Surprisingly good for the price... (Matsui Televisions in general)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Matsui Televisions in general
Date:	01/02/01 (713 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, cheap, easily available, lots of features

Disadvantages: No split screen text. Overly sensitive remote.

I recently bought a Matsui 1410T Fastext TV for my bedroom.

It cost me £89.99 from Dixons, which I thought was pretty good as usually Fastext TV's are quite a bit pricier than this.

Of course the salesman in Dixons was also on the hard sell when it came to the extended warranty option. (Which is extremely BAD, and I didn't take it up) I didn't think I was going to be allowed to leave the shop without taking the option up, and the guy was on at me the whole time "Ah, but it's only £20 blah, blah, blah" and he gave me a very disapproving look as I left the store with the TV sans Dixons warranty.

What he neglected to mention is that taking out this warranty would have been a waste of time, as it covers the TV for 24 months from the date of purchase... a period which is covered for free by Matsui's own guarantee...

I was quite impressed when I got the television out of the box. It is a nice shape, and very compact - the back end not stick out as far as on many 14" sets.

The remote control is also very slim, but all the functions are still immediately accessible. The remote also came with batteries included, so I did not have to worry about that!

The set is easy to set up, with all functions accessed via a hierarchical menu system. There is an auto-search / store facility included to tune in all your channels, but I do not use this as it tends to store channels in the wrong places (i.e. Channel 4 on Channel 1, ITV on Channel 5 etc) and also tends to store poor quality signals ahead of clearer ones.

The manual search function is equally easy to find and use however.

There are 79 channels provided on the set, plus AV, and it comes with the obligatory SCART socket, and it's own loop aerial. I haven't tried the loop aerial, so I can't comment on it's quality, but I doubt if it is much good unless you live in an area with excellent signal strength.
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br>There is a good, clear, and concise On Screen Display whenever an adjustment is made, and most functions can be directly accessed through a key on the remote as well as accessed through the menu.

The only thing that I really do not like about this TV is that it does not have the split screen fastest feature that one would expect. Text is either on or it is off, you cannot move to a split screen view with the text laid over the top of the program, and I find this really annoying.

You can minimise the text to watch the program, and bring it back again when you want to read something, using the "x" button on the remote, but the problem with this is that you have no way of knowing when the page has changed, as the whole status bar is also minimised.

There is also the fact that the buttons on the remote are way too sensitive. The slightest tap sets them off, and you can often end up registering more presses than you intended.

There can also be some rather loud bangs when the set is off and a capacitor discharges, but this is an issue with a lot of modern sets, and also some computer monitors. There is no danger from it - it doesn't signal that the TV is about to blow up or anything, but it can make one jump sometimes!

Overall though, this an excellent fastext enabled set, with good colour, a good sharp picture, and all the features that you would expect from a much more expensive set, all for the bargain price of £89.99

It's well worth a look....

Summary: