JVC LT26DX7 26 inch LCD TV Review

The World Cup may be over for England but it doesn’t mean you should hold back on buying a high-definition TV.  We know people were rushing out to get them installed before the football kicked off, but that was just the very tip of the new-TV-experience iceberg.  With the BBC entering the HD market and SkyBSky surging ahead with more high-def channels, there’s a whole world of visual experiences waiting for you.  JVC know this, which is why they’ve spend so much love and attention getting their 26 inch model exactly right.  Boasting two HDMIs, cinema sound, MPEG noise reduction and lots of other features it’s a prime example of how TVs should be made.

Design
We quite liked the silver and black combo of the JVC LT26DX7.  The screen is surrounded a silver strip followed by a large black border and then edged again with silver.  The speakers are hidden in a recess under the screen taking up less space and not being as intrusive as some speakers. And the whole TV sits on a sturdy stand.  The only criticism is that the JVC does feel a bit plasticy.

 
Well Designed TV With Two HDMI Ports

Setup/Installation
We'd like to say it was easy to install, but we'd be fibbing.  The onscreen menu was really difficult to see because the writing was so small you needed to swish your nose up against the screen to see it.  And the remote control was a bit cumbersome too.  But once it's up and running the features and performance made up for what the set up lacked.

Features
The first thing to get excited about, especially if you’ve got a games console or DVD player is the two HDMI ports so you can connect up multiple devices without having to swap cables over.  While at the back of the TV there are also two Scarts, both RGB capable but no USB connection or digital audio output.

The TV comes with built-in Freeview – nothing special there we hear you say, as Freeview seem to be standard with most new TVs.  But what is special is that the JVC Lt-26DX7BJ also has a slot at the back that accepts CI cards, which means you can top up your digital terrestrial channels with subscription services.

Picture wise you get Digital Image Scaling Technology (DIST) which map incoming pictures onto the native 1366 x 768 resolution giving you more detailed pictures.

There’s also DynaPix image processing which makes it better equipped to deal with high definition, as well as digital and MPEG noise reduction, motion adaptive frame rate conversion, automatic colour management, and PAL 3D Y/C separation.

Performance
The fancy technology that JVC implements in its LCD TVs is DIST.  It’s been going for quite a few generations of tellies now and the bods at the testing factory have learned from previous mistakes.  What you get with the latest version is an exceptional amount of detail.  The colours are really vivid making your viewing experience a joy to behold.  And the contrast range is really good providing virginal-snow whites and deep blacks which means pictures look richer, brighter and deeper. We did have a slight issue with the colour tones, while good most of the time, sometimes they seem to go a bit funny and give you what looks like slightly unnatural tones.  We also found that dark parts of the picture can sometimes look empty and lack subtle shades.  The noise reduction feature that they’ve added means that there’s next to no image noise at all, giving you images that aren’t grainy and edges that are smooth.  Where the TV falls down slightly, and this is a minor quibble, is on fast moving images.  Even with its frame rate adjuster, fast moving images look flat and a bit smeared.  But then we listened to the sound quality and everything was forgiven.  While you can’t see the discreetly hidden speakers, you can hear them and the sound is wide and deep.