Lesser Known HD-Ready LCD TVs

Any introduction to this article is likely to contain market information that's inevitably redundant; and stuff about leading and not-so-leading brands in the marketplace, both popular and unpopular. So I'm going to skip all of that and get straight to the point, which is: mega-retailers don’t stock all brands, and there are plenty of niche brands available at small shops that do business down the road.

Now don’t expect to run into unknown Chinese or Korean brands in this feature. The brands I'm going to review are well-established in their own right; it’s just that they can be termed as an alternative to the mainstream. So Sony, LG, Samsung, Sharp etc. can take a backseat for now; here are four alternatives to consider.

Incidentally the models we considered are all 'HD-ready', meaning 1366 x 768 is the capacity of the panels and not 1920 x 1080. Of course, full-HD videos can be played; only they will be resized.

BenQ VA371
Rs 56,000
BenQ, a consortium of ten companies, manufactures a wide variety of electronics products from mobile phones to PC peripherals. And that includes LCD TVs too, in case you didn’t know. We reviewed the VA371 LCD TV, a 37-incher that looks very promising.

The body is a blend of metallic silver and black. The silver frame cradles the dense black bezel and 37 inch screen, while the front panel, below the screen, has decals indicating the various features on offer: mainly stuff like HD-ready etc.

The speakers are placed below in a silver panel and grille. The TV stand is permanently fixed, so swiveling around is not possible, but physical setup is a breeze. It features a WXGA (1366 x 768) panel, 8 ms response time, and 500 cd/m2 brightness.

The good points of the TV are its color saturation levels; flesh tones being a good gauge to check this. Landscapes looked very beautiful, though just a bit noisy. Motion scenes rendered better than expected. What was lacking was dynamic level in the images. Some dark scenes didn’t come out accurately.

The price is quite reasonable, and the looks are not bad, so this is a firm contender in the market.