REVIEW
STRAP
DOLBY PRO-LOGIC TV
HEAD
JVC AV-29SX1EK
INTRO
Conventional wisdom has it that surround
sound systems need speakers in front of and behind the listener, the JVC
AV-29SX ‘Symphonix’ Pro-Logic TV has only one set of front speakers. How do
they do that, and more importantly, does it work?
COPY
It’s not hard to see why JVC put so much
effort into developing the ‘3D-Phonic sound system, featured on the AV-29SX
Symphonic TV. Surround sound and home cinema still has to overcome a fair
amount of consumer resistance, mainly because of the need for extra speakers,
and their cables. It’s not an easy job,
installing a five-speaker system in the confines of a typical British living
room, and without wishing to sound sexist, spousal disquiet, concerning lots of
little boxes all over the place, has dampened the enthusiasm of more than a few
budding home cinema fans.
JVC have dispensed with those extra speakers
on this set, and instead rely on the set’s built-in speakers to generate surround-sound
effects. It’s a neat trick if you can do it... But does it work?
We’ll come to that in a moment, but first a
guided tour around the rest of the TV, to see what else you get for your £900. The
headline features are familiar territory, it’s a big, bold 68cm (29-inch in old
money) NICAM set with fastext and on-screen display. It’s NTSC and widescreen
compatible (stretch mode for anamorphic recordings), and it has a facility
called ‘Eco’ mode’ which automatically adjusts picture contrast according to
the level of ambient lighting in the room. JVC say Eco mode gives a small but
worthwhile power saving, and helps prevent eyestrain, that can result from an
over-bright screen in a darkened room.
First impressions are very favourable, it’s a
handsome looking beast, styling is clean and uncluttered. The side-mounted,
forward-firing speakers add little to the overall width so it doesn’t appear
overbearing. There’s only one front-panel control, and that’s the on/off button.
There’s a set of buttons and sockets behind a little hinged flap; the sockets
are for a headphone, and AV inputs, for connecting the TV up to a camcorder or
video game. Surprisingly there’s no S-Video socket on the front, which is bound
to irritate owners of high-band camcorders. Around the back there’s a pair of
SCART AV sockets, (three would be have been better), plus a bank of five phono sockets, carrying line-level outputs
from the Dolby Pro Logic decoder.
The first time it’s switched on there’s an-screen
display that invites the user to select the auto set-up routine. This seeks out
and stores all locally available stations, arranges them into a logical order,
and assigns channel numbers and names. It takes only a minute or so, after that
it’s ready to go. Picture and sound adjustments are carried out using
menu-options from the on-screen display; brightness, contrast and colour
saturation can be altered, though the settings are global and not assigned to
individual channels. There are however three alternative picture presets,
called cinema, game, and standard, which optimise the contrast and saturation
settings to suit.
There are five audio options: for Dolby encoded
software there’s Pro-Logic 3D Phonic, with alternate presets for cinema/sport
and musical material; there’s also normal
Dolby Pro-Logic sound, though the decoder’s line outputs for the rear effects
and centre channel have to be connected to amplifiers and speakers in order for
it to work, it doesn’t have separate amplified speaker outputs. For non-Dolby
material there’s a four mode digital sound processor (DSP), the choices are:
dance club, concert hall, stadium, and hyper sound, for mono sources. The first
three effects add varying amounts of reverb to the main channel output, for a
spatial effect. There’s a further set of options for headphone listening, these
include a 3D Phonic setting, plus dance club, stadium and concert hall effects.
Operationally it’s very well behaved and easy
to use. The labelling on the remote buttons that control the OSD are a bit
confusing at first though, and the volume up down buttons are in completely the
wrong place. It’s arguably the most frequently used function, so why are they buried
in amongst the rest of the control keys?
PERFORMANCE
Picture quality is excellent. The Black Line
tube gives images a real sense of depth, colours are bright and vibrant; tricky
shades like skin tones, look very natural, and noise levels are exceptionally
low. Receiver sensitivity is good and teletext remains uncorrupted, even with a
marginal signal. The Eco mode does a fair job of adjusting the picture most of
the time, though we had to resort to manual control once or twice as it didn’t
seem to have the range to cope with very bright conditions.
And so we come to 3D Phonic and the bottom line.
So does it sound as good as a full-blown multi-speaker system? The answer is
no, though to their credit JVC are not claiming it will. Sadly, though, it’s not
even halfway there, and despite a lot of prolonged listening tests at no time
were any of our reviewers aware of sounds coming from behind the listening
position. The rear effects channel is definitely part of the soundfield and
quite distinct. It is displaced from the stereo channels, but appears to be coming
from an area in front of and to the sides of the screen. It’s different, but it’s
not surround sound. We noticed some other
odd effects, higher-frequency sounds -- a screaming jet engine, in Top Gun, for
example -- seems to be coming from higher up, lower frequency sounds -- booms
and bangs -- are closer to the ground. The remaining sound options give a
spatial feel, but they’re not very convincing.
The AX29SX can be upgraded to full five
speaker surround, but it needs external amplifiers to drive the speakers, which
makes it a lot less convenient, and a good deal more expensive. It’s a fine TV,
a great picture with an interesting sound system, but if you really want the
full home cinema effect accept no substitute. For £900 you can get a proper
Pro-Logic TV, extra boxes and all.
BOX COPY 1
HOW IT WORKS
3D Phonic owes a lot to an old idea, called
binaural sound, which pops up every so often. Binaural recording systems use a ‘dummy’
head, with microphones mounted where the ears would be. When played back through
headphones these recordings produce a vivid sensation of space with individual
sounds clearly placed in a 360 degree soundfield. JVC engineers have used
similar techniques to carefully measure the way our ears localise sounds. 3D
Phonic system works by mixing digitally generated sounds in with the main stereo
channels. They are derived from the rear channel output of the TVs Pro-Logic
decoder and processed so as to mimic what the rear channel output would sound
like, were they coming from a pair of rear speakers behind the listening
position.
BOX COPY 2
DATA STREAM
JVC AV-29SX1EK £900
Pros: Great
picture, good sound, easy top use
Cons:
Pricey, and surround sound performance is flaky
Size 733 x 583 x 492m
Weight 39.7kg
Telephone JVC 0181-450 3282
Performance 8
Build quality 9
Value for money 8
Overall Total 85%
---end---
Ó R. Maybury 1995 0408
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