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

silps

Just rang Dell to cancel my order. Couldn't believe how terrible the line quality to their call center (India?) was. On top of that the operator tells me it takes upto 16 hours for confirmation of the cancellation and will call me back to confirm. This is increadibly Mickey Mouse in this technological age we live in and to think Dell is a computer company. Never bought a Dell and will not again.

Reasons for cancelling:

Poor picture quality comments on this forum.

Amazon have no name LCDs for £500 and branded LCDs for around £700. Within 6 months these will probably halve in price (maybe even in the January sales).

Who's going to repair the Dell once the warranties expired? At least with a High Street brand they have service centers.

I've waited this long, I can wait a few more months and buy something I can see before giving out my hard earned cash.

Watch the Dell 32 inch drop in price now the 26 inch is discontinued.

Good luck to all who have purchased.

gavinp

I find it amazing the amount of people posting negative comments without actually having seen or received a TV ?

The posting of photos was a good idea but are out of focus or taken in a darkened room to emphasize reduced contrast levels and the last photo has serious camera shake (the DELL at the bottom of the screen is also completely out of focus!).

It would be more useful to show pictures of the entire TV including the frame and Dell logo with normal lighting so people can judge whether the photo is sharp itself. Even then, the quality of the camera is an issue.

No-one would buy a LCD TV for picture quality (with non-HD sources) over a good CRT TV on a side-by-side comparison.

I have an ageing Panasonic 36" widescreen TV in the lounge and have not replaced this with a Plasma or big LCD for exactly this reason.

I have bought the 19" Dell TV to replace an older 21" TV in our bedroom to save space but it has not arrived yet so can't comment on the picture quality. I do have a Samsung 913N 8ms 19" TFT monitor for my PC and can appreciate that contrast levels will not be as good as CRT even with a newer TFT panel.

Thanks

Gavin

steveh2001

Well i have some positive news for once! (reading 10 pages of this last night before it arrived somewhat depressed me!)

Did some testing with my PC first of all, as ive had a DVI thing on my graphics card but never used - and it looked perfect! Then i stuck in a spare DVD player (via scart), and played finding Nemo, and it did have a few funny marks by the fins of the fish (from close up). BUT then i played it via the DVI on my PC, and it looked perfect! No pixelation at all! So a bit of cable fiddlign is in order i think,

But im very very impressed, it looks veyr cool, i like the Pip Pop thing The Menu is good, and the remote unit nice. It was well packed.

I havent actually tried it with normal TV yet, will do that later as i cant get to the wiring because of boxes But i know it will be a bit pixillated, but hopefully the freeview might look quite good!

So overall im happy

Brodel

Is anyone clear on where people stand if they have recieved the TV and want to return it after testing it? If it's a no no then I'd rather cancel my order now than gamble 360 quid on it being a good picture.

Flimber

gavinp wrote:

...

The posting of photos was a good idea but are out of focus or taken in a darkened room to emphasize reduced contrast levels and the last photo has serious camera shake (the DELL at the bottom of the screen is also completely out of focus!).

...

The Dell Logo is off but look at the 'cliff behind the woman. Presumably that was static in the image at the instant the epic was taken (i.e., the shot wasn't being panned). There's one cliff. The woman in the pic has three jaws: there are three seperate sets of teeth visible. Count 'em

I note your comments on pics and mostly concur. Also, on the earlier Buffy pics, Sky PQ on Buffy reruns is dire anyway and it's an NTSC-PAL conversion so there'll be some 'ghosting' on the best TV's. But I watched almost the entire episode and it was like watching an hour-long poorly compressed 10mb mpeg. In some scenes actor's near-stationary faces were 'morphing' and wobbly with severe halo-ing evident around almost every object on the screen. From 8-10 feet away most artefacts on other material have been barely noticable but the Buffy Ep was incredibly bad even from that distance. Looking at it closeup was achingly awful.

Mike.

kowalski_2

I think we need to clarify things a little.

I have received my set and think it's excellent using a component feed in from DVD and also from my PC using the DVI.

Use a decent quality input signal and you'll get blinding results. Its the same with my projector which if you feed a bad signal in will just look terrible as it blows up the bad image for all to see.

I will reitterate other peoples findings.... If you feed this thing a crap signal then (surprise surprise!) you'll get a crap image.

tonyfaestoney

Is anyone clear on where people stand if they have recieved the TV and want to return it after testing it? If it's a no no then I'd rather cancel my order now than gamble 360 quid on it being a good picture.

Brodel
I e-mailed dell yesterday but received no reply. Called today and they said I could return no problem but they convinced me to speak to technical dept 1st, on hold for a bit then had to leave details for them to call back,from what they said it was no problem returning. I am willing to hear the tech side as I can't believe it could be this poor and I may have set up wrong but I don't think so.
Most channels are ok but still nowhere near CRT but then I have been told I should have known that, try watching buffy on sky1 that's all i say. some dvd's are ok but darker scenes are really bad.
Somebody commented on photos I posted, I will easily post more with the whole tv on screen, the lighting is more down to the flash not being on but will turn all lights on no problem. In fact if anyone can watch sky1 just now take a look and tell me you think that is a reasonable picture?
Maybe the DVI connection is the way to go but means trailing wires. This tv is too much hassle and I will be sending it back.
TFS

JamesP

Can I just confirm that I'm right in thinking that most DVD players do not have this composite ouput? Assuming I haven't got this on mine (because I have 2 DVD players at home and neither look like they have this output) would it make any difference buying gold plated scart leads?

Thanks in advance

Brodel

tonyfaestoney wrote:

Brodel
I e-mailed dell yesterday but received no reply. Called today and they said I could return no problem but they convinced me to speak to technical dept 1st, on hold for a bit then had to leave details for them to call back,from what they said it was no problem returning. I am willing to hear the tech side as I can't believe it could be this poor and I may have set up wrong but I don't think so.

Ah ok, thanks. Did they say anything about the cost of returning it?

tonyfaestoney

Did not get that far, think the guy panicked and stuck me through to tech support who have still not called back even though I started at zero in queue, then 5 then 2 then told they would call back...no shock there. If it is extortionate I will sell on ebay as they are still selling for price I paid at least!