ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Its such a shame. An Avant DVD is far better looking than any flat tv and with a superb picture and sound but practically worthless simply due to fashion. I know you said your not an ebay person but if you put it on ebay it means that someone comes and takes it away for you! Ive sold fully working curved screen Avants for a tenner or less just because it means that some one comes round and takes it away rather than me having to lug it around!
I have been trying to give one away here: http://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/p/5499/50066.aspx#50066
No luck so far but it is about to go on eBay, where at least it will be seen by a wider audience and hopefully sell for 99p 'buyer collects'!!
I agree - there's virtually no following for CRT's now, but if you're going to sell a CRT then it needs to be an RF DVD.
I usually have a couple on the website just for the sake of it, but I probably get one enquiry a year on Avants now. The rest, we just (ahem) "recycle" by taking them to the local dump..
Such a shame.
One TV which seems to have found a new lease of life is the BeoVision 5. Now at bargain prices, and for the visual impact they have in a room they look great value. They also, for an SD set, have very, very good image quality - even by todays standards.
Lee
The Avant is a very cool retro TV/piece of furniture no doubt. But is it now worthless due to 'fashion' reasons or maybe because it is the size of a fridge and centuries behind current technology? It does seem a shame that they are basically relegated to the landfill nowadays when once upon a time people bought them for thousands!
beaker: Its such a shame. An Avant DVD is far better looking than any flat tv and with a superb picture and sound....
Its such a shame. An Avant DVD is far better looking than any flat tv and with a superb picture and sound....
CRTs look (design-wise) antiquated to me. I wouldn't have one in my place.
The BV11 has a superb picture and sound. My landlords have an Avant and until I bought the BV11, I would agree that the Avant has the best picture out there. But they and myself both agree that the BV11 is one of the first LCDs where they've agreed it's as good as, or perhaps a little better, than the Avant - considering the size of the screen.
I would gladly have an (RF) Avant, but I can't begin to think how much it would cost me in pizza & beer to convince my friends to help in teleporting it to the 3rd floor. Also, with my luck I would be the owner to have it when it breaks irrepairably, and I'd have to do the same thing again just to get rid of it.
Also, the local sellers still seem to think they are made of gold, although none I have followed have actually sold!
--mika
9 LEE: I agree - there's virtually no following for CRT's now, but if you're going to sell a CRT then it needs to be an RF DVD. I usually have a couple on the website just for the sake of it, but I probably get one enquiry a year on Avants now. The rest, we just (ahem) "recycle" by taking them to the local dump.. Such a shame.
Well, Mrs. S. and I bought a 3 year old BV7 last year and, although we love it, we both agree that our old Avant 32 RF DVD has a much better picture on SD signals. Such is progress.
Sadly, the Avant's DVD player has died thus making it even more worthless than normal. Lee - if you ever get in a 'spares' Avant with a working DVD mechanism, please let me know!
AdamS: Well, Mrs. S. and I bought a 3 year old BV7 last year and, although we love it, we both agree that our old Avant 32 RF DVD has a much better picture on SD signals. Such is progress.
There's a common misconception here. SD signals are presented in a low resolution, say 525 lines. An LCD has a 1080p panel, thus it has to double the size of the pixels to display a picture. Often an LCD will have a much larger panel (40, 46, 55" etc), thus this scaling is much more obvious. That's why SD can look poor on an LCD. It's not the TV, it's the sourced content and the resolution. That's not a lack of progress, if anything it's a lack of progress in the source content.
Get a blu-ray or a top HD TV source, such as Game of Thrones, watch this on a BV11-55 and the visual and audio experience will be greater than a 32" Avant. Plus you have a modern, HDMI socketed TV, which you can use to connect to a multitude of devices such as the Apple TV, Sky, PS3 and so on.
moxxey: Get a blu-ray or a top HD TV source, such as Game of Thrones, watch this on a BV11-55 and the visual and audio experience will be greater than a 32" Avant. Plus you have a modern, HDMI socketed TV, which you can use to connect to a multitude of devices such as the Apple TV, Sky, PS3 and so on.
I take your point, but unfortunately I have no interest in computer games or streaming services. Equally, the BV7 we bought has the DVD player built-in and not a Blu-ray unit and I'm certainly not going to shell out on a Blu-ray player in order to replace the DVDs I already have! I use Freesat and thus have very good picture quality on the half a dozen or so HD channels but I just find it a little disappointing that the rest of the channels just don't look quite as good as they did on the old timer. And don't get me started on the BV7s inbuilt Freeview unit which picks up a grand quantity of ZERO channels in our area! Yes, we're in a poor signal region for this sort of reception, but even the cheapie add-on box we used to use with the Avant could manage to pick up about 10 channels.
If it all sounds like I'm giving the BV7 a hard time, please don't misunderstand me - overall we're very pleased with it. It's just that this is the first ever item of B&O I've bought (and believe me, I've bought a few!) that hasn't offered a truly vast improvement over its predecessor, or a unit in which any negative points are so insignificant as to be barely worth mentioning.
