BasicDog

I have owned the HANNspree Xv-S 32" TV for around 8 months now and I have been taking it for granted to the extent where I have neglected to mention it on here. This is of course a travesty as it was both very cheap and brilliant.

Employing my usual decision making technique for non PC component products, which involves finding a cheap product with 50+ customer reviews online and reading until I am convinced it is not low quality, I happened upon this TV on ebuyer.com. One of the great things about new companies to the market selling cheap goods is that the sites selling them soon build a substantial collection of customer reviews which in turn builds the company reputation.

A little about HANNspree
HANNspree are a branch-off company of HANNstar who produce the HANNs.G PC monitors; a respected brand and this therefore leads you to expect the same quality from HANNspree TVs.

Features
32inch Widescreen LCD Panel
1366x768 Screen Resolution
500cd/m2 Brightness
1200:1 Contrast Ratio
8ms Response Time
HD Ready
Supports 720i, 720p, 1080i
170/170 degrees viewing angle
Dimensions (WxHxD) : 908 x 800 x 320mm
Weight : 21.8kg
2 x 10 watt Integrated Stereo Speakers

Connections
2 x HDMI
1 x Component In
2 x Scart Connection
1 x Composite In
1 x S-Video In
1 x PC/VGA In
1 x Headphones Connection

Front of TV

Side of TV

Back of TV

Viewing Experience
The picture quality is excellent and after connecting my PC using HDMI to the TV and putting in a recent DVD I was amazed at the level of detail that it displayed, though this is not always a good thing when viewing DVDs from the 90s that have a very grainy quality, which can be quite distracting. In the past SCART leads lower quality had blurred this effect into one smooth color, though I am happy to note that more recent DVDs from the past few years don't suffer from this.

So we have established that the picture detail is excellent but I have to admit at this point that although the colours are the most vivid that I have had on any of my PC monitors in the past, it is not quite what you get from a top range Sony HDTV of the same specs. This has to be expected when you are paying nearly half of what Sony charge for their TVs.

Having experienced some of the early LCD monitors for PC, I remember well the joy of throwing my hulking 17" CRT monitor in a skip and actually being able to fit my keyboard on my university room desk. This was however tainted by the absolutely dire viewing angles that these early monitors had, where watching a DVD from bed (which was lower than my desk) meant looking at a black screen with the occasional flash of colourless detail. The HANNspree viewing angles are very impressive indeed and I am yet to notice any discolouration from any angle, which is always handy when you regularly have 4+ people looking at it from all all corners of the room.

For reasons that I am still oblivious to, a HDMI lead is needed to view DVDs from my PC with decent video playback. Using the normal a VGA (PC) connector the picture seems to stutter considerably especially when the camera is panning up or down, this however does not affect any games that I have played through the VGA connector. This leads on nicely to the last issue that the HANNspree HDTV has where the picture is concerned, when playing PC games I have experienced blurring on very dark areas or black objects next to bright ones, this is similar to the drunk effect that a lot of games designers use. Strangely this issue only affects games and not DVD playback, which is great news if you are not planning on using the TV as a gaming monitor.

Sound Experience
The quality of the two 10watt speakers is more than enough for casual Television/DVD watching, though if you are a fan of feeling the explosions on screen, more appropriate speakers or surround sound set-up would be advised. Along with the many audio connectors at the back of the TV, the important one for the fore mentioned set-ups is the AV out which unfortunately will not allow surround sound.

Yet another odd feature of the TV is that if you try using the HDMI audio in much the same way as you would a SCART lead, the sound will be output through the TV speakers though it does not get output through the AV speaker output. If you have an audio set-up involving some kind of separate surround sound or audio switcher this shouldn't cause any issues, nut for a simple set up with speakers running from the TV if is a nightmare.

Using the TV
The power button is a small silver button between the speakers at the base of the LCD screen, and the other buttons including the menu, channel change, and volume are located on the top of the TV. Personally I have never understood the reason for having buttons in the centre of the top of LCD TVs except maybe an attempt to prevent aching back from leading lower, this would be all well and good if you were bending in an awkward way to see the screen properly as you find your head 90degrees to the picture and any on screen displays (OSD) such as the main menu. This to me seems to be another example where designers perceive buttons to be bad design and attempt to hide them, though I must admit that if you are using the TV remote you really won't care if there are any buttons let alone where they are on the TV unit.

The TV has removable back panels that cover the connectors and help to make accessing them a lot easier as you don't have to worry about how visible they are when the panels are off. The Back panels may give the TV for a nicer aethetic look, but they also help the wires to be neater by pushing them towards the back of the stand and out of sight, this does however cause issues with standard SCART leads which angle their wires in the wrong direction for this design. The SCART leads tend to loosen if the cables are moved in any way due to the awkward angle they are being pulled, once you have everything set up in the corner of the room you won't worry about this.

Pros
Very cheap
Very good picture quality
Good viewing angles
2 HDMI leads
Removable Back Panels

Cons
No Digital Receiver
Black Blurring Issue
SCART lead issues
Source detection issues
HDMI Audio issues

Conclusion
For a company just starting to produce HDTVs this is a very good product, there are a few design and software faults but that is expected for the price that it has cost especially when you take into consideration the high level of technology.

Even though I seem to have mentioned more negatives than positives in this review, the majority of faults are not enough to affect the everyday use of the TV and are quickly forgotten about as soon as you start watching a DVD on it. For that reason I remain a huge fan of this TV.