Digital Trends

Kreisen LT-30FMP

February 23rd, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Testing

The Kreisen LT-30FMP comes with just about everything you will need to get up and running. This includes a remote control with batteries, A/C adapter, DVI and analog RGB cables. We were disappointed to see component video and RCA cables missing from the package, but on the upside, the LT-30FMP does come with the more expensive cables, specifically the DVI cable. The instruction manual that comes with this television is fairly detailed but doesn't tell you the resolution of every input.

Since there is only one component video input on the LT-30FMP, you will have to decide whether to use it for your HDTV external receiver or your DVD player, unfortunately you cannot have both on this input. If you are using a DVD player, then the resolution will be limited to 480P which is the standard resolution for most DVD players anyways. If you decide to use an external HDTV receiver or a HDTV DVD player, then a 1080i resolution will be down-converted to 720P. The manual does not explicitly tell you this so we had to figure it out on our own. The inputs on the back of the set are clearly labeled, but the font should be bigger to help in low light conditions. The stand that comes with the LT-30FMP gets in the way of the inputs on the back of the set, so it took us some minor struggling to get all of our cables plugged in.

As with any LCD television, the picture of the LT-30FMP can change dramatically from various viewing angles and depths. So you will want to calibrate it based on the position you will be watching it from the most. Our AVIA DVD calibration disc showed that our LT-30FMP had to be calibrated immediately after being unpackaged. LCDs tend to be very bright in general because of how they generate their backlighting so we turned down both the contrast and the brightness levels until they were within reasonable levels. We had trouble getting the red and green colors in the test pattern to calibrate correctly with the blues but ultimately found a setting that we were able to compromise with. The black levels are fairly good and show how far along LCD technology has come. Compared to higher-end LCD or Plasma HDTV models, the black levels could have been better. We had trouble finding a happy medium. When the colors and brightness were just right, the dark levels were just to dark, and when we got the dark levels to where we wanted them, the rest of the picture looked washed out. Remember that the contrast ratio is only 450:1 so It's a definite compromise you will have to make, but overall the picture quality was better than average. Just expect a lot of tweaking to get it to where you want it.

We used DISH Network's HDTV service for most of our viewing and found the LT-30FMP to be very enjoyable to use. Depending on which HDTV service you are using, you may have difficulty changing the aspect ratio. Out of the box, the LT-30FMP comes with four different aspect ratios to choose from: 16:9 widescreen, 4:3, 1:1 and Zoom. When the picture coming in through DISH Network was in a 4:3 aspect ratio, we could not change the way it looked on our LT-30FMP unit. For example, there are no 4:3 stretched modes to make it fill the screen, so we were stuck with the black bars on the side. The aspect ratios that the LT-30FMP comes with appear to be more for screen setup than being able to physically change the way the incoming signal appears. The aspect ratio is also reset back to 16:9 when the television is turned off so you are forced to change it again.