I use an Avant DVD in the playroom, a BV3 in the bedroom and a BV5 in the sitting room. My daughter uses an AV9000 in her room. We do have a Panasonic flat screen in the kitchen. The sound quality of the Avant and BV5 put the BV10 I had to shame. The LCD picture was extremely sharp on HD programmes but on SD, the BV5 and Avant are superior. Quite happy with what I have and no plans to change.
Peter
To this day, no display technology, except perhaps OLED, can match the contrast and black levels of CRT. Even the best plasmas fall short, though IMO they are the best displays affordably available
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Still got the LX5500 working just fine and also my '98 IMP AV9000 which were serviced. For the money invested I can't complain.
The only reason I'd replace my BV3 is for a bigger picture, not a better one!
Jeff: To this day, no display technology, except perhaps OLED, can match the contrast and black levels of CRT. Even the best plasmas fall short, though IMO they are the best displays affordably available
Agree!! Plasmas are still the closest to CRT, when it comes to black level, contrast - and natural colors!!! (perhaps except from OLED). Even though BV 7 and BV 11 are better than most other LCD/LED tv's, almost any plasma are even better. So many people today think, that sharpness = 'good picture'... - and they have forgotten how natural a picture the CRT's could give.
When I replaced my BV 3, it was only because I wanted a bigger screen... And there was no doubt...It should be plasma.
While the contrast of CRT and such has yet to be equaled, there's one thing about tubes I most definitely do not miss...geometry errors. No tube set, no matter how expensive, that I've ever seen, including B&O, Loewe, Sony XBR2, and Proton has ever been able to draw a completely straight line, especially at the edges of the screen. They all have some form of geometry error, and to make it worse it varies with screen brightness. And that aspect varies from not bad at all on expensive sets with well regulated and overbuilt power supplies, to absolutely horrendous for cheaper sets.
I had an NEC TV for a very brief time, about 2 days, that was just horrible in this respect. I remember watching a program that showed a graph on the screen full screen. The graph lines, green on black, with a multicolored data lines, and it looked like a chicken wire fence assembled by a drunk spider on acid. Horrible bent, and when they faded the image out to fade into the next image, as the brightness reduced the lines went almost completely straight. Watching it was horrible, lines would bend back and forth depending on scene brightness variations. Horrible set.
Add to that tilt that was always a function of how the tube was oriented in relation to the earths magnetic field, you often had to move the set around in the room to find a location with the least tilt, unless you were lucky enough to have a set that had an adjustment for that in the menus. And overscan...argh.
Stefmag5:Agree!! Plasmas are still the closest to CRT, when it comes to black level, contrast - and natural colors!!! (perhaps except from OLED). Even though BV 7 and BV 11 are better than most other LCD/LED tv's, almost any plasma are even better. So many people today think, that sharpness = 'good picture'... - and they have forgotten how natural a picture the CRT's could give. When I replaced my BV 3, it was only because I wanted a bigger screen... And there was no doubt...It should be plasma.
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
Chris Townsend: Stefmag5: Agree!! Plasmas are still the closest to CRT, when it comes to black level, contrast - and natural colors!!! (perhaps except from OLED). Even though BV 7 and BV 11 are better than most other LCD/LED tv's, almost any plasma are even better. So many people today think, that sharpness = 'good picture'... - and they have forgotten how natural a picture the CRT's could give. When I replaced my BV 3, it was only because I wanted a bigger screen... And there was no doubt...It should be plasma. So why do you think B&O didn't use Plasma in the 7/10/11 series televisions. Cost is out considering they cost a fortune?
Stefmag5: Agree!! Plasmas are still the closest to CRT, when it comes to black level, contrast - and natural colors!!! (perhaps except from OLED). Even though BV 7 and BV 11 are better than most other LCD/LED tv's, almost any plasma are even better. So many people today think, that sharpness = 'good picture'... - and they have forgotten how natural a picture the CRT's could give. When I replaced my BV 3, it was only because I wanted a bigger screen... And there was no doubt...It should be plasma.
My understanding was that customers were asking for them believing that newer/thinner/lighter must be better, as was being touted by every other manufacturer, the lack of an LCD offering giving the impression that B&O were lagging behind. Contrast / motion / viewing angle related issues were apparent in the early LCD models which, again, were not a problem in plasma sets. While there is no doubt that modern LCD's have dramatically closed the gap I've yet to read a definitive review from any reputable AV reviewer that says LCD has finally surpassed plasma performance.
From FlatpanelsHD (which seem to be quite "pro" B&O) - Among Edge LED-TV’s the Beovision 11 currently has the lead.
Ban boring signatures!
Puncher: My understanding was that customers were asking for them believing that newer/thinner/lighter must be better, as was being touted by every other manufacturer, the lack of an LCD offering giving the impression that B&O were lagging behind. Contrast / motion / viewing angle related issues were apparent in the early LCD models which, again, were not a problem in plasma sets. While there is no doubt that modern LCD's have dramatically closed the gap I've yet to read a definitive review from any reputable AV reviewer that says LCD has finally surpassed plasma performance. From FlatpanelsHD (which seem to be quite "pro" B&O) - Among Edge LED-TV’s the Beovision 11 currently has the lead.
