REVIEW

MITSUBISHI CT-28AV1BDS

Mitsubishi are relative latecomers to the Dolby Pro-Logic TV market, but they’ve clearly done their homework, and learned from the experiences of the other manufacturers. The CT-28AV1BDS is one of range of highly-specified NICAM TVs with screen sizes from 51 to 66cm (21 to 28 inches). This is the flagship model, with a 66cm screen and the full-house specification, which includes a built-in Astra satellite receiver, a console-stand, a pair of surround speakers plus several armfuls of convenience features.  At just under £900 (excluding dish and installation) it looks like a pretty good deal.

They’ve played it safe with the cosmetics. Sad to say it’s just another dreary plastic box but the console it sits on is reasonably good-looking. It houses the centre-channel speaker and underneath there’s room for a VCR and laser disc player. The satellite viewing card fits into a slot behind a front-panel hatch. On the other side of the fascia there’s another hinged cover hiding a set of secondary controls, front-mounted AV inputs and a headphone socket.

A simple to use auto-install system takes care of tuner programming. The 150-channel satellite receiver is factory set, with the BSkyB channels heading the list. Incidentally channel changing (terrestrial and satellite) is unusually slow, it takes around a second for the picture to appear, which might not sound a lot but it can be irritating if you’re a dedicated channel-hopper. Installing the surround-sound system should be simple too, but the speaker leads supplied are ridiculously short; we suspect most people with normal sized living rooms will have to extend them. Levels are set using a sequenced white noise generator, controlled from the informative on-screen display.

Auto subtitling is a new feature, this can be set to display teletext subtitles whenever the volume is muted; it comes in very handy when the phone rings, so you can continue to watch the programme and follow the plot. There’s a good range of picture adjustments, including variable colour temperature, and sharpness; it also has six digital sound processor (DSP) modes with disco, theatre, concert hall, cathedral, stadium and pseudo stereo effects. Four AV memories are available for storing personal picture and sound preferences.

Picture quality is excellent, the invar mask tube has a good contrast range, from solid black to a clean bright white. Colour resolution is spot-on, and with a strong signal there’s virtually no picture noise. Surround sound resolution is okay, back channel output is adequate and it’s good at localising loud sounds and big dramatic effects, but the quieter ones sometimes end up getting swamped.

DATA STREAM

Mitsubishi CT-28AV1BDS, £900

Pros --  Amazing value! It’s going to provide a real challenge for the other DPL TV manufacturers

Cons -- a few relatively trivial niggles, like the short  rear channel speaker cables, slow channel change and bland cosmetics   

Dimensions       670 x 550 x 490 mm (excluding stand)

Mitsubishi Electric UK Ltd., telephone (017072) 76100

Performance                  9

Features                       8

Value for money 8

Overall Total                  90%

FEATURES

* Built-in satellite receiver and Videocrypt decoder

* PAL/SECAM/NTSC display

* multi-lingual on-screen display

* auto subtitling

* auto tuning

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Ó R. Maybury 1996 0501