once it had finished (yes it was that simple) I began to check the channels which looked fuzzy, I checked the cables and found one of the old coaxial (ariel) leads had all but given up the ghost. I replaced it with one I had in my ‘electronic junk box’ and it was fixed.
The video, Satellite box and DVD unit were all fine, looked great in fact, I’d connected them via the Scart sockets, something we’d never had on the previous TV. I made a couple of adjustments to the preferences and I inserted LOTR’s DVD and waited to see if my money was well spent, sometime later …... I concluded it was.
Comparing it to my mates Panasonic flat widescreen , a good deal more expensive, I’d say the Thompson tied image wise, the built in speakers were as good, but not great and peripheral connectivity had the Panasonic beat. There are twice as many sockets on the Thompson which means everything has a dedicated input rather than sharing one by other means, such as a switch box. This does improve picture quality and makes for easier use via the remotes as well.
Most importantly image quality was crisp, especially from the DVD and Satellite box. Not so great from the video deck, but that is old and in need of replacement, must write that down. The flat screen certainly improves the quality of view from all angles in the room and though I can’t tell for certain, the doubled scan rate may have been contributing to the increased picture quality and vibrant colours; it all seems so much more tangible.
Conclusion
This cost me £499.00 from Comet (That hurt). I’ve never before paid more than £40 for a TV, I’ve always had broken ones and fixed them up, but I think this was definitely good value. The picture quality is superb and the sound is a drastic improvement on normal TV’s. Add to that a few small features which save hassle and money and a very fair guarantee extension scheme and I’m more than happy with my purchase. I have watched Monsters Inc, Blade 2, LOTR, Harry Potter, Shaft (the original baby) and many other
DVD’s and it’s great how much more you can enjoy them when you can SEE THEM. One draw back is video, watching my old collection is much better on this TV, but now I’m use to DVD quality I just want them all again… You can tell I was a cry baby can’t you.
The biggest problem though, now we have 4 remotes, I know I’ll have to buy a programmable and it’s not the TV’s fault but….
Thanks for reading… hope you found it helpful
It only gets 4 stars because it's sound quality wasn't as good as I thought it might be though it's still very good, picture quality is excellent.
Not for wimps, welcome Widescreen 
Great review although mine went POP (twice) so mabye your £40 was well spent