26" LCD TV - HD Ready £378 delivered! (merged) [CLOSED]

kmkmkm

Brodel wrote:

With regards to returns. How do you respond to them in writing because from what I have seen of Dell's email system they very rarely reply or show any sign of getting the emails in the first place. Do they have a snail mail add? Also to return it at our own cost will be a small fortune I imagine, I know someone stated 13quid earlier but it must be more than that?

Good question. As this is going back, could somebody please tell us the exact procedure so i'm not stuck with this lemon. Thanks in advance.

leona71

slowen wrote:

Is this LCD TV really as bad as people are saying as mine should be delivered by Friday, bought it to go in my bedroom and it is not the biggest bedroom length wise so will the picture be bad?

Is anyone satisfied with the TV?
Does anyone know if Dell have a good refund policy?

I am satisfied with my tv as it's going in my spare living room, the picture quality is okay, not great but okay. If you fiddle about with the settings you can get the picture to look really really good but you have that cinema border at the top of the screen and the bottom of the screen. I played Lord of the Rings on Widescreen and it's excellent...and just for the record i have the same tv as everyone else the Del WP2600 26". My other half spent a good half hour setting it up and played about with the settings.

So it seems fine to me, mind you i'd be upset if this TV was for my main living room. Overall a good tv for a spare room, bedroom, kitchen etc.

tonyfaestoney

Originally Posted by leona71

Just a tip for everyone - if you watch a widescreen movie on your LCD reduce the picture on the screen to take the widescreen movie....the quality is then EXCELLENT. Nothing wrong at all, no pixelation or ghosts at all.

You must have a totally different TV than me. I've done this and much more and there's so much ghosting it's like Halloween. Compared to CRT, it's horrendous

Had to laugh (felt like crying) at kmkmkm's "its like halloween", your not far wrong.
Leona, are you saying this is acceptable and what we should expect from an LCD tv that cost a grand a few months ago?
Think everyone has to judge for themselves but as I am not technically clued up I thought it would have been a bit better.
TFS

DrMonkey

I orderd 2, they called me to say there was a problem with my credit card and could i give them the details once more. I said NO. Rather not take the chance and hassel of sending them back.

leona71

What i am saying is that if you are used to watching CRT then changing to LCD will no doubt be a tad different. You will start to notice the pixelation etc....but it really doesn't bother me that much and i must say that i am happy with my TV. I am used to makes like Panasonic and Sony so i am clued up with regards to quality TV's but i must say that this TV is fine for me. Still watching LOTRings and the pic is perfect. Maybe it's down to the aspect ratio of the film.

As long as i'm happy that's all i say....my daughters words were - wow mum that TV is ace. Family are very pleased...

unknown_786

*Few* Glad I didn't go for this!

clarky2005

Has anyone recieved the 19" version? i called Dell today and they said it was discontinued

mk-donald

Well I unpacked and setup the W2600 bought as Christmas present for mother today to replace an old 22" so-so 4:3 CRT TV.

Very stylish looks - better looking than the Dell site photos make it look. Remote also very stylish though balance in one's hand not perfect.

Loads of cables including VGA and DVI and LONGER than normal S-Video and L-R Audio.

Connected it up to:
- apartment block communal aerial (okay on BBC1/2/ITV1/C4, poor on Five)
- a Tivo via RGB SCART (and Tivo set to RGB)
- a VHS recorder through the Tivo
- a Freeview decoder through the Tivo (and set to Widescreen)
- a DVD player via S-Video/L-R audio (and set to Widescreen)
- a NTL Digital decoder via Y-C/SCART (and set to Widescreen)
- an Xbox via bundled SCART into a switchbox on the NTL Digital Scart feed (and set to Widescreen)

They mainly watch NTL live (including Sky Sports) and Tivo recorded.

Turned on to a silent UK channel!

Went through setup routine and found set to Italian, and redid to UK and got it to tune. Found all 5 channels but described four of them as C4 and took a while to find the menu command to rename and resort the channels.

The aerial features are clearly designed for somewhere with dozens of terrestial channels where all the dual-tuner and Picture in/on/beside Picture features come into their own. Wasted really on my parents configuration.

Aerial picture is weak but had been weak on parents previous cheap CRT.

Tivo menus a little pixelated, but they will flicker on a CRT due to a design bug. Plays fine.

Freeview pictures fine.

NTL Digital picture fine except when fed with dross - eg 1991 4:3 football floodlit matches looked very iffy, live widescreen bowls coverage very vivid and detailed.

DVD playback seemed fine but they only had a black and white DVD in and didn't test extensively.

Xbox playback very impressive.

One issue with connecting : no mention of which socket is RGB and which Y-C (S-Video) so had to trial and error.

Also had a glitch with NTL Digital remote that it was controlling BOTH the NTL sound AND the TV sound. Found on web how could set new code on the NTL remote and managed to suppress that, but didn't find a code that WOULD control just the TV sound which would be useful. Dell literature mentions try 'Philips' but first 5 codes I tried didn't work.

I'm not used to watching an LCD TV with that many pixels and that size and from TV viewing distances, so can't compare this set to other LCDs. I did find that watching LCD TV for 1-2 hours is different to watching CRT TV for a lifetime (I'm used to a 100Hz 32" Trinitron widescreen) but couldn't point to any particular faults/failings in the Dell display. Only 'garbage-in garbage-out' was evident on some NTL programming.

Didn't see any evidence of ghosting, just occasional slight digital artefacts that one gets on Freeview/Tivo/NTL-Digital as they are digital decoding compressed signals with non-infinite bandwidth. (See those on my own Tivo/CRT in fast moving Simpsons episodes as I record them at 'Basic' quality.)

Did not test it with digital input via VGA and/or DVI inputs. Hoping to get a long DVI cable at reasonable price so parents can feed it from their computer (will have to buy them a radio keyboard/mouse too...).

Parents have been watching it for few hours since I left and they are happy. (Only phoned them in case it was showing any of the dreadful picture results mentioned by others and without prompting they said it was great.)

In case it makes a difference : the boxed set had lived in centrally heated house for 24hrs and then air-con'd car until it was installed.

Do make sure you checkout the various settings for: SIZE of picture, the colour mode (Movie/Sport/Multimedia/Personal from memory, tailored as you prefer) and the audio mode (Voice/Music/Theater from memory). The factory reset menu can reset just the colour settings if you do totally mess them up.

So my verdict after 2 hours is definitely competent with the wide variety of device inputs I saw and nothing to make me want to return it. Have to see what some real experience shows now...

jordy32

thanks for taking the time to type all of that out!, all of us still waiting for delivey needed a positive review to keep the spirits up.

kmkmkm

I reckon at least 75% will want to return the 26" version, so tips on dealing with Dell returns would be very handy.

A good DVD to test out a telly is 'Aliens'. There is scene in it where the marines suddenly realise the aliens are in the ceiling above them. All hell breaks out and I swear all hell broke out on my TV. The picture just became a mess with slow down, smearing and multiple ghosts as well as picture break up. I wish I had taken some photos of it before I packed it up to be returned. I will be shocked if anybody can show me a good pic of Aliens running on this TV. If they can, then my set is faulty.

I am not amused.