Thanks, Puncher I couldn't have said it better myself...
Having watched the buying public on TVs, I wouldn't go so far as to call them informed at all. What sells on the floor is what some advertiser has pushed out as buzz words coupled with brightness and "pop." Back in the tube days before dedicated B&O stores, you couldn't give a B&O tube set away to anyone other than someone who was a Beohead. They were adjusted from the factory properly, very close to a calibrated set. On the floor, sitting next to some monstrously misadjusted set running 14,000K color temp and such, they looked dull and lifeless to most people. Anyone who was into video quality immediately was drawn to them, 99% of people, not so much.
Most people think plasmas are so energy inefficient they will heat up your room and up your utility bill astronomically. Plus as thin as they are now LCDs are thinner. And brighter and punchier, see above.Horrible off axis performance, mediocre blacks for most of them, but most people only care about retina searing levels of brightness.
I think B&O went LCD for a variety of reasons I've posted before. People want them, they can be more energy efficient and thinner, and for a company that sells to people with the mantra of it just works, you don't have to mess with it, a panel that won't suffer burn in if some dolt leaves it on a video game display for days has an advantage. Imagine the ire of someone who just dropped well into 5 figures for a TV that gets burned in after a month of his kid living on the latest video Xbox game. I think B&O waited until the local dimming backlighting tech got good enough that it met their standard for good black levels, after LCDs met that they moved for the above reasons. I don't think they would have prior to a certain performance level being met, hence the long line of Beovision plasmas up till now.
Chris Townsend: As for thinness being the reason can someone explain then why the LCD 7 is the fattest TV, and the 12-65 Plasma is the thinnest. Doesn't add up does it?
As for thinness being the reason can someone explain then why the LCD 7 is the fattest TV, and the 12-65 Plasma is the thinnest. Doesn't add up does it?
The BV7 probably wasn't that much fatter than other LCD's at the time it was released however other manufacturers revamp their "design" at least once a year whereas the BV7 is frozen in time, hence it now appears dated compared to the likes of the BV11 and even the cheaper offerings from the others makers.
Once again you're right, Puncher.
And I will add, that when B&O started doing flatscreens, both LCD and plasma Tv's were quite "fat". And plasmas were quite expensive and power consuming -and generated a lot of heat. So no Wonder B&O didn't go for plasmas only -even though they did have better picture...
Chris Townsend:As for thinness being the reason can someone explain then why the LCD 7 is the fattest TV, and the 12-65 Plasma is the thinnest. Doesn't add up does it?
It is only within the last 2-3 years that plasma tv's have become thinner. so it wouldn't be fair to compare one of the latest designs (BV 12) with the old BV 7 design...
When B&O started doing flatscreens there were no LCD panels, only plasma. And not even HD, when they started they used what are called EDTV panels, which have a native resolution of 480p. LCD technology had to mature a lot before they started using LCDs, early (and most current) LCDs are not very high quality.
Jeff: When B&O started doing flatscreens there were no LCD panels, only plasma. And not even HD, when they started they used what are called EDTV panels, which have a native resolution of 480p. LCD technology had to mature a lot before they started using LCDs, early (and most current) LCDs are not very high quality.
You're right. I almost forgot, that the first one was the BV 5 in 2002. But already the year after came the BV 6 with LCD. I remember back then, when you could compare the LCD's with the CRT's in the stores. IMO the BV 6 had a poor Picture quality when seen next to a BV 3 or MX 8000 (though the BV 6 were better than most other LCD's in the store). But... people wanted the flat ones - and the rest is history...
Yeah, early LCDs were pretty atrocious, but no one made plasmas in less than 37 inch sizes, I don't think anyone ever did either that I have seen. I don't think LCDs ever had a decent picture until the LED local dimming ones came out, which pretty much limits you to the more expensive ones. I haven't spent enough time looking at an LCD to tell but I know a lot of people seem to have issues with the motion artifacts on them even on the high refresh rate panels. I guess some are more sensitive, as there were people who used to be driven nuts by the rainbow flashes on DLP projection sets, especially ones with only a 4 segment color wheel. I could see the rainbows, but never knew if it'd be that I'd get used to them and stop seeing them or would get to where I saw them all the time and would be driven nuts by them, so I avoided DLP.
I do remember back when I bought my Panasonic 42 inch plasma EDTV the B&O was using the same EDTV Panasonic panel, but with their processing and video engine the B&O looked better. Close enough for the price difference though, I seem to recall paying around $2500 for the Panasonic while the B&O was about $20k.
Jeff:Yeah, early LCDs were pretty atrocious, but no one made plasmas in less than 37 inch sizes, I don't think anyone ever did either that I have seen.
And for a simple reason: the technology didn't (doesn't) allow smaller physical pixel sizes than that, and the whatever x 480 panels were already ill suited for European 625 line TV formats.
I hadn't stopped to think of pixel size, but it makes sense.Thanks!