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The monitor

The monitor has a silver finish, with the speakers on the sides of the screen. At the bottom right of the display are buttons for input select, volume up and down, channel up and down, activate menu, a power LED, and the power button. The up/down buttons double as the navigate buttons in the on-screen display.

The image is very bright, and the viewing angle is just astonishing; both vertically and horizontally. The colour stays the same, and does not wash out. When in TV mode, the screen is not jittery like I have seen on so many other flat-panel TVs, meaning the TV is not tiring to look at. When in 'computer' mode, the image can be a little fuzzy; I have no idea why this is, but it is tiring (I connect my displays via DVI, but the 'ordinary' VGA connection had the same fuzziness). With this I do not mean the type of fuzziness you get when using an LCD at a non-native resolution; it is a different type of fuzziness. The problem appears on Ubuntu, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Zeta 1.5-pre.

Obviously, you can control things like brightness, contrast, and so on. You can also switch between various video modes such as 4:3, full screen, nonlinear scaling, and standard mode (handy for broadcasts in widescreen).

The on-screen display is very easy to use, and it controls every aspect of the device. The contents of the menu differ based on the input type currently active; the TV settings are hidden when using i.e. DVI as the input, making the TV much easier to use.

The remote control, while simple, has one serious flaw: the buttons are all similarly shaped and coloured, meaning it can be very hard to distinguish which button does what. The TV does respond very well to the remote, even though the batteries which came with the package were dead. You can control every aspect of the monitor with the remote, including input select and video mode.

One of the coolest features is the 'picture in picture'. Normally on a TV, this means you can watch two channels at the same time; however, with this multi-purpose monitor it means you can watch either the s-video, composite, component, or tuner input while working behind your computer, in 'picture-in-picture' style. You can then adjust the size of the "window", and move it around using the OSD (of course controllable via the remote control). While this feature is mostly not useful for me (I use the device as a TV alone, as I am of the strong opinion a computer has no place in a Hi-Fi/DVD/TV setup), I can see the usefulness of this when you choose to use this monitor for your computer.

Upon first inspection, I was a little worried the speakers would not be capable of producing any meaningful sound, and that I needed to connect my digital tuner to my Hi-Fi set to get decent sound, but I was proven wrong. The sound from the speakers is surprisingly full, albeit a little low on bass. Of course it is no Hi-Fi set, but for a TV this is good enough. Via the OSD you can set treble, bass, balance, volume (no, really?), and surround on/off.

The TV has some extra features such as parental controls, a sleep timer, and closed captions for i.e. the hearing impaired.

Bugs

The TV has, as far as I can see after two weeks of usage, two bugs; one of which is minor, one of which is major. When turning the device on, the word "composite" sometimes refuses to disappear from the screen, requiring me to restart the device a few times before it does disappear. Very annoying, but still a minor bug. The major bug is the whole situation with the PAL. Assuming this is indeed a firmware issue (and not a hardware issue like Eugenia's husband thinks), this qualifies as a major bug in my book.

Conclusion

Besides making the ridiculous world of TV broadcasting crystally clear visible, this device has given me little in the form of unfavourable experiences. Seeing the low price, this monitor just screams "value for money"-- provided you live in a NTSC country or have digital television when in a non-NTSC country. As a computer monitor, the slight fuzziness might irritate you.

Positive points:

Negative points:

1. "Introduction; standards hell"
2. "The monitor; conclusion"