Dell W1700 17in. LCD TV

05 Mar 2004 11:49

This versatile LCD compromises both computer and TV sources, but an attractive price makes its moderate picture quality easier to bear.

Design

Dell's first TV has high style in mind. A silver finish dominates the face, offset by blue-grey highlights. A few buttons offering rudimentary control share the bottom left with an IR sensor, while the subtle Dell logo sits at bottom centre. With its 16:9 screen flanked by a pair of speakers, the W1700 measures about twice as wide (54.4cm) as it does high (29cm). An adjustable tilt/swivel stand is included, and its variable-height stalk can raise the monitor from 11.5 to 24cm above the desktop. The 7kg set is easy to carry around, thanks to its built-in handle.

This 17in. wide-screen LCD has 11 percent less screen area than a non-wide-screen 17in. monitor. It seems even smaller when displaying regular TV with window-box bars to either side; the resulting 4:3 image measures about 14in. diagonally.

The attractive silver remote boasts a comfortable cursor control for menu navigation, but its other buttons are too similar to easily differentiate. We appreciated the dedicated button that switches from PC to TV display. We had no problems with the simple on-screen menu system, which looks like it was lifted straight from a computer monitor. A different menu, with different parameters, comes up, depending on whether a TV or computer source is active.

Features

The W1700 can display just about anything. Its native 1,280 by 768 resolution is enough to show every pixel of 720p HDTV; higher-resolution 1080i HDTV is scaled down to fit the pixels, while everything else is scaled up. Dell includes a PAL/SECAM, NTSC and SDTV/HDTV-ready tuner that can connect to an antenna or a cable system. Cable subscribers will probably still need to use their boxes to receive every channel.

In addition to the screw-type RF input for TV, the W1700's video connections include composite and S-Video jacks, plus an HDTV-compatible component video input, all with stereo audio. You also get a composite A/V output. There's a DVI jack that can connect to computers, but since it lacks HDCP copy-protection, it won't work some DVI-equipped DVD players. A VGA-style analogue computer input is also available. A 1/8in. headphone jack on the side allows easy late-night listening.

Chief among the TV's convenience features is a PIP (Picture-In-Picture) function, but unfortunately it works only when the PC is the main source and a video input fills the smaller window -- not with two video sources or channels. There are three sizes available for the small window but no split-screen action. The W1700 also has three preset picture modes, four preset sound modes, three colour-temperature presets (for video), and a user-adjustable RGB colour control (for computers). Video sources allow four aspect-ratio choices, including one that selectively stretches the sides of the image but leaves the middle intact.

Performance

We first tested the W1700 as a television. We connected our Denon DVD-2900 in progressive-scan mode, set the W1700 to its Warm colour temperature and Movie picture preset, and measured a ridiculously blue 11,745 degrees Kelvin at the bottom of the greyscale and 6,789K at the top (6,500K is ideal). As a result, we saw inaccurate colour in low-light scenes; during X-Men when Rogue first encounters Wolverine in the bar, the shadows looked slightly green-blue.

When we slipped in our trusty copy of Star Trek: Insurrection, we noticed the W1700's implementation of 3:2 pull-down worked well, eliminating jaggedness along the edges of the buildings. But the colour decoding accentuates green significantly, and we couldn't make any adjustments. We had to reduce the colour control to prevent greens from taking over the picture. Like all LCDs, the W1700 cannot produce true black; the best it can do is a dark green-grey. Shadow detail was below average compared to that of other LCD TVs we've seen.

DVD looked better during bright scenes, and we saw plenty of detail via component video during the genetic material fly-through from the beginning of X-Men. When we connected our Bravo D1 and set the DVI output to 720p, the image looked crisper and cleaner than standard DVD. The third time we watched the scene was with the JVC HM-DH3000U as a source playing our X-Men D-VHS tape; as expected, it looked best of all. Dark scenes were still problematic though; for example, we saw the green tinge in shadows again during the opening scene when the young Magneto becomes separated from his parents in the concentration camp. The high resolution of the W1700 really pays off for HDTV, but keep in mind that you must sit very close to appreciate all that detail on this rather small screen.

The W1700 isn't much of a computer monitor. We were unable to set proper contrast and brightness levels without compromising one or the other. In our greyscale tests, the panel lacked uniformity and showed pronounced bumps, ripples and variously placed hot spots. Worst, we found that the W1700 suffered from egregious hue-shifting -- when the intensity of a colour increased or decreased, the colour itself changed instead of becoming more or less intense. Although the on-screen menus are easy to use, we found it almost impossible to get a good picture with the W1700, no matter how much we tweaked the image settings.

Editor's note: The original review of the W1700 by CNET.com, published in December 2003, was based on a pre-production sample. ZDNet UK has examined a production unit supplied by Dell UK, and found the image quality to be slightly better than reported above. Consequently, we have boosted the performance rating from 5 to 6.

Story URL: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/monitors/0,1000001018,39148085,00.htm